Local News in Brief : Orange : Teachers Told They Won’t Get Pay Hike

Teachers in the Orange Unified School District, who waged a 7-day strike last May over salaries and benefits, were told this week that they will not receive an additional 1.2% pay increase that had been contingent on the district’s financial condition.

The settlement that ended the bitter dispute had stipulated that teachers would be allocated the additional pay increase, provided that state funding resulted in district reserves of more than $659,000. The agreement called for a 3% pay bonus for the 1987-88 school year, plus a 6% increase for the current school year, with the additional 1.2% to come.

But this week, in a letter to the district’s 1,100 teachers, Orange Unified Supt. John Ikerd reported that a fiscal report projected a balanced budget for the district, including a reserve of only $400,000, short of the mark agreed to by both sides.

Mark Rona, president of the Orange Unified Education Assn., said that union officials are satisfied with results of the report.

“There’s not much we can do about it. The district just doesn’t have the money,” Rona said Thursday.

He added that teachers now are turning their attention to new contract negotiations. The current contract expires in June, he said, and teacher representatives are hoping to avoid the tension that culminated in Orange County’s first teacher strike in 3 years.

“There are bad feelings among some of the teachers with regard to the (school) board members,” he said. “It’s something we’re going to have to deal with, but it’s also something they’re going to have to put behind them. If we don’t put it in the past, we’ll never get anywhere.”

The Orange Unified School District, with 24,500 students, is the third largest in Orange County. It includes the cities of Orange and Villa Park, and parts of Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Anaheim.