Board Approves Changes to Upgrade Teacher Status, Pay

Calling them necessary to upgrade public education in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Board of Education on Monday endorsed several bold policy changes aimed at enhancing the status and pay of teachers, including a proposal to close the wage gap between teachers and administrators.

The board voted 4 to 2 to restructure district salaries, with the goal of enabling teachers to earn as much as administrators based on education, experience, credentials and working hours. By the same margin, it also agreed to require all administrators with teaching credentials to spend some time teaching every other year.

The board voted separately on two additional proposals: to create a “career ladder” that would enable teachers to earn higher salaries by assuming greater responsibilities and to establish a task force to study the salary restructuring issues. It approved the measures by a 5 to 1.

Board member Jackie Goldberg, author of the proposals, said the changes are needed to demonstrate the district’s belief in the importance of teachers and to acknowledge that most teachers today are far better trained than in the past. She also said the measures could help prevent in the future the bitter labor unrest among teachers that has plagued the district for most of this school year and which may result in a strike as early as next week.

Said board member Leticia Quezada, who supported the proposals: “I think the bottom line of the motions is the professionalization of teachers. . . . The crisis of morale in public education today has much to do with a tremendous gap in understanding . . . between teachers and administrators. This motion goes a long way” toward closing that gap.

Board member Rita Walters voted against all the measures, calling them ill-timed and biased against administrators.

“It is hard not to find an anti-administration bias in this motion,” she said. “It is not necessary to denigrate one group’s status while trying to raise another.”

Other critics of the salary restructuring proposal said they would be concerned if any change in the existing system failed to reflect the fact that administrators, particularly those based at schools, have heavier responsibilities than teachers.

In addition to Goldberg and Quezada, board members Warren Furutani and Julie Korenstein voted in favor of all the proposals. Board member Alan Gershman opposed the pay restructuring proposal and the requirement that administrators teach periodically. Board President Roberta Weintraub was absent due to illness.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Wayne Johnson said the proposals, while offering positive changes, amounted to little more than a “philosophical statement” that probably will have little effect on the current labor dispute.

The proposals addressed some of the same issues that have been raised during the last several months of tense negotiations between the district and its 32,000 teachers. The two sides have been deadlocked over issues of pay and teachers’ rights and authority to make school decisions.

Supt. Leonard Britton, in general, spoke favorably of the changes, although he said some of the objectives may be difficult to accomplish and will require careful study.

Britton will appoint a task force of teachers and administrators to study the concept of salary restructuring and to present several models of new salary tables to the board by July 1, 1990.

Goldberg said she hoped that the requirement that all administrators with teaching credentials teach periodically could go into effect early next year.

Her proposals have angered many administrators, who already were upset about earlier suggestions to reduce their pay in order to give teachers higher salaries.

The changes approved Monday could affect about 425 central office administrators and 1,500 principals, assistant principals and other managers.

It takes about 19 years for a teacher to rise from the beginning salary of $23,440 to top pay of $43,000.

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.

It takes about five years for a full-time elementary principal to move from a beginning salary of $52,200 to the maximum salary of $63,325.

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