180 Teachers Stage 1-Day Walkout in Huntington Beach

Carrying signs and chanting, at least 180 of the 220 teachers in the Huntington Beach City Elementary School District on Wednesday staged a peaceful but vocal one-day strike.

Picketing took place at all eight schools in the 5,350-student district, which serves about half of the city’s elementary students. Substitute teachers replaced all striking teachers, and pupil attendance was about 82%, compared to 93% for a normal Wednesday, school administrators said.

The teachers staged the work action to underscore their unhappiness over the lack of a pay raise for the current school year and possible school-program budget cuts. The school district has said its “last, best and final offer” to the teachers is for a 3.5% pay raise for the current school year. The teachers are asking for about a 5% raise.

‘This Is About Kids’

“But this strike isn’t just over teacher pay,” kindergarten teacher Mary Dyer said during a morning outdoor rally of all the strikers. “This is about kids and programs and how they might be hurt by budget cuts for next year.”

The school district has said that to accommodate even a 3.5% pay raise, at least $500,000 must be pared from the district’s $17-million budget.

“We would like to offer our teachers more, but 3.5% is stretching as far as we can go,” said district Supt. Diana Peters. Negotiations between the teachers union and school district negotiators broke off Monday after the teachers learned that the district would not increase the 3.5% pay offer. No new talks are scheduled. Teachers were due back in their classrooms today.

The Huntington Beach strike was the second this year of Orange County teachers.

Orange Unified School District teachers staged a one-day strike April 12. Last week, unions in the Orange Unified, Westminster and Magnolia school districts all said they would probably join Huntington Beach in a strike Wednesday--the state’s official “Day of the Teacher.”

But after the strike threats, negotiations picked up in those three school districts. Tentative contract settlement was reached in the Magnolia and Westminster school districts. Orange Unified union officials said Tuesday that contract settlement appeared near, and the officials called off joining in Wednesday’s strike.

Huntington Beach City Elementary School District teachers thus went it alone Wednesday. And the district’s union officials charged that school board members are dragging their feet on a settlement despite the efforts of the other school districts to reach agreement with their teachers.

“Our district is the only one that’s not settling,” Carol Autrey, president of the Huntington Beach Elementary Teachers Assn., said during a morning rally of all the strikers.

‘Something Is Wrong’

“The other districts suddenly came up with new offers for their teachers. But not our district. I think something is wrong with the administration of Huntington Beach City School District.”

Peters, however, said the administration can only give what money is available.

“We are offering the teachers a 4.3% pay package because the district also wants to give a 0.8% increase in fringe benefits in addition to the 3.5% pay raise,” district Supt. Peters said. “The state only gave us a 2.54% pay increase, so we are reduced to deficit spending just to make this offer.”

According to school administration figures, the average teacher in the Huntington Beach district makes $37,190 a year. Salaries range from $19,213 for a beginning teacher to $42,009 for the most senior instructor with advanced degrees.

Peters noted that Bill Honig, state superintendent of public instruction, had in effect agreed with the school district’s assertion that no more money is available this year for teacher pay. On Monday, Honig criticized the proposed strike of Huntington Beach teachers. He said they are being misled about school finances by “renegade” union officials.

Honig, who noted that he rarely steps into local school district disputes, said he hoped that teachers would recognize that the state did not provide a very big increase to education this year. He said he hoped that the teachers would forgo a strike and instead work for passage of initiatives in June and November to provide more state money for education.

Honig’s criticism angered many of the teachers Wednesday. Catcalls about Honig were occasionally heard on the picket lines, and Autrey ridiculed his criticism as she spoke at the rally.

“He is calling me a renegade and you the sheep,” she told the teachers. “If being a renegade is standing up for the rights of the teachers . . . then it’s time we stood up and spoke out, and I’m proud to be a renegade, if that’s what it means.”

The striking teachers staged a group march on school district headquarters, 20451 Craimer Lane, about 10 a.m. The march followed early morning picketing at all eight schools.

Peters was standing outside the district headquarters, talking to reporters, shortly before the marching teachers arrived.

Strike Criticized

“Everything is going very, very smoothly in the schools,” she said. “We have certificated (substitute) teachers in all the classes, and there are no problems.”

Peters briefly criticized the strike.

“Strike tactics are really outdated,” she said. A strike “does not impress the community.” She said the public is unlikely to support “a strike by teachers who are under a current contract that has a no-strike clause.”

The teachers’ current contract does not expire until June 30.

Marty Kahn, executive director of the West Orange County United Teachers, a federation that includes the Huntington Beach teachers, responded to reporters’ inquiries Wednesday about whether the strike is legal.

“Before we went on strike, we asked the CTA (California Teachers Assn.) legal counsel if we could strike, and legal counsel said we could,” Kahn said.

Legality Questioned

Peters and other administrators, however, contend that Wednesday’s strike was illegal. Normally teacher strikes only gain legal status after the negotiation process has gone through a stage called fact finding. Fact finding involves a three-person team of experts who examine budget documents and make non-binding recommendations to both the union and school administration. Huntington Beach only entered the fact-finding stage Monday, when mediation procedures collapsed. The fact-finding process usually takes two to three months and culminates in a report.

Substitute teachers hired by Huntington Beach rode in groups, on school buses, to their assignments Wednesday. The strikers jeered at the substitutes, whom they called “scabs,” and some of the substitutes shielded their faces as their bus drove through a picket line.

The strike was the first ever in the district. Autrey said that although strikes have taken place in nearby school districts, Huntington Beach teachers have never before “even come close” to striking. But she said teachers, by a 91% vote, supported a strike this year.

Autrey, at an afternoon news conference, said more than 200 teachers took part in the daylong strike. But Catherine Wheeler, administrative assistant to the superintendent, said the district’s school-by-school census on Wednesday showed 180 teachers unaccounted for and apparently on strike. Of the remaining 40 teachers in the district, she said 29 regular teachers did not strike and reported to their classrooms; six called in sick; three were on jury duty, and two were out of school for personal reasons.

Autrey, during her press conference, said no more strikes are contemplated for the rest of the school year, which ends in June. But she said she could not rule out the possibility of another strike in the fall.