Santa Ana Teachers Vote to Ratify Pact in a 75% Landslide

Santa Ana teachers Monday overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract, ending nine months of bitter bargaining, spontaneous sickouts and strike threats.

Nearly 75% of the teachers (1,096 to 395) approved the contract in voting conducted Friday and Monday. The lopsided vote came despite a move by some unhappy teachers to derail the proposal.

The agreement gives the teachers a retroactive 5% bonus for the current school year and a 7% regular pay raise for 1988-89. Pay raises and benefits will be negotiated in the third year of the contract. The 1,750 teachers in the system now earn an average $31,800 per year, with salaries ranging from $20,670 to $41,383.

“I’m very pleased,” said Gail King-Burney, president of the teachers’ union, the Santa Ana Educators Assn.

“We’re very glad the teachers ratified the contract,” added district Assistant Supt. Don Champlin on Monday night.

The teachers’ last contract expired July 1, 1987. When talks on a new contract bogged down, teachers authorized the strike March 22.

While the teachers never scheduled a start for an official strike, they unofficially staged two “sickouts” last month; in the first, 500 teachers were absent, 300 in the second. Teachers said they wanted the sickouts to pressure the school board to settle.

Offer Raised to 5%

The five-member board, working to avert a full-fledged strike, ultimately increased its offer to the teachers from 3% to 5% but insisted that the 5% be a one-time-only bonus for the current school year.

A bonus, unlike a regular pay raise, does not become part of a base salary. When the proposed contract was announced by the union in flyers given to all the teachers, the notice did not say that the 5% for 1987-88 was a one-time-only bonus.

Later, some teachers accused their union leaders of deception, picketed and urged defeat for the contract.

But King-Burney and Bill Ribblett, executive director of the union, said the lack of explanation of the bonus was only an oversight, not an attempt to deceive.

Moreover, King-Burney on Monday accused some of the teachers who had opposed ratification of jockeying for power within the union: “I think the division of this (union) was totally unnecessary, totally uncalled for, and I think if everyone had had faith in their bargaining team, as I did, they would have known that we weren’t trying to sell them down the river.”

Fringe Benefits Continued

King-Burney noted that the new contract guarantees that the district will continue all fringe benefits at no increased cost to the teachers for this year and next year.

Fringe benefit costs, especially health insurance, are major problems for most money-starved school districts. In a nearby example, the Orange Unified School District, which had a one-day teacher strike Tuesday, has said it cannot afford to guarantee payment of all increased costs for teacher fringe benefits next year.

King-Burney also said that under the new contract, Santa Ana teachers will get a chance to vote on establishing an “agency shop,” under which all teachers must either join the union or pay a representative fee nearly the same as union dues to the union to bargain for them.

Santa Ana Unified’s historically conservative school boards have stoutly resisted agency shop demands for decades. But the new contract, which the school board approved last week 3 to 2, calls for a plebiscite by the teachers by May 18. If a majority of the teachers approve, the district will become an agency shop.

Ribblett said Monday that under the tight-budget conditions of the school district, the union got as good a settlement as possible. But he said the tight financial situation “shows that the voters need to approve the initiative this fall to give more money to the schools.”

He referred to an initiative aimed for the November ballot that would earmark a portion of the state budget for increased aid to education.

Champlin said Monday night that while Santa Ana Unified is pleased that the contract struggle is over, financial headaches remain.

$2-Million Cut Predicted

“We are going to have to cut at least $2 million from programs for next year to be able to afford this pay raise given in the new contract,” he said.

Champlin estimated that next year’s district budget will be about $136 million and said Santa Ana Unified had already tapped state lottery money as a recurring source of pay raises for teachers.

“We’re now giving about half of our lottery money every year to teacher salaries,” he said.

School districts were warned three years ago, when the lottery began, not to use that money as a source of paying recurring expenses, such as teacher salaries, because economists noted that a lottery cannot be trusted as a continuing source of income.

But many districts, finding no other money, have used the lottery for salaries, saying they can only hope that the money does not dry up.