Some Teachers Take Extra Duties to Boost Salaries

Last year, James Heili, a counselor at South Gate Junior High, earned $53,000--more than $10,000 above his base salary--by teaching English and history during his regular 16-week break at the year-round school.

“Sixteen weeks is a lot of time off,” Heili said, noting that even teaching during his vacation left him about two weeks off. He gets another week off at Christmas, as well as several school holidays. Also, Heili said, teachers who work during vacation sessions are on a four-hours-a-day schedule. “You’re still partially on vacation when you do the (vacation) session,” Heili said. “With me it’s minimum strain. . . .”

Martin Baran hustled much more and pulled in nearly $66,000. That put him among the highest-earning teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where the average annual salary for a regular classroom assignment is about $36,000 and top classroom pay is about $43,000.

Many Long Weeks

Baran, whose main job is teaching social studies at year-round Huntington Park High School, did it by putting in many 50- and 60-hour weeks. In addition to his regular classes, he substituted during one two-month break and taught the equivalent of summer school during another. He also helped teach new instructors, coached the school’s academic decathlon team and taught adult school two nights a week.

At the same time, for no additional pay, he served as chairman of his school’s social studies department and headed the campus chapter of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers’ union.

“I enjoy teaching,” said Baran, adding that the extra income helps pay the mortgage on his new Sylmar home. “It’s not painful for me. I love what I’m doing.”

Because of their schedules, teachers long have been able to earn extra money, often by working summer school or taking temporary jobs in other fields.

Now, however, determining the full earning potential of Los Angeles district teachers has become part of a bitter debate between the teachers’ union and district management over salary increases. The union is seeking a 12% increase next year; the school district has offered 17% over three years, with the possibility of larger increases if more state funds become available.

The question of teacher earning power, in part, grew out of the union’s attacks on what it says are inequities in district salaries. The union has hit hard at the gap between the average teacher salary and the salary of some school principals, who earn $75,000. The union also is angry that more than 30 central office executives were paid more than $90,000 last year.

Comparison Challenged

In response, district management, trying to build support for its pay offer, has argued that the union’s comparison is a misleading one. In fact, district officials have said, many teachers, through extra assignments, make considerably more than the salary scale would suggest.

School district payroll records, obtained by The Times under the state Public Records Act, show several thousand teachers, counselors and administrators in the Los Angeles district supplemented their earnings during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1988, by taking on added assignments ranging from extra class periods and summer school to adult classes and training assignments.

About 5,770 members of the teachers’ pay group, or more than one in six of the 32,000 total, each collected more than $45,000. More than 1,700 teachers earned above $50,000 and 121 earned more than $60,000. Several members of the teachers’ pay group, which includes counselors, nurses, librarians and psychologists, earned more than $70,000 last year. (Salaries for district teachers begin at $23,000 a year.)

A Huntington Park High counselor who coordinates teacher and student schedules was paid nearly $78,000--more than most school principals in the district.

The figures surprised even some of those most familiar with the teachers’ pay structure. “They must be putting in an incredible number of hours,” said Wayne Johnson, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles. “I don’t know how they could do it.”

Teachers, administrators or education experts interviewed by The Times all generally agreed that teacher salaries should rise. But some said actual earnings, rather than just salary schedules, also should be considered in determining how much of an increase teachers should receive.

“These (higher-paid) teachers . . . basically choose to work additional days and additional hours,” said Tom Killeen, district director of personnel research and analysis. “If they choose to work and they have the time, they can make a sizable income during the year.”

Others, including Baran and Johnson, say the payroll records, in fact, bolster arguments that teacher salaries are too low. “The base pay isn’t really that high so it forces people to go out do these kinds of things,” Baran said. “I don’t think you should have to be spending so much of your time just to make a decent living. . . . If I had kids right now I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Teachers have been infuriated by recent news reports disclosing that Supt. Leonard Britton’s driver-bodyguard, Fred Diemert, a supervising district police officer, earned more than $90,000 last year, about half of it in overtime.

