Huntington Beach : Contract Gives Teachers 19% Raise Over 3 Years

Huntington Beach Union High School District teachers on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a new contract that will give them a cumulative 19.38% pay raise over three years, said Jerry Tolman, president of the District Educators Assn.

Tolman noted that ratification of the contract came almost a year and a half after negotiations began. The old contract expired in January and negotiations collapsed last spring when the former school board balked at the teacher union’s insistence on binding arbitration and agency fees, Tolman said.

Binding arbitration is a method of settling disputes by a third party, and agency fees are a form of mandatory union dues.

“Without a new school board, there would still be no binding arbitration, no agency fees, no new contract,” said Tolman. He referred to the fact that in the November election, three new board members endorsed by the union were elected to the five-member school board.

The new board, by a 5-0 vote, approved the contract Monday night, and teachers ratified it Tuesday.

Tolman said the new contract provides a retroactive 2% pay raise for each of the two semesters in the 1984-85 school year, a 3% raise for each semester in 1985-86 and a 4% raise for the two semesters in 1986-87.

According to Catherine McGough, administrative assistant for the district, the teachers’ pay, prior to the new raises, ranged from an entering salary of $16,276 to a top salary of $37,203.