La Cañada board, teachers remain at odds in contract negotiations
Tension between the La Cañada Teachers Assn. and La Cañada Unified School District over contract negotiations continued to grow during last week’s regular meeting of the district’s governing board.
Continuing a new, pre-meeting tradition that began in March, dozens of LCTA members stood at the corner of Cornishon Avenue and Foothill Boulevard to encourage passing vehicles to honk in support of the teachers, while also expressing solidarity in support of a wage increase.
NEWSLETTER: Get the latest 818 headlines straight to your inbox >>
Teachers participating in Tuesday’s demonstration carried black balloons with them from the street into the school board meeting.
Although negotiating parties for the LCTA and school board had seemed close to reaching a mutual agreement over teacher pay raises and a revision of LCUSD’s salary schedule for the next school year, contract talks took a negative turn on April 27, according to the union’s leader.
LCTA President Mandy Redfern stated the school district unilaterally moved the bargaining process from Interest-Based Bargaining to adversarial, positions-based bargaining. Supt. Wendy Sinnette countered with a statement that several offers had been made and rejected by LCTA representatives.
Teachers were offered a 4.1% raise retroactive to the start of the current school year and increases in the salary schedule in key areas, amounting to an overall increase of 4.3%.
But, according to the LCTA, the salary schedule revisions would actually average out to a 2.68% increase for teachers, which would be further reduced to 1.18% after increasing employee contributions to healthcare and retirement benefits were factored in.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Board President David Sagal spoke at length about the current climate of contract talks with the teachers.
“We plan to offer competitive salaries and benefits,” he said. “This has been the district’s guiding principle while maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect, with a common goal of doing what’s best for your students.”
Sagal said the board is aware that some LCUSD teachers are currently exploring opportunities at other L.A. County school districts.
“We want to do everything we can to keep you on our team,” he told the teachers. “It would be unbearable to have one of you leave the team. What we value and what we aspire to do collide with limited resources.”
Supplemental funding from outside the school district accounts for 1% of revenues, Sagal said, with $4.5 million provided annually through donations, not even accounting for boosters clubs, with $1.5 million more in revenue coming in from the local parcel tax.
“The parcel tax expires in 2021, so we’re not on the soundest of footings,” Sagal said.
In addition, the district is faced with its own increasing employer contributions to teachers’ retirement benefits, which will continue to climb until the district is paying 19.1% by 2020.
Sagal compared LCUSD to other demographically similar districts, like Manhattan Beach and South Pasadena, even though they have varying student class sizes, scales of operations and, therefore, varying federal funding levels. San Marino Unified most closely matches La Cañada, for example, but receives more supplemental funding than LCUSD and has “very strong” local revenues and a higher parcel tax.
“They have $5.3 million generated annually,” Sagal said. “That’s more than double La Cañada.”
During public comment, Redfern spoke first to the packed room.
“We’ve been accused of engaging in CTA tactics,” she said. “We, the teachers in this room, are the faces of LCTA. I guarantee that when you step into our classroom for the coming week, we do the best job possible to make sure our students have the best possible education.”
Redfern reiterated LCTA has “maintained solvency” for the last 13 years, including during the recession, and went eight years without seeing a single salary increase.
“We did this with the promise that when revenues came in, it would be our time,” she said. “We feel betrayed that this is happening.”
Matt Sanderson is a contributing writer.