Beverly Hills Schools Draw Up Strike Plan : District, Teachers Inching Closer to Agreement, Hope for Settlement

With no agreement in hand after a mediation session this week, Beverly Hills teachers and the school district both remained hopeful of a settlement but started preparing for the possibility of the district’s first teacher strike.

The school board on Tuesday unanimously approved emergency procedures in case of a strike, which teachers threaten as early as Oct. 16 unless the Beverly Hills Unified School District provides acceptable increases in salary and benefits. The board set pay for substitute teachers during a strike at $185 to $225 per day, whereas the regular substitute pay is $82 to $111.

Supt. Robert French said the higher wages are needed “sometimes to convince people to travel this far, or to cross picket lines.” He said the district will advertise in the newspaper this week at $185, and, if not enough qualified substitutes responded, offer higher rates.

Meanwhile, the Beverly Hills Education Assn., which represents about 300 teachers, planned to picket at Back to School Nights that began Wednesday and has rented a “crisis headquarters” office above a bakery on Santa Monica Boulevard near La Cienega.

Since May, the district and the union have been negotiating salary and benefit provisions for this year, which is the final year of a three-year contract. They called in a state mediator in August after failing to agree.

District Offers 9% in 2 Years

A mediation session Tuesday ended with both sides inching closer to each other. The district is offering to raise teacher salaries 4% this year--earlier, its proposal had been 3.05%--and to continue the contract another year with a 5% increase in 1990-91. Starting salary would be raised 27%, to $27,520.

Starting salary for Beverly Hills teachers is now $21,604, with a top pay of $46,270 for nine years of experience plus a master’s degree and training credits. The average salary is $42,659.

The district is also offering $3,070 per teacher per year for health benefits giving each teacher the option of depositing the money into a tax-sheltered annuity--which is what the current contract provides--or $3,900 without an annuity option.

Teachers Seek 18% in 2 Years

Teachers are seeking an 18% increase over two years, down from an earlier demand of 20% over two years, with the district deciding how to split the 18% hike. Teachers also want full medical and dental coverage paid by the district, estimated by the union to cost about $4,300 per teacher per year.

Bill Gordon, chief negotiator for the union, said “Beverly Hills has eroded from one of the top school districts in the country, to an also-ran” and that “there’s no better (way) to restore” the district’s stature than to “go to the morale of teachers (with) equitable treatment.”

Pointing to the contract won by Los Angeles teachers after their spring strike, Gordon said that, if the district offered “full fringes for life, like L.A. has, and bring the salary up, we’d have something to say.” Los Angeles teachers negotiated 8% pay raises for each of the next two years.

The district’s $28.3-million budget leaves about 5%, or $1.3 million in reserves, the district has said. Each 1% in salary increase for teachers will cost about $145,000, French said.

French said Wednesday that he was preparing to send parents a chart of the proposals and a letter stating that he is optimistic a settlement will be reached but that, if there is a strike, all schools will stay open with a credentialed teacher in each classroom. His letter also urges parents to volunteer to substitute teach if they are credentialed, and to “assure (their children) that this action (a strike) is not directed at students.”

The mediator has set the next session for Oct. 12, four days before the threatened strike. Both the district and the union, though, said that, if either side wanted to move closer or faster, all it would take was a phone call to the mediator.

“I’m still very positive,” French said. “Our last and best offer is not on the board yet.”

“I’m really, sincerely hopeful that people of good will can sit down and provide . . . an equitable settlement for teachers,” Gordon said.