Board’s Move Angers Orange Unified Teachers

ORANGE —  Leaders of the Orange Unified teachers union said Thursday they will file unfair employment charges against the school district after its Board of Education voted to raise salaries only for beginning-level teachers.

Union President David Reger denounced the board’s action as a “desperate move to circumvent contract negotiations.”

After negotiations on a three-year teachers’ contract have been deadlocked all year, the board on Wednesday night approved a $6,000- to $7,000-a-year pay raise that affects most teachers with less than 10 years of experience. No pay raises were included for senior teachers, who make up more than half the instructors.

“We have to take this one step at this time because we’re in a state of emergency,” Assistant Supt. of Personnel Malcolm Seheult said.

*

A declaration of emergency was made this week after a teachers union survey found that about 300 teachers might not return to the district next year. The potential exodus could leave the district with a dire teacher shortage, especially as elementary schools aim to hire more teachers to limit more classes to 20 students. District administrators said they will have to hire an additional 150 teachers by next year to keep pace with growth and attrition.

Currently, Orange Unified stands as the lowest-paying unified district in the county, and school administrators said that the pay raise would attract new teachers for the coming year. But teachers said the board’s decision was an attempt to clamp down on further contract negotiations.

“Our board will not bargain with us,” Reger said. “What they’ve done is blatantly illegal.”

The union’s attorney intends to file by Monday charges with the Public Employee Relations Board, a state agency that investigates alleged contract violations.

According to officials with the state board, a school district generally cannot make unilateral contract changes without completing bargaining negotiations with their employees.

“The purpose of this requirement is to allow the employees and the employer to bargain over the agreement on equal footing,” said Bob Thompson, deputy general counsel for the Public Employee Relations Board.

Thompson cited a similar scenario in 1978 when several school districts were anticipating the major losses of property tax money from the passage of Proposition 13. Various districts made unilateral changes to wages and teachers’ contracts. The Public Employee Relations Board, however, deemed those actions as a violation of procedures and recommended that the districts return to the bargaining table.

*

Orange Unified President Martin Jacobson said he is confident that the board’s decision is legally sound.

“Our legal advisors said this is legal,” Jacobson said. “But we were so far apart in negotiations that it didn’t look like a settlement would be reached. This is something the board felt we had to do to keep our young teachers.”

But teachers with more than 10 years of experience said they are being shortchanged.

Fletcher Elementary teacher John McCarthy, who has been with Orange Unified for 18 years, said he’s mailing out his resume to other districts because he’s fed up with the drawn-out wrangling. He characterizes the standstill in negotiations as the result of the board’s unwillingness to compensate its veteran teachers.

“It’s very disheartening,” said McCarthy, a fifth-grade teacher. “If I could find a job someplace else that pays less, I’d go. Morale is very low.”

Teachers have until June 30 to turn in their letter of intent to return to the district next year.

But Supt. Robert L. French said the negotiations are far from over. He said he has $1.7 million budgeted for teacher raises. He added that the proposals he has presented to the union have been rejected as insufficient.

“We have significant raises in mind,” French said. “But what they want we can’t financially afford.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Wage Comparison

Beginning teachers at Orange Unified School District have both the lowest minimum and maximum salaries among all unified districts in the county. Comparison for school year 1995-96:

MINIMUM

*--*

District Amount 1. Garden Grove $28,900 2. Santa Ana* 28,887 3. Los Alamitos 28,615 4. Capistrano 27,067 5. Newport-Mesa 26,740 6. Tustin 26,363 7. Brea Olinda 25,563 8. Placentia-Yorba Linda 25,379 9. Saddleback Valley 25,000 10. Irvine 24,073 11. Orange 23,358 Unified districts median 26,363

*--*

MAXIMUM

*--*

District Amount 1. Los Alamitos $44,675 2. Capistrano 42,493 3. Saddleback Valley 37,388 4. Brea Olinda 35,601 5. Garden Grove 35,486 6. Santa Ana 32,965 7. Tustin 31,216 8. Placentia-Yorba Linda 9. Irvine 29,814 10. Newport-Mesa 28,148 11. Orange 23,358 Unified districts median 32,965

*--*

* Year-round school; traditional school year is 184 contract days and 180 teaching days

Note: 1995-96 salaries for Laguna Beach Unified not available

Source: Orange County Department of Education