Teachers OK New Pact; Strike Averted

The Orange Unified School District’s 1,100 teachers voted Friday to accept the district’s latest contract offer, averting a strike that had been called for Monday.

“Schools will open as normal” for about 24,000 students in Orange, Villa Park and some parts of Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Anaheim Hills, said district spokeswoman Jacque Wilson. The offer accepted by the teachers, represented by the Orange Unified Educators Assn., includes a 10.5% salary increase, said association vice president Wilma Wittman.

Earlier this week, the teachers had voted to arrive at the district’s 37 schools Monday, the first day of the school year, with picket signs rather than notebooks.

Wilson said the teachers “compromised” a great deal but were satisfied with the agreement. The most important gain for the teachers was the higher salary in the new three-year contract, Wittman said.

Salaries for Orange teachers currently range from $19,713 to $36,870. With the 10.5% increase, the salaries will range from $21,684 to $40,627 for the 1986-87 school year, Wittman said. Salary increases for the remaining two years of the contract can be renegotiated under the agreement, she added.

The union originally asked for a 15% increase.

The last teacher’s strike in Orange County was in October, 1985, when about 240 of Tustin’s 397 regular classroom teachers stayed away from classrooms in the Tustin Unified School District’s first strike in its history.

In Orange, the two sides reached an impasse in June, and a state mediator was called in. The teachers’ three-year contract expired June 19, the last day of school.

In addition to the salary issue, the two sides were split on several other points. The union won its demand that binding arbitration apply to all aspects of the contract. The district prevailed on how money received from the California Lottery will be spent: under the contract, it will not be set aside for bargaining matters such as salaries.