L.A. Teachers See Pay Gap, Take Battle Positions in Contract Talks

Deanna Brown was a choreographer earning a decent living when she decided to switch to teaching in 1975. Becoming a teacher meant taking a pay cut but she “had a calling for it,” she said, and has never regretted the career change.

What does upset her is that after eight years of college and nearly 14 years in the classroom, she earns $36,000 a year--half of what friends in engineering or business make who have less formal education than she does.

“I’m not saying teachers are supposed to make grandiose salaries,” said Brown, who teaches mentally gifted students at Monlux Elementary School in North Hollywood, “but there isn’t any equity.”

David Tokofsky, the Marshall High School teacher who gained national recognition for coaching the Los Angeles Unified School District’s first U.S. Academic Decathlon championship team two years ago, would agree. An outspoken proponent of higher pay and status for teachers, he has one foot out of the classroom this year, teaching only half-time at Marshall and spending the remaining hours at USC, where he is working as a researcher and taking classes toward a doctorate in education policy.

What troubles him the most is that the $26,000 he would earn this year if he was teaching full time is so much less than what he could earn if he deserted the classroom and became an administrator.

“Should my principal be earning $75,000 and a beginning teacher $23,000? That’s ridiculous,” he said. “People have said to me you either have to be dumb or idealistic to stay in the classroom.”

Angered over what they see as pay inequity--and buoyed by a national school improvement movement that says teacher salaries are too low--Los Angeles Unified School District teachers have taken up battle positions in negotiations for a new contract. United Teachers-Los Angeles, which bargains on behalf of 32,000 teachers, nurses, librarians, counselors and psychologists, is asking for a 12% pay increase this year, which would boost maximum pay from $43,000 to $48,000. The Board of Education said the most it can afford is 5% this year and 17% by 1991.

Britton Earns $141,000

Because of a district tradition of giving administrators the same percentage raise as teachers, the size of many top administrators’ salaries has become a rallying point for many teachers. Thirty-seven top administrators earn more than $90,000 a year. As chief of the nation’s second-largest school system, Supt. Leonard Britton earns $141,000 annually, more than the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles or a U.S. senator.

Among superintendents, only Richard Green, head of New York City schools, the nation’s largest school system, earns more than Britton--$150,000 annually.

The average Los Angeles district teacher earns $36,660 yearly, which compares favorably with the $33,159 statewide average and the $28,044 national average. Beginning teachers in Los Angeles earn about $23,000, which is comparable to or slightly better than other large urban districts.

The union recently launched a $35,000 media campaign on the salary issue, taking out half-page ads in The Times, the Daily News, the Herald Examiner, Santa Monica Evening Outlook and the Long Beach Press-Telegram. It also is planning radio spots and billboards with “the same nasty message,” a union official said--that the district overpays its managers and underpays its teachers.

Los Angeles Unified’s salaries are competitive with its chief big-city rival, New York, which pays teachers with a master’s degree about $1,000 less and teachers with a doctorate $2,500 more. Both districts offer about the same beginning salary.

Los Angeles district officials said the district’s last salary offer would make Los Angeles teachers the highest paid among the 10 largest school districts in the country.

However, Los Angeles’ current salaries are less attractive than what many smaller districts currently offer.

According to a Los Angeles County Office of Education salary survey for 1987-88, 10 unified school districts--Beverly Hills, Pomona, Pasadena, Montebello, Alhambra, Long Beach, Paramount, Baldwin Park, Inglewood and Walnut Valley--have higher salaries for teachers with a master’s degree and at least 10 years of experience.

And, in Rochester, N.Y., teachers recently negotiated a landmark contract that will boost maximum pay for “lead teachers”--an elite group who take on extra responsibilities--to $69,000 annually starting next year. Beginning pay in Rochester also will rise dramatically--by 22% to $27,000 a year. Rochester, with about 34,000 students and 2,500 teachers, is considerably smaller than Los Angeles, which has nearly 590,000 pupils and 27,000 classroom instructors.

State Funding

Rochester Teachers Assn. President Adam Urbanski said in an interview that the reason his district can afford such dramatic raises is the state’s generous increases in education funding. New York school districts have received at least 14% more money every year for the past five years, he said, which is reflected in New York’s third-in-the-nation ranking in per-pupil spending. (It spends $6,849 per student, $3,000 more than California.) The state also has provided extra funds earmarked for teacher salary increases, Urbanski said.

In contrast, Los Angeles, like all California school districts, has received state increases lower than inflation the last few years. The recent passage of Proposition 98, which guarantees schools a fixed percentage of state general funds as well as any surpluses that become available, will provide schools with more money that could be used on salaries, but there is disagreement on exactly how much more it will generate.

