School Officials Search for Funds to Sweeten Pay Offer

As tensions mounted on school campuses Thursday, Los Angeles Unified School District officials said they are hoping that an even larger than expected state tax windfall could sweeten their pay offer to teachers and head off a strike set for Monday.

School board members and top district administrators held intensive closed-door sessions on and off into Thursday evening. Earlier in the day, representatives of United Teachers-Los Angeles and the district met face to face briefly and were in telephone contact on key issues. Both sides cautioned that no substantial progress toward a settlement was made.

But Dick Fisher, the district’s chief negotiator, said the district has learned that the state income tax surplus could go as high as $900 million--about $300 million higher than state estimates given a few weeks ago. That could substantially increase the district’s share, which was projected to be about $33 million, with about $17 million of that already promised to teachers. New funds would “go right into the existing offer,” Fisher said.

Meanwhile, students, parents and other district employees were being drawn into increasingly tense and complicated preparations for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s first teachers’ strike in 19 years. Today could bring new confrontations as many teachers conduct what could be their last classes before a walkout.

“We are working as diligently as we can on all the issues,” school board President Roberta Weintraub said. The board is scheduled to resume private discussions today.

Wayne Johnson, United Teachers-Los Angeles president, said Thursday that he had a 10-minute conversation with district officials, including Weintraub.

The possibility of reopening formal negotiations was discussed, not specifics of a contract, Johnson said.

Johnson said the union will negotiate again only if the district agrees in advance to better its latest offer of a 21.5% pay increase over three years. The union is demanding 21% over two years.

“They’ve got to come back to us with a different offer than we have on the table. Then we would really start to negotiate and get a settlement. If not, there is not a lot to talk about,” said Johnson, who added that he is prepared to participate in talks through the weekend.

Thursday night, several hundred teachers, chanting, “Strike! strike! strike!” jammed into a Los Angeles Convention Center meeting room for a rally and planning session.

Johnson told them that district security officers will attempt to collect grade books today and that the district will seek a court order to get them. In that case, teachers should return the roll books “exactly as you received them,” he said, apparently meaning turning in blank books.

An activist in the Los Angeles labor movement described the pre-strike situation as “ugly.” “It’s an adolescent match of who is more macho,” the activist said.

Tensions heightened Thursday among students and parents who said the threatened strike already is disrupting their education.

Fifteen student leaders from three high schools--University and Fairfax in West Los Angeles and Birmingham in the San Fernando Valley--were involved in a confrontation with school district police Thursday as they attempted to meet with Supt. Leonard Britton at district headquarters at Grand Avenue downtown.

Fairfax High Student Body President Yasmina Porter, who organized the delegation to show support for teachers, said school police officers escorted them to a room where they were told that Britton would appear. Instead, Porter and other students said, the police officers told them they were truants and that they would be placed on district buses and returned to their schools. Porter said that when some students attempted to leave the room to talk to reporters, the officers blocked the doors and physically restrained several who attempted to pass.

Said Ronald Kim, a Fairfax High student leader: “When the police saw me approaching reporters, one grabbed me, twisted my arm behind my back and said he would arrest me. . . . All I wanted to do was to leave the room to speak to the press.”

None of the students were hurt and all were allowed to leave in their own vehicles without being reported as truants.

District police chief Wesley Mitchell said the students were suspected of being truant and were detained as a “standard procedure” until their ages were determined. Under state law, school attendance is mandatory to age 16.

Associate Supt. Gabriel Cortina talked with the students on Britton’s behalf because, he said, Britton was tied up in meetings concerning negotiations. Cortina tried to reassure the students that their schools will remain open if teachers go on strike.

“Students are scared and mad and they don’t know what they are going to do on Monday,” Porter said. “Our textbooks have been collected, and teachers are pretty apathetic. I’m kind of frustrated. I know teachers don’t want to strike, but they don’t want to hold back their bargaining chip (students’ grades).”

Meanwhile, angering them further, teachers received formal notification Thursday that they each would have to mail by Monday a check for $135.42 to the district if they want to keep up their health insurance for the rest of May during a strike. If a strike continues further, the teachers will have to pay $270.83 a month for the benefits.

“They are also holding my paycheck. Why don’t they just take it out of my paycheck?,” said Adrienne Mack, an English teacher at Sylmar High School. Like many other teachers, she expects not to receive her pay for the last month because she is not turning in grades by Monday, disobeying district orders.

Teachers also were told that they must make arrangements to cover payments to the credit union or on bank loans that are usually deducted from their paychecks.

The teacher’s union has arranged for a $40-million pool of bank loans to help members who face financial trouble. The union estimates that amount will be enough if the strike lasts through the end of June.

The rest of the unionized employees of the school district--police, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, clerks, janitors, craftsmen and teachers’ assistants--are supposed to be bound by contracts that forbid strikes. Complicating matters, some of the other unions have so-called “me-too” contracts which call for renewed bargaining if the teachers’ union wins a better benefits package than the non-teachers have.

On Thursday, leaders of those other unions said they recommend that their members cross the teachers’ picket lines if a strike occurs next week. However, some of those employees might decide to honor the strike lines.

John Tanner, staff director of Service Employees International Union, Local 99, which represents 18,000 cafeteria workers, drivers, gardeners, classroom aides and other groups, said classroom workers may feel more torn about the strike because they work closely with teachers. But he warns that they might face disciplinary action from the district if they do not work during a teachers’ strike.

Brian Gorman, a field representative for the California School Employees Assn., which represents about 5,000 clerical and technical employees, said his members sympathize strongly with the teachers. His members have been told that they can walk on the picket lines before and after work and during lunch breaks but not during work hours. Coincidentally, the clerical union, whose contract expired a month ago, is scheduled to have a contract mediation session with the district today.

Monday’s proposed teachers’ strike would fall in the middle of the playoffs for baseball, golf, gymnastics, softball, tennis, track and volleyball teams. The district has announced that coaches may direct teams in the afternoons and evenings even if they participate on the picket lines during the day, and the Los Angeles City Coaches Assn. has recommended that coaches do just that.

However, baseball coaches and the United Teachers-Los Angeles have criticized that position, although union President Johnson said he will not discipline those who decide to coach. “I don’t see that as hurting our strike in any way,” he said of the coaching.

The district also pledged to use administrators and substitute teachers to keep open after-school day care and many of its other programs, as well as much of its regular classroom activities as possible during a strike. But students and parents said they doubt that much education will take place during a strike.

“Parents are chewing nails out here,” said Pam Bruns, a co-founder of The Complex, an organization of teachers and parents in the Pacific Palisades area. “Our natural allegiance is to teachers, but we feel disenfranchised because of what they are asking for,” she said, referring to a UTLA demand that teachers hold 51% of the seats on new school governing councils.

Times staff writers Rich Connell and John Lynch also contributed to this story.

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