Op-Ed: Breaking down what the negotiations between teachers, LCUSD entail

The current negotiations between the La Cañada Unified School District and its teachers will have major repercussions throughout our community for years to come. Decisions made at the table should be made with the community’s knowledge, which is the reason LCUSD has agreed to move to a traditional bargaining format.

Both the District and our teachers agree that the most important goal is to recruit and retain the highest-quality teachers. There is no doubt this can only be achieved by offering competitive salaries and benefits to our valued teachers.

Throughout negotiations this has been the District’s guiding principle. At no time was it ever contemplated or authorized to not offer our teachers a raise. From the start of the current negotiations, the LCUSD Governing Board has directed the administration to cut through all funding and budgetary constraints to come up with a competitive salary increase. The direction was to question past budgetary assumptions, to cut what programs we can and to squeeze out whatever monies are available within these constraints.

The problem is that these constraints are formidable:

- Under the new Local Control Funding Formula, LCUSD is one of the lowest-funded districts in California. We receive the base grant and only a small amount of supplemental dollars. Three of the four comparable districts have more students generating supplemental funds than LCUSD — one almost three times as many.

- In the 2014-15 school year 82% of revenues went to salaries and benefits, leaving 18% for books, school safety, maintenance, technology, teacher support and training, and everything else, including keeping the lights on.

- La Cañada has a parcel tax of $450 (compared to $1,195 in San Marino, and $386 in South Pasadena) set to expire in 2021, which expiration without renewal would reduce the current budget by more than $2.5 million.

- Without the donations from the LCF Educational Foundation, which change annually and cannot be relied on, the District would be in deficit by $2 million, based on contributions over past years.

Recruiting and retaining teachers is the District’s first priority. But for teachers to teach, they need a safe and well maintained school to do it in, and books to teach from.

The current salary schedule offered by the District puts LCUSD within 2% of our comparable high-performing districts. Taken together with the combined 10% raise given the teachers over the last three years, we think it is a fair offer. Yet even if it is accepted by the teachers, the District will face an uncertain future. With the new salary schedule in place, the District’s operating budget will reflect a deficit in 2017-18 of $1,229,895.

As we prepare the new budget, this deficit continues into 2018-19. In order to avoid a negative or qualified certification from the County of Los Angeles, LCUSD must certify that it can pay its debts for the current and two subsequent budget years. If theoffer is accepted, under our current budget, LCUSD will have to address these deficits to get a positive certification.

LCUSD will have to find the money to erase the deficits by cutting additional programs, moving staff around and deferring essential expenditures even further, all with the desired goal of avoiding staff reductions. These will be tough decisions for the District and our teachers, but together we think we can do it.

So you see, these are decisions our community needs to be made aware of. They impact us all. And if we are to seriously consider some of the alternatives raised during these negotiations — further deferring maintenance, safety improvements and book purchases, or cutting art and music programs, or avoiding the costs of making the football field and the swimming pool safe by leasing these facilities off school premises — then these tough decisions need to be made with the knowledge of the community.

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DAVID SAGAL is president of the La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board.