Compton Teachers Ratify Pact Granting 7% Retroactive Raise

After seven months of bitter negotiation and strikes so crippling they were halted by a judge, Compton Unified School District teachers overwhelmingly ratified a three-year contract Wednesday to gain a 7% salary increase, retroactive to last July.

In return for a first-year raise that matched what they had demanded, the teachers agreed to accept less than 7% increases during the rest of the contract period. Next year they will receive a 5% raise, and the following year’s figure will be tied to the cost of living.

Union leaders said the contract will eventually achieve their goal of lifting Compton salaries nearly to the Los Angeles County average. Until now, Compton’s 1,400 teachers received the lowest pay of the 43 public school districts. The 28,000-student district is the county’s third-largest.

“It’s a victory because we didn’t cave in,” said teacher Wilhelmina Ryan, president of the Compton Education Assn. The vote in favor of the contract was 64%, she said.

Ryan said the contract also increases the pay cap for teachers with master’s degrees and gives others more salary credit for length of service. The first-year raise will push the top teacher pay scale to about $35,840.

“It helps us reach parity,” Ryan said. “It puts us in the middle of the pack.”

School Supt. Ted D. Kimbrough was attending a graduation ceremony when the teachers’ vote was announced and could not be reached for comment.

The teachers had been negotiating with district administrators since last fall. When talks broke down in November, however, union members began a series of intermittent strikes to dramatize their complaints about low pay and poor working conditions.

After 16 days of one- and two-day strikes, administrators persuaded Superior Court Judge Ricardo A. Torres to order the teachers back to school even though the union had complied with a long mediation process required by state law. The district’s case was bolstered by a state Public Employment Relations Board finding that Compton students--struggling in a district that has long been economically disadvantaged--were being deprived of their state constitutional right to obtain an education.