District Approves 6% Pay Raise for Teachers

Approval of a four-year teachers’ contract that offers a significant salary increase and flexibility for implementing experimental educational reforms highlighted a busy district agenda Tuesday.

The San Diego Unified School District Board of Education also:

* Allowed the popular Gateways private summer enrichment program to remain at University City High School for next summer.

* Approved a policy making school enrollment easier for homeless children.

* Considered adding Chollas and Kennedy elementary schools to the list of 18 city elementaries already on multi-track, year-round schedules.

The meeting was also the last for longtime Trustees Dorothy Smith and John Witt. Colleagues and school administrators honored Smith, who is retiring after almost eight years, and Witt, who was defeated for reelection this month after 12 years on the board.

Retroactive to July 1

The contract, also approved by teachers during a ratification vote Tuesday, provides a 6% salary increase retroactive to July 1. That will lift the beginning salary of a teacher to $21,031 a year, with top-paid teachers receiving $43,752. Salaries in the subsequent three years will increase at least the minimum provided for in cost-of-living adjustments by the state Legislature, but can rise higher, depending on the amount of new money available under provisions of the recently approved Proposition 98.

On the reforms item, the contract creates a special administration committee of district and teacher representatives to consider how to make changes easier at individual schools. The district has begun a major restructuring to allow teachers and principals to decide how curriculum and organization should be changed at their schools to improve instruction.

Such changes could include staffing, budgets, peer coaching, team teaching and other strategies that could be in conflict with the basic contract and thus would require a waiver from the special administration committee. The committee would be separate from normal grievance procedures.

Board Was in Accord

The board passed the contract unanimously and without comment, but Supt. Tom Payzant expressed keen pleasure last month when he announced the tentative agreement, saying it represents a new era both of cooperation and more rapid movement to revamp educational doctrine at the heart of a national debate over the future of American schools.

On the Gateways matter, the board voted 4 to 1, with Smith dissenting, to leave the program for high-achieving students at University City High next summer, where the program has been since it was established by parent volunteers six years ago. Payzant had asked that the program be moved to Madison High School for one summer while University High was given its first thorough cleaning since being opened in 1981.

However, a majority of the board agreed with concerns of Gateways administrators, who said they would not have enough time this year to move the program, which has grown from 600 to 1,800 students and employs 62 teachers. It directed Payzant to sign a contract with Gateways for July 3-Aug. 11, 1989.

The board also indicated its intent to move Gateways to Madison in the summer of 1990, and then back to University for the next three summers beginning in 1991. However, Gateways must apply each year for a specific contract under the provisions it uses to rent district facilities.

Records to Be Moved

The policy changes approved for enrolling homeless children--estimated at 200 districtwide--will place responsibility for records and other enrollment requirements at the district level, relieving principals at individual schools of having to trace data that is often difficult to find. Because homeless children may switch schools in a matter of days because their parents or guardians so frequently change location, the new policy will make it easier for teachers to follow the progress of such students by having quicker access to previous school performance records.

On the year-round subject, the board asked administrators for more information on the proposed switch to a multi-track, year-round system at Chollas Elementary, a math-science magnet under the voluntary integration program. The schedule is designed to expand capacity at crowded schools without building new facilities.

It places all students on one of four nine-week attendance tracks, with three tracks in schools at any one time. A school with 1,000 students under a traditional nine-month schedule will drop its daily enrollment to 750.

But parents and teachers at Chollas fear that the magnet will become less attractive under the year-round schedule and harm attendance.