Anaheim’s High Schools Prepare for 1-Day Strike

Anaheim Union High School District officials are lining up security guards and going down the substitute teacher rolls to gear up for a planned teacher strike Wednesday.

But they want to assure all parties that it will be business as usual. Wednesday “will be a regular school day,” Assistant Supt. LeRoy Kellogg said.

The district sent the same message in a letter to parents Monday.

The Anaheim Secondary Teachers Assn., which represents the district’s 900 teachers, has announced that it will stage a 1-day strike Wednesday--the statewide Day of the Teacher--to demonstrate impatience with stalled contract talks.

Some Absences Expected

Kellogg said officials expected some student absences but no more than usual: “We are asking that all students and parents support the district. It is a regular school day. If students don’t show up for school, they will be considered truant.”

Kellogg said district officials have not yet decided whether to hire private security guards or use administrators as monitors.

“We want to protect our property as well as our staff,” he said, but Kellogg conceded that “we don’t have reason to believe anything might happen.”

“I understand they’re nervous,” said Judy Thomas, executive director of the teachers union. “They’re hiring security guards and setting up command posts. It sounds like they’re setting up for an army. They don’t know their employees very well. There’s not going to be any violence.”

Teachers’ Salary Demands

For this school year, teachers want a 41% share of the budget surplus after a 2.5% reserve is set aside. For next school year, Thomas said, teachers are seeking a cost-of-living adjustment of about 3.2%, plus 41% of what is left over after a 3% reserve is set aside.

District negotiators do not want to guarantee a pay raise for next year but have offered teachers a share if there is a budget surplus.

“The whole question is the treatment of teachers by the district, our position being that they ignored us,” Thomas said.

“We were not in the budget at all (for a raise this year). But for next year, now that they’re developing that budget, we want them to hear us, to make us a priority.”

Staff writer Mary Lou Fulton contributed to this story.