Teachers Vote to Strike Over Pay Issue in Santa Ana

Santa Ana teachers Tuesday authorized their union leaders to strike, perhaps as early as Thursday, if salary differences in their contract negotiations cannot be resolved.

About 700 of the district’s 1,750 teachers attended Tuesday afternoon’s emotional meeting at Valley High School, where the strike vote took place. Bill Ribblett, executive director of the Santa Ana Educators Assn., said 88% of the teachers voted in secret ballots to support the strike.

If a walkout takes place, it will be the first teachers’ strike in Orange County since the Tustin Unified six-day strike in 1985.

No date has been set for a strike in Santa Ana, but Ribblett said it could be called as soon as Thursday.

“The district has called us to the (negotiating) table on Wednesday, but if that doesn’t work out, we could call the strike any time after that,” Ribblett said.

The vote empowers the board of directors of the union to call the strike.

“I will call another meeting (of teachers) before we take any action,” union president Gail Burney-King said.

Burney-King later appeared at the regular meeting of the Santa Ana Unified School Board on Tuesday night. She informed the board of the strike authorization vote and in a prepared speech, said: “If this is war, you’re causing it by your delay.”

About 150 teachers packed the halls and the small meeting room where the school board holds its sessions.

Asked for comment on the strike authorization, Robert L. Richardson, school board president, said: “We’re still at the (bargaining) table. We’re working for a resolution, and I think that’s all that’s prudent for me to say.”

Later in the board’s meeting, the board members adopted a resolution for “emergency procedures” to be used in case of a strike.

Among other things, the resolution stated that “all unauthorized absences shall result in the deduction of salary and paid benefits for each day of absence. . . .” The resolution also authorized hiring substitutes at a daily rate of $175 and empowered the district superintendent to close any school if “the physical welfare of the students or staff on that school site is in jeopardy because of . . . disruptive activity. . . .”

With about 38,500 students, Santa Ana Unified is the largest school district in Orange County. The current average salary for a teacher is $31,800, said Assistant Supt. Don Champlin. He said salaries range from $20,670 for a beginning teacher to $41,383 for the most senior instructors.

As in the case of the 1985 Tustin strike, a dispute over a pay raise for the teachers is the central issue in Santa Ana Unified. The teachers’ union has asked for a 9% pay raise retroactive to July 1, when the teachers’ last contract expired. The school board’s current offer is for a 3% raise.

The school board also stalemated in negotiating a pay raise for its 1,100 classified (non-teaching) workers. A representative of the classified workers, Ben Bustamente, told the school board Tuesday night that classified workers believe their negotiations “are being held hostage” because of the simultaneous negotiations with the teachers.

Bustamente said the school board is offering the classified workers a 2.88% pay raise, which he said is unacceptable.

District staff officials on Tuesday said that because the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian only gave schools a 2.54% increase this fiscal year, Santa Ana Unified can barely afford a 3% pay raise for teachers. “Even a 3% pay raise is deficit spending for us,” said Assistant Supt. C. G. (Pat) Browning.

But Ribblett, executive director of the Santa Ana Educators Assn., said the district has unspent money it can tap to pay teachers a higher salary. Ribblett told the teachers’ meeting Tuesday afternoon at Valley High School that, among other things, the district has $3.5 million “that was put into a special reserve so they can purchase property.”

School district officials have said money must be set aside to help buy property because Santa Ana Unified needs to build 22 new schools in the next 10 years. The new schools are needed because enrollment increased about 1,000 students per year in the past decade. That growth is forecast to continue at about the same rate for several more years.

While Santa Ana Unified is one of the most rapidly growing school districts in the state, it is also among the poorest--even though state funding is geared to a pupil head count. Because of a complex web of state laws and court decisions over the past 20 years, California does not equally fund each schoolchild. Browning noted that of the 12 school districts in Orange County that are unified--kindergarten through 12th grade--Santa Ana Unified gets the lowest per-pupil funding from the state.

Browning said the annual per-student funding for Santa Ana Unified is $2,551.21, compared to $3,009.81 per student for the top-funded unified district in Orange County, Los Alamitos Unified.

“It is true that we are a growth district, and if we didn’t have to build new schools for the students and buy them books and other equipment, there might be more money,” Browning said. “But we don’t have any empty school buildings to put all these new students in. Every time we have 30 new students, we must rent a new portable to put them in. We don’t have any excess money.”

Some teachers at the Tuesday’s meeting urged a delay before authorizing a strike. Several said that it would be wiser for teachers to have periodic wildcat demonstrations, such as the sickout staged by about 300 of the district’s instructors last Friday. “A strike is our trump card, and we shouldn’t play that trump card too soon,” said one teacher at the mass meeting.

Other teachers said that their precarious financial situations would not allow them to go on strike. “I’m divorced, and I stand to lose my home and everything if I have to go on strike,” said one teacher.

But the majority of speakers urged solidarity and a strike vote. English teacher Greg Katz told the meeting that a strike authorization is like giving the union a paddle to use against the school board.