Teachers Blame ‘Divided’ School Board for Stalled Talks

Santa Ana Unified School District is stalled in getting a new contract for its 1,750 teachers because of a “divided and leaderless” school board, an official of the teachers’ union charged Monday.

Bill Ribblett, executive director of the Santa Ana Educators Assn., also charged that the five-member school board is “trying to push us into a strike.” The teachers last week overwhelmingly voted authorization for a strike, but a walkout was delayed pending further contract negotiations.

School board President Robert L. Richardson disagreed Monday with Ribblett’s charge that the board was not united. He said the school board “is working together . . . (and) hopes to get a resolution (of the teachers’ contract) very soon.”

The district and the union have scheduled additional talks with a state-appointed mediator early next week. A mediator was called in after negotiations broke down in February.

At issue in the contract dispute is a pay raise for teachers. Their last contract expired June 30.

Although the teachers’ union originally sought a 9% pay hike, last Friday it lowered its demand to a 6% raise for this year, retroactive to July 1, and a 6.5% pay raise for the next school year.

The school district’s offer at Friday’s negotiations was for a 3.5% retroactive pay raise this year, coupled with a one-time-only payment of 1% of each teacher’s salary.

“We went into Friday’s session with a settlement offer, we thought,” Ribblett said. “But the district rejected it. Now I’m going to have to call a mass meeting of teachers on April 5 because our last offer was below the parameters the teachers had given us for negotiation.”

School district officials have said that Santa Ana Unified is in such bad financial shape that it cannot afford a 6% pay raise for the teachers. District officials have said that because the state gave all schools only a 2.54% increase this year, any teacher pay increase above 2.54% is “deficit spending.”

But Ribblett and other union officers have countered that the school district has reserves that are available, including money set aside to buy property for new schools. Ribblett said Monday that the state and the city of Santa Ana can jointly help the school district buy land for new schools. He said the district therefore should be able to tap the $3.8 million it has saved for land acquisition.

The school board has come under repeated attacks from teachers in recent weeks as contract talks have bogged down. During a mass meeting of teachers last week, several instructors noted that the union had endorsed and helped elect a new board majority last November. The three new board members elected with union support were Richardson, Audrey Yamagata-Noji and Sal Mendoza.

Ribblett said the three new members are not united. “Sal Mendoza wants to help, and he offered his plan,” he said. “Audrey (Yamagata-Noji) wants the district to come up with something better than it’s offered. But Rob Richardson is just sitting on the fence; he’s providing no leadership.”

Richardson, in a separate interview, said he and the two other new board members came on the board several months after contract negotiations had begun.

“The process was under way long before the new board (majority) was elected,” he said. “The issues are complex. You just can’t take a magic wand and solve the problems. Some people think a gavel is a magic wand. But it’s not.”

Mary Pryer, a veteran member of the school board, also disagreed with the charge that the board is not united. “I don’t think the problem is disagreement among the board members. The problem is that the school district doesn’t have the financial resources,” Pryer said.

Mendoza last week reportedly angered his fellow trustees by meeting on his own with teachers and saying he thought the new contract should provide them a 6% pay raise this year. Mendoza, following his meeting with the teachers, conceded to reporters that he had no plan for coming up with the money for a 6% pay raise. He said he would delegate that to district administrative staff, which would “have to cut here, cut there.”

Pryer on Monday was critical of Mendoza’s actions. “What he did was inappropriate,” she said. “I guess it was because of his inexperience. I think he knows now that negotiations are not done by individual board members.”

Mendoza on Monday said he had no comment and referred all questions to district spokeswoman Diane Thomas. Yamagata-Noji and board member James A. Richards could not be reached for comment on the contract negotiations.

Although Santa Ana Unified has year-round schools, most are not in session this week, which is the traditional spring break.

“There are only 13 schools now in session, so I don’t think anything will happen this week,” Ribblett said regarding a possible resumption of mass sickouts by teachers. “It’s hard to say though because the teachers are getting very frustrated.”

Last Friday, about 500 teachers staged a sickout--the second since contract talks bogged down. About 300 teachers had stayed out of their classrooms during the first sickout.