Teachers, District Reach Tentative OK on Contract

Moorpark teachers and school district officials reached a tentative contract agreement late Friday, ending speculation that the 11-month-long dispute would help fuel a recall campaign launched last week against four of the district’s five school board members.

Officials of the Moorpark Unified School District agreed to increase teacher salaries 3% for the current school year and 6% next year, school board member Patty Waters said. The district also agreed to pay teachers a 1% bonus this year and drop a sought-after provision that would have required teachers to remain after school at the request of principals to attend faculty meetings and parent conferences, she said.

Representatives of the Moorpark Educators Assn., which represents most of the district’s 166 teachers, had sought a 10.5% pay raise over two years. The district had previously offered a 6% increase over two years, plus a 1.5% bonus. Teachers had been working under their old contract, which expired in July.

The tentative agreement will be voted on by association members on Wednesday, association president Jan Ryden said. Settlement of the long-stalled talks was helped by pressure put on the board by the recall effort, she said.

Not Related

But board member Waters said that the settlement was not related to a recall campaign headed by members of the Committee to Save Moorpark High School. Waters and board members Tom Baldwin, Lynda Kira and Carla Robertson were served with recall notices Tuesday by members of the citizens group that is trying to stop the sale or lease of the 69-year-old Moorpark Memorial High School.

School board member Cynthia Hubbard-Dow was not served with a recall notice because she supports preserving the high school, recall supporters said.

The recall notices served on the four board members make a variety of charges, including intentionally delaying the contract talks, lack of leadership, disdain for public involvement and fiscal irresponsibility. The board members say the allegations are untrue and that recall supporters are conducting the campaign because they are angry over the board’s decision to dispose of the old high school.

Recall organizer and high school preservation committee member Pam Castro said last week that she had broad support from teachers and a parents group called “Moorpark Moms.” Castro said both groups had agreed to join the recall campaign because they were angry over delays in the contract talks.

To qualify for a special recall election, the committee has 90 days to collect the signatures of about 2,400 registered Moorpark voters for each of the four board members.

But teacher association representatives said early Friday that their group had not endorsed the recall campaign.

Students Kept Home

Ginger Hitz, co-founder of Moorpark Moms, also said on Friday that her group had not agreed to support the recall. Hitz and her group persuaded the parents of about half the district’s 4,200 students to keep their children home May 27 to protest the stalled contract talks.

It was that action and not the recall that convinced at least one of the school board members to back off from requiring that teachers stay after school for meetings. That provision had been a major obstacle to the contract settlement, district and teacher representatives said.

“The parents told us in their own way, by keeping their children home, what they wanted us to do,” Baldwin said. The recall effort, he said, “involves very few teachers and parents.”

The school board voted earlier this year to find a developer to buy or lease the 29-acre high school site over the objection of some residents who want the high school preserved. The school was eastern Ventura County’s first high school, at one time serving students from as far away as Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

District officials said they cannot afford to keep school open. A new high school, which is being built with $15 million in state money, is scheduled to open this fall, district officials said.