Irvine : Dispute Ends as Board OKs Pact With Teachers

The bitter 11-month contract dispute between the Irvine Unified School District and its teachers ended Friday with the ratification of a two-year agreement by the Board of Education.

The new contract, which was approved Thursday by a wide margin by the Irvine Teachers Assn., gives teachers a 3% cost-of-living salary increase, a 4.6% pay raise for serving an extra five days per year and an additional 4% step-increase for 80% of the teachers. All pay hikes are retroactive to July, 1984.

In a special noon meeting, the five-member school board voted 3 to 1 to accept the contract. One member was absent.

Supt. A. Stanley Corey said the pact was “fair” but it would force the district to trim other areas of its budget by $1.5 million over the next two years. The cuts, Corey said, would be across the board and would include reductions in spending for maintenance and supplies. No layoffs are planned. The district would use attrition to thin out some positions and would reassign some librarians and administrative employees to teaching posts, Corey said.

The drawn-out contract negotiations were punctuated by the teachers’ rejection in December of what district officials called the “last, best and final” offer that also included a 3% raise. In February, 527 of the district’s 750 teachers staged a one-day walkout to protest the offer, calling for a 4% pay hike.

The contract specifies an annual salary range of $19,084 to $37,183, making Irvine teachers among the highest paid of Orange County’s 12 unified school districts. The average teacher makes about $26,000 yearly.

As part of the agreement, the teachers voted earlier this month to continue paying an annual $330 fee for union representation. The agreement calls for teachers who are not members of the union to either join or pay the $330 annual fee to a charity, said school board member Helen Cameron, who voted in favor of the contract.

Cameron said the board’s vote in favor of the pact is “a symbolic gesture of our esteem” for the teachers. Paying the teachers more, she said, justified the expected $1.5 million in cuts. Board member Bruce Lee, who voted against the pact, however, said he was “not against paying people what they are worth, but “budget cuts and raises are incompatible.”