“We’re working in an atmosphere where we’re fighting over crumbs,” Britton said. “The issue is, the megabucks (for dramatic teacher raises) have to come from the state. Our level of funding is directly related to what the state is willing to fund.”

Britton, who came to Los Angeles from the Miami school system, where he was widely praised for efforts to raise teachers’ status, said he favors restructuring teachers’ duties so that the most able eventually could qualify for salaries of $60,000 or more--without having to abandon teaching for an administrative job. For the time being, however, he said the district’s last offer, which would raise the top salary to $54,437 by 1991, is the best possible considering present resources.

The only way the district could offer a larger raise to teachers, he said, would be by cutting other costs.

‘Matter of Priorities’

“The union says it is a matter of priorities where the money goes, and they’re correct,” the superintendent said. “Additional monies could be found tomorrow morning, but what program would the board have to give up to achieve that?”

School Board President Roberta Weintraub said that the district has committed 85% of its California Lottery revenues to increasing salaries for all employees, but the district could face as much as $50 million in budget cuts just to fulfill its wage offer to teachers.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Wayne Johnson said more money for teachers could be found in certain accounts that he said have been padded, such as cafeteria services and textbook purchasing. Union officials said the district regularly allots more money than it winds up spending in those areas. District officials confirm the surpluses but say that by law they cannot reallocate specially designated funds for other uses, such as teacher salaries. Union officials dispute this.

Although he could not provide an exact figure, Johnson also said that “millions” of dollars could be saved by freezing administrator wages and trimming the district bureaucracy.

The ratio of administrators to teachers in the district is 1 to 12. That falls within the acceptable range as set in state law, a recent survey by the California Department of Education showed.

But Johnson said it should be no lower than the district ratio of teachers to students, which is roughly 1 to 27 or more.

In addition, Johnson said, Britton and the Board of Education could have withheld raises of up to $5,000 a year for 47 top administrators that were granted during a management reorganization last summer. News of those raises, coupled with recent newspaper reports about Britton’s bodyguard-driver making $90,000 last year--half of it in overtime earnings--has infuriated many teachers.

“No chauffeur is worth three times what I get,” said Helene Schnider, a 20-year classroom veteran who teaches in a Sherman Oaks magnet school. “That is making people angrier than anything else.”

Weintraub said she is “not going to defend” the amount earned by the driver, who is a district police officer. “They should have spread the overtime to other people,” she said.

But the district’s administrator salaries are “competitive with other districts,” she said.

In addition to the $141,000 that Britton earns, two deputy superintendents and the chief financial officer earn about $125,000 annually, while eight associate superintendents earn between $76,000 and $95,000. The average principal earns about $60,000 a year.

According to a Los Angeles County Office of Education report, among unified districts, Los Angeles is ranked No. 1 in salaries of the superintendent, the chief business officer and high school principals. It ranks third in elementary principals’ pay.

The district devotes a smaller proportion of its budget--9.8%--to administrative wages than Montebello, Pomona, Long Beach, Baldwin Park, Compton, Rowland, Burbank, Culver City, Duarte, Inglewood, Palos Verdes and Santa Monica-Malibu, a county survey based on 1986-87 figures showed.

Britton said that freezing administrative wages will not yield enough extra dollars to make a substantial difference in the district’s offer to teachers.

According to district calculations, a 1% raise for management would cost about $1.5 million--or a fraction of the $11.5 million the district said a 1% teacher raise would cost.

Some experts say the outlook for significant advances in teacher salaries is grim not only in Los Angeles but statewide.

When adjusted for inflation, teacher salaries in California have just begun to catch up to their 1972 level, according to Michael Kirst, a Stanford University education professor. Because state budget increases for schools have been slightly less than inflation the last two years, “it’s going to be tough” for teachers to expect real gains in their earning power, he said.

Union chief Johnson said teachers “don’t ever expect to make as much as a brain surgeon.” Nonetheless, “we do expect to make as much as the average accountant or computer programmer. Teachers are the lowest paid of all the people where a college degree is required to get the job. All we’re asking for is some recognition of that.”

SALARY GAP

Average annual salaries in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Teachers are paid for 204 days a year, principals for 220 days and the superintendent for 260 days.

‘83-’84 ‘84-’85 ‘85-’86 ‘86-’87 Superintendent $100,667 $113,731 $122,147 $134,362 High School Principal 48,487 52,563 55,646 63,810 Elementary School Principal 43,559 47,388 50,667 57,662 Teacher 27,453 29,630 31,750 34,902

‘87-’88 Superintendent $141,080 High School Principal 64,855 Elementary School Principal 58,866 Teacher 36,663