Teachers in Sacramento Strike; New Unrest Seen

Teachers in the Sacramento Unified School District, the state’s seventh largest, went on strike Tuesday, primarily in protest over the issue of pay.

A union official said 83% of the district’s 2,300 full-time teachers manned picket lines at the start of school Tuesday and are determined to resume the protest today.

With teachers in Compton striking intermittently during the last two months and Los Angeles teachers threatening to do the same unless they receive a double-digit raise, the latest protest may herald the start of a new period of unrest among the state’s teachers.

“We’re looking at two to four years of pretty bad years” for teacher salaries, predicted Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford University education professor and former president of the state Board of Education. “The fiscal situation is rapidly turning in a negative direction . . . and it’s bound to lead to more labor conflict with teachers.”

Jim D. Harlan, president of the Sacramento City Teachers Assn., said the recent flood of education reports calling for higher teacher salaries has contributed to teachers’ dissatisfaction in Sacramento. But he said most of the anger stems from a belief that the district could find the money to offer more than the 3.8% raise that has been offered.

Sacramento teachers, who have been without a contract since June, are asking for an 8% raise.

The district offered a 3.8% increase for all teachers but also proposed paying slightly more at the bottom and top ends of the scale. Under the latest offer, the district would give beginning teachers a 5% raise and veteran teachers from 4.4% to 9.6%.

Buses Rolled

District spokesman George Medavoy said all 55 elementary, 10 junior high and 7 senior high schools opened on time, buses rolled and cafeterias were fully staffed Tuesday. But all schools will be operating on a half-day schedule today because the district has not been able to hire enough substitute teachers to cover all classes, he said. The district has hired about 550 substitute teachers at $140 a day, about twice the normal rate.

A pupil attendance report for the first day of the strike was not available. But union officials said they received reports that many buses arrived at schools nearly empty, presumably because parents fearing that a strike would occur decided to keep their children at home.

In Compton, 85% of the district’s 1,400 teachers have been on strike for the last six school days. Since November, they have staged six one-day walkouts. More than 20 teachers and sympathizers were arrested for trespassing last week when they refused to leave district headquarters.

Compton pays the lowest teacher salaries in Los Angeles County. Current wages range from $20,200 to $32,370. District officials have said that the district’s budget will allow only a 5% raise this year and further increases over the next two years are contingent on the availability of certain state funds.

In Los Angeles, teachers are beating the drums for a 14% raise that would boost beginning pay to about $22,000 from the current $20,600 and top pay from $37,500 to about $40,000. The district has offered a 7% raise, in part by drawing on lottery revenues. Negotiations broke down in December when an impasse was declared.

The results of a membership vote on the 7% offer will be announced later today at a rally at district headquarters, a spokesman for United Teachers of Los Angeles said.

Union officials say that teachers have been encouraged by a string of recent state and national reports that call for major improvements in the pay and overall status of teachers. But in California, their hopes for improved pay are colliding head-on with tighter budgets dictated by Sacramento.

A major education reform bill passed in 1983 reversed a long period of decline in statewide school funding. Teachers won large salary increases, which, according to Stanford’s Kirst, resulted in fewer strikes over the last couple of years.

But Kirst said the state’s revenue shortfall, a voter-imposed limit on state spending and the austere budget just proposed by Gov. George Deukmejian may spell an end to the “placid” relations that have existed between teachers and district management in recent years. Teachers can expect “nowhere near the salary increases of the past,” he said.

Recent reports from blue-ribbon panels on education reform have supported teachers’ demands for higher wages. In 1985, a 17-member California commission composed of business and government leaders urged that teachers’ salaries should be raised as high as $57,000 a year, provided that teachers also are given more responsibility and control over schools.

Last May, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy said that the most highly skilled teachers should help redesign and run schools, for which they should earn as much as $72,000 annually.

Too ‘Compressed’

That call was echoed by the National Governors Assn. three months later, which said in its report that the less than $10,000 difference between top and bottom pay for teachers in most states was too “compressed” to retain and attract good teachers.

“To coin a cliche, there definitely is a revolution of rising expectations among teachers,” said Ned Hopkins, a spokesman for the California Teachers Assn., the state’s major teacher organization. “You can’t have a report saying that salaries ought to be up to $60,000 and after 20 years you’re only making around $30,000. Teachers are finally rising up and saying that’s not right.”

Ed Foglia, president of the state teachers association, said that teachers are “going to have to address” the grim fiscal situation, however.

Makes Plea

“Times are going to get a lot tougher for public education in California, especially with spending limitations coming down on our head,” he said. “My plea to superintendents up and down the state is to build up a trust level.

“Compton and Sacramento are two examples of where there is very little trust between the superintendent and the teacher organization. We’re going to have to get over that.”