Mum’s the Word in Teacher Salary Protest

Teachers in the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District tried to resolve a contract impasse Thursday by giving students and administrators the silent treatment.

After working since August without a contract, teachers proclaimed the “day of silent protest,” during which they vowed to not speak to anyone while school was in session.

Keeping quiet required a little creativity at times. Teachers wrote assignments on blackboards or on overhead projectors and answered questions from students with a combination of nods, gestures and hastily scrawled notes.

“They had some clever things,” said Stu Reeder, principal of La Puente High School. “Some teachers made signs that would say, ‘Please be quiet,’ ‘No, you can’t go to the restroom,’ or ‘You’re goofing off. Get back to work.’ ”

Students in the San Gabriel Valley district did not seem to mind not hearing their teachers’ voices for a day.

“It’s kind of funny, actually,” said Dana Watanabe, 16, a junior at Los Altos High School in Hacienda Heights. “They all gave us tests and a lot of people saw movies . . . I think it’s better than having them go on strike or something.”

Teachers in the district, which serves 22,000 students in La Puente, Hacienda Heights, Valinda and parts of the City of Industry, complain that their pay is not competitive with other school districts. The starting salary of $20,265 ranks 35th among 43 districts in the County.

The Hacienda-La Puente Teachers Assn. is demanding a 12% increase over the next two years. The district’s top offer has been a 3% raise over the same period.

The silent protest was decided on at a union meeting last month after Ray Lopp, the association’s executive director, recalled that such a tactic had been used by teachers in San Jose in the late 1970s.

Administrators praised the teachers for making their point without disrupting the learning process.

“I thought the teachers handled their action satisfactorily,” said Assistant Supt. John Clonts. “From what I saw, it didn’t seem to have any adverse effects on the students.”

Most students interviewed said they support the teachers’ pay demands.

“It’s not that they didn’t want us to learn,” said Lewis Alarcon, 15, a sophomore at Las Puente High School. “They just wanted to get their point across.”

In conjunction with the teachers’ action, more than 100 students carrying picket signs marched from La Puente High School to the district headquarters Thursday morning, where they met with Clonts to lobby for higher pay for their instructors.

Union officials estimated that between 80% and 85% of the district’s 1,200 teachers kept their vows of silence. District officials said that between 50% and 75% of the teachers participated in the protest.

The job action was most evident at the district’s four high schools, where students could be assigned reading or class work that did not require explanation. However, many teachers in the lower elementary grades said they could not remain silent because their young students need oral instructions.

“When it gets down to the primary grades, they’re allowed to modify it,” said Barry Pitts, president of the teachers association. “It’s not an iron-clad thing.”

Even Pitts, who teaches fifth and sixth grade at Shadyglen Elementary School, admitted that he had to deviate from the rule of reticence once or twice.

“There were a couple of times when I had to speak out because they were getting a little unruly,” he said.

But, by and large, administrators reported that students were not taking unfair advantage of their teachers’ mute protest. Leading a visitor through the silent corridors of Los Altos High School, Principal Pat Mauch described students’ behavior as “maybe a little better than normal.”

“I haven’t seen anybody up in the dean of discipline’s office all day,” Mauch said. “The kids have accepted it and adjusted very well to a different type of learning environment.”

Teachers at Bixby Elementary School and Wilson High School, who did not participate in the protest Thursday, will observe silence today, Pitts said.

Pitts said the success of the protest will be gauged April 8, when negotiating teams for the district and the teachers association return to the bargaining table.

“I’m hoping it will put some leverage on the school district so they’ll come up with more than 1.5% a year,” he said.

But school board member Kenneth Manning said the protest is “not going to change our budgetary situation.”

“They’re not going to find anybody on the Board of Education who would say they don’t deserve more money,” Manning said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is where is the money going to come from?”