Resume Bargaining, Open-Air Audience Tells Tustin’s Board

A crowd of about 1,600 in Northrup Field Stadium at Tustin High School Monday night heard scores of speakers, most in support of the striking teachers, bombard the five-member board of the Tustin Unified School District. At the unusual outdoor meeting, school board members listened to the speakers but took no action on the most frequently heard demand: Return to the negotiating table.

Dorothy Ralston, president of the board, refused a demand early in the long hearing that she poll the board about a resumption of negotiations. “This is the hearing segment of the meeting,” Ralston said to the demand. Her comment brought a chorus of “boos” from the audience, followed by the chant, “Recall! Recall! Recall!”

Petitions seeking support for defeat of two board members in November’s election and the recall of the remaining three members were presented to people as they entered the stadium.

In addition to the recall threat, another new development in the four-day-old strike was a warning by a Tustin High School student that at least 1,000 of his classmates would walk out of classes Thursday if the board failed to resume negotiations. The student, Craig Castellanet, 16, a junior at Tustin High, told the board he had the signatures of 1,000 classmates.

“If this demand (resumption of negotiations) is not met, we will not be attending school on Thursday,” Castellanet told the board. The audience applauded loudly.

Earlier, however, the first speaker had been a parent who defended the school board and castigated the teachers for “encouraging truancy.”

Kathy Gordon, who said she had four children in Tustin schools, was referring to the walkout Friday by about 300 students at Foothill High School and several dozen others at Tustin High. The audience booed, and several people complained that she was speaking longer than the three minutes allowed.

Later in the evening, speakers critical of the board spoke longer than three minutes without criticism from the audience.

The challenge to poll the school board on resumption of negotiations came from a parent, Norman Neville, 44, who lives in a section of Santa Ana that is in the Tustin Unified School District.

Neville said he felt sure the teachers would return to work at 8 a.m. this morning if the board would signify it would resume negotiations. Neville turned from the microphone and faced the teachers seated in the stadium. “Will you go back to work?” he asked.

“Yes! Yes!” the teachers chanted.

Neville then turned to the school board members and asked if they would agree to resume negotiating. It was at this point that board President Ralston refused to poll the members.

Before the meeting, Ralston had made it clear that the school board would not take any vote involving the strike during the Monday night meeting. She said people who wanted to speak would be heard, but she reiterated that the board’s final offer of Sept. 26 to the teachers had not changed.

Sandy Banis, president of the Tustin Educators Assn., said the strike will continue at least through today, and teachers will hold another mass meeting at the Tustin Civic Center at 11 a.m. today.

School board meetings normally are held in the district administration building on C Street in Tustin, but the meeting Monday was held in the outdoor stadium because of the anticipated crowd. Bill Teter, director of maintenance and operations for the school district, said the stadium seats 1,900, and he estimated the crowd at 1,600.

The teachers’ association is asking for a retroactive 6.3% pay raise for 1984-85 and an 8.1% increase for the current school year. The school board on Sept. 26 broke off negotiations after making a “final offer” of 8.2% for the current school year and “not less than 4%” for 1986-87. The offer did not include any pay raise for 1984-85. The teachers on Sept. 30 overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. The teachers in June had voted down the school board’s proposal for a 3.8% pay raise for 1984-85.

Earlier Monday, about 170 striking teachers held a morning meeting at Peppertree Park in Tustin and then marched downtown. The march included a swing by school district headquarters, where the teachers chanted “back to the table” and “we want a contract.”

During the march, Banis said that the teachers’ efforts to tell their side of the story to the community is meeting with success. “We’ve had a very good response from the residents,” she said. “In fact, I’m kind of surprised at how good it has been.”