Teachers Strike for a Day Over Pay : Orange Unified Has Its First Walkout Ever

Teachers in the Orange Unified School District staged a one-day boycott of their classrooms and picketed for better pay and fringe benefits Tuesday--the first teacher strike in Orange County in three years.

Hundreds of the 1,100 teachers in the sprawling, central Orange County school district marched and chanted in front of their schools. There were no serious incidents or confrontations, but student absenteeism districtwide was 10 times greater than usual.

Orange Unified, which covers 108 square miles, provides schools for the cities of Orange and Villa Park and parts of Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana. The demonstration Tuesday was the first strike in the 35-year history of the district.

“We’re all upset about being out here on strike, and we hate giving up the money we’ll lose by being on strike today, but we had to make a stand,” said Evan Keesey, a special education teacher at Prospect Elementary School.

Greg Benoit, art photography instructor at El Modena High, said: “I’ve been teaching 16 years, and I’ve never before had to go on strike. But the district couldn’t come to agreement with us in more than a year of negotiations. It seems like we had no alternative (but to strike).”

School district officials said about 60 to 65% of the district’s teachers were absent Tuesday, but the teachers’ union said strike participation exceeded 80%.

District officials said about 20% of the 24,500 students ditched classes during the day. Normal absenteeism is about 2%, district spokeswoman Josie Cabiglio said.

Union officials said the teachers will return to classes today. “And now we’re trying to get the school district back to the bargaining table,” said Mark Rona, president of the union, the Orange Unified Education Assn.

“I’m disappointed that the strike took place,” district Supt. John Ikerd said late Tuesday afternoon, “but I’m still optimistic that closure can be reached on a settlement, and I look forward to the return of the teachers tomorrow.”

However, Ikerd said no date has been set for renewed negotiations.

At issue is an existing three-year teachers’ contract reopened for proposed pay and benefit increases. Unsuccessful negotiations have been going on for 14 months.

Rona said that since the school board rejected a compromise proposal Monday, the union is returning to its earlier, higher demands. He said they include a request for a 5% pay raise for the current school year and a guarantee that the district will continue to pay all the cost of health and welfare benefits.

The school district has tried to limit a pay raise to 2.54% this year, saying that amount was all that came as an increase for the schools from state government for 1987-88.

The current average teacher salary in Orange Unified is $33,307, according to district figures. The pay range is from $21,686 for a beginning teacher to $40,628 for the most senior instructor.

Rona and several teachers charged Tuesday that much of Orange Unified’s money problems stem from “financial mismanagement.” They referred to the Orange County Grand Jury’s indictment in 1987 of a former school district maintenance official, his wife and two former contractors. The four were charged with rigging bids in the school district in the late 1970s and early 1980s and arranging for kickbacks in the way of goods or services. The trial of the four is scheduled this fall.

Orange Unified school board members have repeatedly said that loopholes in procedures that allowed the bid-rigging scandal have long since been plugged. The school board also said that it has been careful in spending district money but that funds are dwindling because Orange Unified’s enrollment has declined for about eight years.

Rona, the union president, walked the picket line Tuesday morning at El Modena High in eastern Orange. “We offered the district a compromise Monday, but they rejected it,” he said. Rona said the compromise was a proposal for a revised teacher pay schedule, called a matrix, that designates automatic pay increases based on units of advanced education and teacher seniority.

Rona said the school district negotiators agreed to the proposal in principle. But Rona said the district balked at the union’s demand that the change be accompanied by a guarantee that teachers would not have to pay any increased costs of their health and welfare benefits next school year.

Cabiglio, spokeswoman for the district, confirmed Tuesday that the school district has concerns about escalating health and welfare benefits. She said that while the district would try to pay for health and welfare increases in 1988-89, some of the cost might fall on the teachers.

According to Cabiglio, all but 100 of the missing teachers on Tuesday had substitutes. But the striking teachers charged that the district actually lacked more substitutes than 100. They said students told them that conditions inside the schools were chaotic.

At El Modena High, some students cut classes and climbed fences to join the picketing teachers. At Orange High, about 75% of the students cut classes in mid-morning.

Teachers picketed at their respective schools in the morning. At 12:30 p.m., about 350 of the strikers met at Hart Park in Orange to hear Rona and other union officials give brief talks.

At 1:30 p.m., about 450 of the strikers converged on the school district headquarters at 370 N. Glassell St., where they picketed and chanted for about half an hour.

In interviews, teachers repeatedly expressed their frustration over the stalled pay talks.

“Negotiations have dragged on and on and on,” said Bill Prescott, a work-experience teacher at El Modena High. “We just got to the point that we thought we had to do this.”

Gwen Chapman, who teaches advanced-placement biology at El Modena High, said teachers have to struggle to get even small pay raises. And even so, she said, teachers remain near the bottom of the economic ladder. “I have two sons in their 20s,” Chapman said. “One’s an accountant and one’s a mechanic. They have less college education than I do, but they’re already making more money in their jobs than I’ll ever make in mine.”