The payroll records make it clear that even the most indefatigable teachers could not come close to Diemert’s earnings. And teachers note that he spent a good share of his time sitting outside the superintendent’s office at school district headquarters.

Administrative Pay

As a group, the records show district administrators and managers, including principals, assistant principals, regional superintendents and central office executives, were much higher paid than teachers in 1987-88. Nearly 2,000 earned more than $50,000. Of those, more than 230 earned more than $70,000 and dozens made more than $90,000. Britton earned $141,080.

Like teachers, many administrators increased their pay by thousands of dollars with extra assignments. For example, Roy Kawamoto, who works a 10-month year as an assistant principal at Chatsworth High School, increased his base $36,616 salary to more than $56,000. He worked a six-week summer school stint as an assistant principal at a West Los Angeles junior high school and taught adult school classes at night.

It appears from the records that extra assignments are more common among administrators on the lower end of the salary schedule. Higher paid principals and administrators, who work 11- and 12-month schedules, tended to earn only their base salary.

School Board President Roberta Weintraub said she is “thrilled” that some teachers are making more than $60,000 per year. “For the really entrepreneurial teacher who wants to work full-time and take on extra (duties), it is possible to make a decent living in the district,” she said. “What I want to do is extend the possibility even further,” she said, so the district can “lure into teaching those who don’t consider it as a profession because they do not think it is even possible to make a living.”

Pete Glos, a former mathematics teacher at Huntington Park High School, earned nearly $78,000 working year-round as a counselor, schedule coordinator and registration adviser. “There are all sorts of ways of increasing your income, if necessary,” he said. “There are workaholics and then there are work aholics, if you know what I mean. . . . Some people can work 12, 14, 15 hours a day and they seem to thrive on it. Other people put in a six-hour or an eight-hour day and they’ve had it.

“That’s not just teaching,” Glos said. “That’s any field.”

Mentor Teacher

Gerald Kobata, a computer science instructor at Bret Harte Junior High School in South-Central Los Angeles, last year boosted his $41,000 district salary to nearly $67,000. In addition to his regular classroom assignment, Kobata served as a mentor teacher, counseling young teachers. He also earned extra money for working in a hard-to-staff inner-city school, taught summer school, conducted computer classes for teachers and taught citizenship classes at night.

“I really enjoy it,” Kobata said. “(It) is so motivating. . . . If I weren’t doing this, I would be working on something else. Maybe my own business.”

Kobata said his day typically begins at 4 a.m., when he rises to jog. He arrives on campus about 7:45 a.m. and teaches his regular classes until 3 p.m. Some days he then rushes across town to conduct courses for teachers on classroom use of computers. He returns to South-Central Los Angeles to teach amnesty preparation classes four nights a week.

On the days he does not squeeze in a computer class for teachers, he may serve as a mentor teacher. His day often does not end until 9:30 p.m.

Kobata said his social life suffers and he must do a lot of his grading and class preparation on the weekends. “It’s pretty demanding,” he said. “I’m the first to admit that.”

The payroll records show many of the teachers who earned between $50,000 and $60,000--like South Gate Junior High’s Heili--did so on less hectic schedules. Most are already near the top of the salary schedule, earning $40,000 a year or more for their regular assignments.

In addition, hundreds earned extra income for teaching at hard-to-staff inner-city schools (a $2,000 bonus) and serving as mentor teachers ($2,000 per semester).

The district’s increased use of year-round schools to cope with inner-city overcrowding also has expanded opportunities for teachers to increase their income. In some year-round schools, the calendar is divided into three, 16-week sessions. Teachers and counselors work two of those sessions.

Vacation Work

Several vacation assignments are typically available. Those who work the third session as substitutes or regular teachers can earn several thousand dollars extra.

Johnson, the union president, said it is not fair to look at teachers and counselors like Heili, Baran, Kobata and Glos. Given the district’s 32,000 teachers, there are relatively few extra assignments available, he said. Also, the availability of vacation-time work varies considerably depending on teachers’ subject specialties and school calendars.

