Board OKs Hiring of Substitutes : Burbank Teachers Threaten to Strike

Teachers picketed City Hall and Burbank Unified School District headquarters Wednesday afternoon, saying they are prepared to strike if their 8-month-old dispute with the district over salaries and the use of lottery funds continues.

Later in the day, the district school board authorized Supt. Wayne Boulding to hire “emergency guest employees” in the event of a strike.

Waving placards with slogans reading “Down and Out in Burbank” and “Quality Education Means Quality Salaries,” almost all of the 360 members of the Burbank Teachers Assn. paraded around the headquarters to “demonstrate their solidarity and exasperation” at the lack of an agreement, association President Maureen Doyle said.

After half an hour, the demonstration moved to Burbank City Hall, where Doyle presented a petition to Mayor Mary Lou Howard asking the council to order the district not to hire substitute teachers if there is a strike.

“The teachers are extremely frustrated, and they really don’t want to walk out, so we’re doing these other things to show that we’re united,” Doyle said. “But if things do not improve, most of the teachers are ready to walk.”

At a previously scheduled meeting held a few hours after the picketing, the board voted 3 to 2 to approve an emergency resolution to pay $125 a day to substitute teachers needed if there is a staff shortage. The resolution also said schools should remain open “and available to students unless the superintendent determines otherwise.”

“The board did what it felt it had to do,” board President William Abbey said after the meeting, which was closed because it concerned a personnel matter.

Another in a series of state-mediated meetings of teachers and district officials is scheduled for Friday, but both sides acknowledged that they are far from agreement. At issue are changes to be made under a renegotiation clause that covers the final year of a three-year contract that expires June 30.

“At this point, I would say we are not optimistic,” Doyle said.

The district has proposed an across-the-board salary increase of 2.5% and a one-time bonus payment, retroactive to Sept. 1, of as much as 2.25% of teachers’ annual salaries. The bonuses would be financed with up to 55% of funds in excess of $250,000 that the district receives from the California Lottery.

Burbank teacher salaries range from $19,757 to $36,306 a year.

The teachers have asked for an across-the-board raise of 9.25% and an additional 3.9% in bonuses funded by lottery money received by the district in excess of $100,000.

Liz Burroughs, assistant superintendent of personnel services for the district, said such bonuses would require spending 60% of the district’s entire lottery proceeds.

The district has received $547,000 in lottery money and another payment is expected to increase the total to more than $1 million, Burroughs said.

Burroughs said officials have not given the teachers a bottom-line offer. “We are not through negotiating yet, and the teachers know that,” Burroughs said.

Offer Termed Lacking

But Doyle said the district is planning to give the teachers a 3% increase across the board as a final offer, which she said is “still not good enough by any stretch of the imagination.”

Negotiations have been going on since July, except for a period between November and January when an impasse was declared. At that time, the district was offering a 1.75% salary increase and teachers were asking for 10% raises and a one-time bonus payment of 75% of all lottery revenue above $100,000 allocated to the district.

Doyle said a letter has been delivered to Burbank school board members asking them to attend the mediation session at district headquarters. “We feel with the board members present there will be more good faith at the bargaining table than there has been so far,” she said.

Negotiations on a new contract are scheduled to start in July.