Windfall Raises Hopes of Ending L.A. Teacher Strike

The enormous state budgetary windfall announced by Gov. George Deukmejian Wednesday raised hopes for an end to the teachers’ strike that has crippled the massive Los Angeles Unified School District. An extra $120 million to $228 million could come to the district over the next two years.

Face-to-face meetings between teachers’ union and district officials were set to resume today in attempts to bridge the big differences that remain on teacher pay proposals.

Day 3 of the teachers’ strike--begun amid reports of “Molotov cocktails” at one school, the arrest of a striking teacher at another school and drastically plummeting attendance throughout the district--ended with the teachers’ union increasing its salary demands because of the expected infusion of state money.

“This is very good news,” Wayne Johnson, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, said of the state funding. “If they (district officials) don’t want to settle with us now, they just want to break the union.”

School board members were pleased by Deukmejian’s announcement of a $2.5-billion state tax surplus over the next two years. They offered no change in their position, however, saying that a state fact-finding report released Wednesday supports their standing contract offer.

“There clearly is more money,” member Julie Korenstein said after the board met in a five-hour, closed-door session. “The information we are receiving from Sacramento is very positive and very encouraging.”

School board President Roberta Weintraub said that she, district Supt. Leonard Britton and chief district negotiator Dick Fisher will meet this morning with the union’s Johnson and two other union representatives.

One analysis of the state budget suggested that up to $1.9 billion of the projected $2.5-billion windfall could go to education. Under that scenario, Los Angeles Unified, which had expected only $34 million in extra state funds over the next fiscal year, could receive between $120 million and $228 million over two years. However, several political hurdles lie ahead.

After the governor’s announcement, district officials said they still expect to receive, at most, $48 million in the next fiscal year, enough to fund only the district’s current pay offer to teachers.

School officials are uncertain how much of the extra funding can be reserved for salary increases, because the state Legislature may earmark a portion of the funds to finance class-size reductions, buy textbooks and maintain and expand school facilities.

After learning of the new funds, Johnson promptly raised the stakes in negotiations. At the beginning of the strike, teachers had been seeking a 21% raise over a two-year period. On Wednesday, Johnson changed the demand to a 26% hike over three years, with 10% retroactive for this year and 8% for each of the next two years.

The district has offered a 21.5% hike over three years--a contract that would increase beginning teachers salaries from $23,400 to $28,850 in July of 1990. Senior teachers with advanced degrees could see their salaries rise to a maximum of $52,700.

“If we don’t have this contract settled by Friday,” Johnson told a late-afternoon press conference, “the community should revolt for such disregard of the children. There is no question in our mind that there is money to settle this quickly and stop the chaos.”

Weintraub said the UTLA’s new proposal “is an impossible figure and will not even be considered.”

The governor’s announcement came in a period of a deteriorating education process and rising tensions on picket lines.

More than 250,000 students skipped school Wednesday to stay home, visit beaches and cruise shopping malls. A roughly equal number of students attended class, encountering a crisis that some say has transformed the nation’s second-largest district into an overgrown day-care center with a curriculum dominated by educational games and videos.

District officials said morning attendance reports showed that 287,000 of the district’s 594,000 students showed up for class Wednesday. On Tuesday, 325,000 attended; on Monday, 430,000.

At Hollenbeck Junior High School, extra police were assigned Wednesday after three “Molotov cocktail” firebombs were thrown at the school overnight, causing no injuries and only superficial damage.

At Banning High School, driver’s education teacher and football coach Rocky Garibay, 35, was arrested while walking the picket line and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

A district spokesman said the arrest stemmed from a confrontation Tuesday in which Garibay allegedly struck a substitute teacher with his picket sign. Garibay, who was acting as the captain of the picket line, also reportedly spat on the substitute and pounded on his vehicle.

Banning High Principal Augustine Herrera sent the substitute home Wednesday morning “for his own personal protection.”

District officials said there was a slight increase in the number of teachers who reported for work. About 8,200 teachers reported to classrooms Wednesday, 550 more than the day before.

Union officials say that about 23,000 of the district’s 32,000 teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians have honored the picket line.

The district got a boost from the state “fact-finding” report, which said Los Angeles district teachers are already among the highest-paid in the nation. The school district’s current salary offer is “very fair and reasonable,” the panel said in its non-binding report.

Weintraub said the report “totally exonerates us from any claims made by the union.”

But UTLA negotiator John D. Britz, in a dissenting report, called Geraldine M. Randall, chairwoman of the fact-finding group, “so biased as to qualify for the position of chief negotiator for the district. . . . The chairperson should be ashamed of her report; everyone else should disregard it.”

The fact-finding process, which is required under state law, is generally considered the last step before a strike can be legally called. The purpose of the three-member panel--made up of a chairman and a negotiator from each side--is to break up deadlocked negotiations.

The report, which covers 14 negotiation issues, also recommended against the agency fee provision sought by the UTLA, which would require all 32,000 district employees represented by the union to pay annual fees.

The report suggested that both sides submit to arbitration the district order last year to withhold pay of teachers refusing to turn in grades and perform playground supervision.

The union, which originally planned to strike on May 30, moved up the walkout to May 15 after district Supt. Britton threatened to withhold paychecks if teachers did not turn in grades by the 15th.

In addition to a pay raise, teachers are seeking relief from unpaid duties such as playground patrol, and a majority voice on school decision-making committees. The school district wants teachers, parents and administrators to have equal say on the committees.

The union represents about 22,000 teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians. Striking teachers account for almost two-thirds of the district’s work force of 32,000.

Tensions at Banning High School, located in mainly blue-collar Wilmington, were especially high. Usually, 2,600 students are enrolled at the school and the daily absence rate is about 400. Wednesday morning 322 students went to school, but about one-third later went home, according to Herrera. Normally the school has 137 teachers. On Wednesday, it had 10 regular teachers plus 10 substitutes.

The school has been hit especially hard by the strike, the principal said, because Wilmington is a strong union town. Herrera said some parents are calling him and expressing reservations about having their children cross picket lines because they are union families.

“We have a strong blue collar union community. Many of the people who work on this campus live in this community, including our teachers. Some of our teachers do longshoremen’s work in the evening or in the summer,” Herrera said.

District officials condemned a report that the striking teachers had offered junior high school students extra credit if they identified substitute teachers to the union. On the other hand, the union complained that substitutes and working teachers were driving recklessly near picket lines.

Perhaps the largest demonstration occurred at Manual Arts High School. An estimated 2,000 striking teachers who rallied Wednesday morning at Exposition Park later descended on Manual Arts, virtually encircling the school and chanting so loudly that students gathered at upper floor windows to survey the scene.

Less typical were teachers such as Kevin G. Dailey, who was among the handful of regular teachers who crossed the picket line to staff a classroom at Audubon Junior High School in the Crenshaw district.

“In this community we need to provide for our students,” Dailey said. “In other communities, they have things the students can go to to fill the time. Our students need us. . . . I need to be here. I don’t want to strike my kids.”

STRIKE HOT LINES

District telephone hot lines open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

General strike information: 213-625-KIDS.

High school information: 213-345-GRAD.

Adult education information: 213-62-LEARN.

District’s 24-hour recorded telephone hot line updated daily.

English: 213-625-4000.

Spanish: 213-625-4643.

The union has a hot line for teachers only, which is not made public.

CLASSROOM AT HOME--Teacher Mayra Fernandez keeps education on track with classes at home. Page 3