And he noted many extra-pay assignments are more readily available to veteran teachers than the lowest-paid beginning teachers.

“The opportunities are very limited,” Johnson said.

Others dispute that. Glos said that at his school he sometimes has to shop around for teachers to fill vacation assignments. Also, the adult school program has expanded in recent years, with more classes offered in the afternoons, and the mentor programs have been added, district officials said. In the past year, the federally funded amnesty program for illegal aliens also created a huge, unfilled demand for adult school citizenship classes.

In all, school district officials estimated that in 1987-88 they paid for some 16,000 extra-duty and adult school assignments that, on average, earned teachers between $1,000 and $10,000 extra.

Kobata, who as part of the pay fight is participating in a union-led boycott of some non-classroom teacher duties, said base salaries should increase. But he added: “There are opportunities out there” to earn extra income. “I don’t know how many teachers are willing to accept those.”

‘A Basket Case’

Some teachers say it is too stressful to take on added teaching assignments. “I love this (basic teaching) schedule,” said Sam Panossian, a 15-year veteran who teaches science classes at Huntington Park High School. “I need my time off to charge up my batteries. I wouldn’t even consider doing night school. I’d be a basket case.”

Johnson, who himself took on extra assignments when he taught at Hamilton High School, acknowledged that many teachers work second jobs during vacations to increase their income. One friend, he said, could make more waiting tables at Harrah’s in Las Vegas during his vacation break than the rest of the year in the classroom.

But Johnson also said many teachers do not work other jobs and need to be better compensated for their basic duties, which are unusually demanding. “My contention is that one hour of classroom teaching with 35 kids is the equivalent of three hours of anything else you’ll do,” he said. “You have to prepare for that hour and then after that hour you have to grade papers.”

The Los Angeles district has not studied how juggling multiple assignments has affected the performance of its highest-earning teachers.

Myron Dembo, a USC professor of educational psychology, said, “I have no doubt some people could do that. But as an educator, I wouldn’t want that to be the pattern. . . . It may encourage people to cut short some of their primary responsibilities.”

He said the emphasis should be on raising base salaries at a time when many teachers are leaving the field. This is particularly important for beginning teachers who need extra time to develop their skills and concentrate on their basic classroom responsibilities, Dembo said.

“If they have more time available for talking to kids and talking to parents, you might argue that teachers could be more effective in their primary jobs,” he said.

Performance Maintained

But teachers who are doing the extra assignments defend their performance. Some, like Baran and Kobata, note that even with their added responsibilities, they have passed administration and peer reviews to become mentor teachers.

In Baran’s case, his reputation at Huntington Park High does not appear to be suffering. He currently volunteers, for no extra pay, as a coach of the academic decathlon team. Tin Tran, one of Baran’s former students and now a teaching assistant at the campus, said Baran is always prepared and regarded by students as one of the school’s most challenging instructors.

“(Students) know the teachers who really care,” Tran said. “The prevailing attitude among students is . . . he makes it fun to learn.”

SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEE EARNINGS Here are actual gross earnings for Los Angeles Unified School District employees in the teaching and management units. They include payments for all assignments worked in the 1987-88 fiscal year. The teaching unit includes instructors, counselors, nurses, librarians and psychologists. The management unit includes central office executives, regional superintendents, principals and assistants. The numbers in the pay ranges are cumulative. Not included are teachers and managers earning less than $45,000.

TEACHERS MANAGEMENT $70,000 or more 10 233 $60,000 or more 121 854 $50,000 or more 1,738 1,977 $45,000 or more 5,749 2,200

According to the school district, here are estimates of the average additional annual income a teacher may earn for extra duties: Top base salary $43,000 Adult school classes $8,479

Extra session/year-round $5,068-$7,602

Summer school/traditional $3,800

Activity adviser $1,415-$2,046

Substitute/year-round $2,654

Hard-to-staff school bonus $2,000