Bonita School District, Teachers End Pay Dispute With 6% Raise

A salary dispute that led to a 2-day strike in September by teachers in the Bonita Unified School District has ended amicably with labor and management hoping for more harmonious times ahead.

Under an agreement reached last week with the Bonita Unified Teachers Assn., the district’s 370 teachers will receive 6% raises retroactive to Oct. 15, which is equivalent to an annual increase of 5.1% for the 1988-89 school year. Teachers’ salaries will now range from about $21,300 to $44,000.

The two sides had been at an impasse, with the teachers association demanding a 6.2% annual increase and district officials maintaining that a 3.8% raise was their “best and final offer.”

“Our financial situation has changed somewhat since then,” Supt. Duane Dishno said of the change in the district’s offer. “I’d say it was a compromise.”

Dishno said the district was able to be more flexible in negotiations because of some unexpected revenues, including about $85,000 generated by an extremely popular state lottery last month and another $85,000 in the form of an “adjustment” to last year’s lottery revenues.

Another factor in the district loosening its purse strings was the voters’ passage of Proposition 98, a public school funding initiative, which could bring between $300,000 and $1.2 million in new state revenue to the district.

The district also agreed to increase its annual contribution for fringe benefits from $2,856 to $3,412 per teacher. District officials had previously refused to spend more than $3,000 annually per teacher for benefits.

The salary and benefit package was approved by 98% of the teachers association membership that voted last week, said union President Dan Harden.

“We’re very pleased, not just with the percentages but with the effort by the district to come to a resolution before fact-finding,” Harden said. “We hope this represents a new approach by the district.”

The arguments of both sides in the dispute were being considered by Geraldine Randall, a neutral fact-finder provided by the state Public Employment Relations Board, who was to have issued her recommendations last Friday. The district and teachers association reached their agreement last Wednesday.

No Program Cuts

The new contract will cost the district about $300,000 more than it planned to spend for teacher salaries in the current school year but will not necessitate cuts in other programs, Dishno said. The school board still must ratify the agreement at its Dec. 5 meeting.

School board President Biff Green applauded the agreement, despite the additional outlays it will require of the district.

“We know where the vast majority of those dollars will come from,” he said, adding that the agreement “goes a long way toward bringing the district together.”

However, the agreement is opposed by school board member Robert Green, who earlier this year survived a recall attempt mounted by the teachers association after Green took a hard line in the 1987 salary dispute. He said the new wage pact reduces the district’s reserves below 2% of its overall budget, which he said will send up a red flag to state officials concerned about the district’s solvency.

“It is not economically good for the district,” Green said. “Public education as a whole is in a real serious problem and Bonita is a classic example of that problem. It’s slowly going bankrupt and doesn’t even know it.”

Similar Demands Expected

He added that the raise given teachers will prompt similar demands from other district employees, who accepted smaller salary increases because of the district’s financial situation. The combined cost of all these raises will exceed $500,000, he said.

Green expressed disgust with the district’s negotiators, who he said urged the school board to increase its offer because the fact finders’ report would likely show the district to be better off financially than officials had claimed.

“They (the negotiators) could never get a job in the private sector,” Green said. “If these people were working for me, I’d fire them on the spot,” he said.

The district and the association said last week’s salary pact was presaged by an agreement reached earlier this month to drop six complaints of unfair labor practices the two sides had exchanged since a March, 1987, salary dispute that had been marked by a 1-day teachers’ strike and 1-day student boycott.

That earlier agreement, reached Nov. 3 after negotiations with a state mediator, was a turning point in relations between the district and the teachers’ union.

“I think that demonstrated a new attitude--that we’re not going to fight old battles, and we’re not going to try to measure everything in terms of who’s winning and who’s losing,” union President Harden said.

Biff Green, school board president, said the agreement was “a positive step” toward more productive relations between the district and the teachers association.

“I think both sides have worked very hard to show confidence and trust and build communication with each other,” he said. “I think our superintendent . . . has really been the catalyst for that.”

Both sides have expressed hope that the disputes and discord that have plagued the district are giving way to compromise and cooperation.

This will be tested when negotiations begin in May for a new contract.