District Lining Up Subs for Anaheim Schools Walkout

Substitute teachers were still being hired late Tuesday afternoon as Anaheim Union High School District officials made final preparations to keep all of the district’s 21 schools open during a 1-day teacher strike today over stalled salary talks.

While Assistant Supt. LeRoy Kellogg declined to say how many substitutes were on standby, the president of the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Assn. said he expected at least 600 of the district’s 900 teachers to walk out.

“I don’t think they (district officials) ever expected the kind of unity displayed at our meeting last Friday,” when 82.4% of the teachers gave the go-ahead for today’s 1-day strike, union President Leonard Lahtinen said. Teachers are expected to walk off the job at every school, he said.

Anaheim Union district officials have vowed to keep all classes open and continue regular services through the job action. Kellogg said the district placed advertisements in Tuesday’s newspapers seeking credentialed substitute teachers and was also drawing on other districts’ rolls of substitute teachers to hire enough, at $180 a day each, to cover the strike. The Anaheim Union High School District, which includes junior and senior high schools for most of Anaheim, as well as for La Palma and Cypress, maintains a list of about 250 substitute teachers. Many substitutes are retired teachers, he said.

But Kellogg said he would be surprised if retired teachers crossing picket lines today included former Anaheim Union High School District teachers, who most likely once belonged to the union.

“I’d be surprised if they do, and disappointed,” added union President Lahtinen.

The strike is being waged on statewide Day of the Teacher to demonstrate the teachers’ impatience with stalled contract talks. Teachers have been working without a contract since last August, and the two sides have failed to reach any agreement despite the attempts of a state mediator.

Teachers, whose salaries range from $21,000 to $42,000 annually, want a 41% share of the district’s budget surplus after a 2.5% reserve is set aside this year. For next year, they are seeking a cost-of-living adjustment of about 3.2%, plus 41% of the budget surplus after a 3% reserve is set aside. Negotiators for the district, which has suffered financially as enrollment has dropped through the years, do not want to guarantee a pay raise but have offered teachers a share of any budget surplus.

But teachers say that going without a guaranteed increase for 2 years is unacceptable.

“Basically we’ve been willing to bite the bullet for this year, but we refuse to do that for another year,” Lahtinen said. No new negotiating sessions are scheduled.

“We’re waiting for a call from them. The ball is in their court. We don’t have anything else to offer,” Lahtinen said.

He said district officials were asking teachers Tuesday to “hand in all keys, roll books, roll sheets, attendance cards.” Although he said that is standard procedure in the district’s strike manual, “I think teachers feel that it’s an insult. We are having a 1-day strike. It’s not as if they’re never going to come back to the classroom again.”

Teachers plan to set up picket lines at each campus before school begins. At noon, they will hold a rally at Pearson Park in downtown Anaheim, with teachers from nearby Anaheim High School marching to the site, Lahtinen said. The teachers will have lunch before heading back to the schools for more picketing, he said.

The district board has voted to punish the strikers with loss of pay or disciplinary action and will make it more difficult for teachers to take sick leave on the day of the strike.

District officials will not know how many teachers are absent from classrooms until the school day begins.

While Kellogg declined to give specific numbers, he said “several hundred” substitutes will be standing by and will be dispatched from several “staging areas” within the district. He would not say whether classrooms would have to be combined for the day but stressed that there will be “adequate teachers to keep the schools open.” Students who are absent without an excuse will be considered truant, he added.

Kellogg said countless parents have been calling the district’s strike information hot line for a taped message that states that schools will be open and that the district “will maintain safe and orderly campuses.”

Kellogg said the district has hired private security guards for the day, which irked Lahtinen.

“We put out a flyer to our members asking why the district has finally found the money to improve security when we’ve been asking for that,” he said. “They will hire them when teachers are on strike, but when teachers are on the job, they’re not interested in securing the campus.”