Sweeping Moves to Aid Teachers Will Get Hearing

Addressing issues that cut to the heart of a prolonged and bitter labor dispute, the Los Angeles Board of Education today will consider several sweeping proposals to upgrade teachers’ status, including bringing their salaries in line with administrators’ pay.

If approved, the changes--which would also require administrators to teach every other year--would move the Los Angeles Unified School District into the front ranks of school systems nationwide that face a shortage of qualified instructors and are searching for ways to make the teaching profession more appealing.

The proposals have stirred debate locally and have rankled many administrators, who are already steaming over earlier suggestions that they take pay cuts to give teachers higher salaries.

Even teachers are not united behind all of the proposals. Although teachers all want higher pay, many--including local union officials--fear such ideas might lead to wide salary differentials among teachers based on merit and responsibility.

Alleged Inequities

Board member Jackie Goldberg, the author of the proposals, said the measures address the deep anger of teachers about inequities in prestige, power and pay that she says are built into the practices and policies of school systems throughout the country, including the Los Angeles district.

“What does it mean to have a system where the further away you get from teaching children, the more money you’re paid?” said Goldberg, who taught high school for 20 years.

The current system means teachers have to leave the classroom even if they would rather remain, she said. “That is not healthy for an educational institution. . . . The teaching profession, as it now stands, is not held in high enough esteem.”

The changes would not take effect for at least two or three years and the board, which has been divided over questions of teacher pay and power, may have difficulty agreeing on all of the proposed steps.

But, if approved, the measures could help ease the resentment among district teachers, who have threatened to go on strike May 30 if their contract dispute has not been settled. Chief among the teachers’ union’s demands are a 21% pay increase over two years and teacher control of new school decision-making councils. The district has offered a 21.5% raise over three years and wants teachers, administrators and parents to have equal authority on the school councils.

Goldberg has called for a restructuring of district salaries so that a teacher could earn as much or more than an administrator with the same credentials, education, experience and working hours.

Included in the restructuring would be a “career ladder” that would enable some teachers to assume greater responsibilities at higher pay without having to become an administrator. She wants Supt. Leonard Britton to appoint a task force of teachers and administrators to devise several models for a new pay scale by July, 1990.

Since the early 1980s, a number of national and state reports on the need to overhaul public education have urged school districts to take such steps. One of the first districts to implement these types of reforms on a broad scale is the Rochester City School District in New York, where teachers can earn up to $70,000 a year by performing extra duties, such as advising and coaching other teachers.

Many Affected

Goldberg’s proposals would affect about 425 central office administrators and 1,500 principals, assistant principals and other school-based managers.

The district has separate pay scales for teachers and administrators. Under current salaries, a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no classroom experience earns $23,440 annually. It takes about 19 years and a master’s or doctorate degree to reach top pay of $43,000.

The district pays an extra $153 a year to teachers with a master’s degree and an extra $408 annually to those with a Ph.D.

In general, a teacher who has spent five years in the classroom and has earned an administrative credential, can apply for an administrative job. All principals and assistant principals are also required to have a master’s degree.

The pay scale for administrators with teaching credentials ranges from about $37,000 for program coordinators to $95,600 for associate superintendents. (The superintendent and two deputy superintendents earn executive flat salaries of $141,000 and $125,200, respectively.)

A full-time elementary school principal can move from a beginning salary of $52,200 to the maximum salary of $63,325 in five years. Full-time high school principals start at $58,000 and can earn up to $72,800 by the end of five years.

Pay Schedule

Administrators are paid for eight hours per day and work 221 days, 234 or 261 a year. Teachers are paid for six hours per day and work 204 days a year.

Goldberg maintains that the separate pay scales fail to reflect the fact that teachers are better educated than in the past. All of the district’s 32,000 teachers have a bachelor’s degree, nearly a third--9,120--have master’s degrees, and about 350 have doctorate degrees.

“We’re talking about a very different level of the profession today, and it’s time that the structure of the district in terms of salary and responsibilities reflect that difference,” Goldberg said. “It’s not a matter of saying that teachers are more important (than administrators). But right now we are sending the message that administrators are more important because of what we pay them. That gulf doesn’t and shouldn’t exist anymore.”

Some teachers said the proposed salary changes are long overdue. “If this goes through, it would set a precedent,” said Marcia Liebman, a teacher at Magnolia Avenue School near downtown Los Angeles. “There are different kinds of responsibilities that administrators have and different kinds of responsibility that teachers have. You can’t say one has more responsibility. (So) the pay should be equitable.”

‘Extreme Reservations’

Walker Brown, executive director of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents district principals and assistant principals, said the organization has “extreme reservations” about the proposed changes, particularly those relating to pay.

“If the salary schedule is based solely on experience, college, years with the district, administrators would be at the top,” he said. “But if it is based on some other criteria, the purpose of which is to bring teachers up and bring administrators down . . . that suggests no brownie points for being a senior high principal, and that tends to deny the traditional concept of responsibility and accountability being remunerated.”

Board member Rita Walters is also critical of the proposals. “A principal is responsible for 20 to 100 teachers, all of the staff in the building, all the scheduling. That responsibility exceeds that of being prepared for teaching a single class,” she said during a board discussion of the proposals last week. “There is an anti-administration bias here.”

Goldberg has also proposed a requirement that all administrators with teaching credentials return to teaching periodically to stay in touch with “the realities of the classroom.” Under her proposal, principals, assistant principals and deans would have to teach the equivalent of one course for one semester every other year, while central office administrators would have to spend 45 hours in a classroom every other year. Many principals spend some time teaching, such as when substitutes are not available, but there is no district policy that requires them to teach on a regular basis.

Union View

Frances Haywood, vice president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers’ union, said teachers could wholeheartedly support the concept of administrators having to teach periodically.

She also agreed with the basic premise of making teacher and administrator salaries more equal but stopped short of endorsing Goldberg’s proposal. “If a teacher is making $40,000 and an administrator is making $80,000, there’s something obscene about that pay schedule,” she said. “But I would like to see much more detail on how (Goldberg) plans to go about structuring it.”

Haywood said the teacher union opposes paying some teachers more than others on the basis of merit and duties, which is the concept behind the career ladder. “What money is out there should be equitably given to everybody until everybody gets to a decent level (of pay),” she said.

Most California school districts, including Los Angeles, have the beginnings of a career ladder in the state mentor teacher program. The state provides districts with money to pay an extra $4,000 a year to a select group of teachers who are relieved of some of their regular duties to perform other tasks, such as helping to train new instructors or write curriculum outlines. The pay increase is temporary, however, with mentor teachers generally serving no more than three years and then returning to their regular posts.