Teachers in Culver City Spurn 6% Raise

A contract settlement reached by Los Angeles teachers last spring continues to reverberate in surrounding school districts, and the latest twang has sounded in Culver City.

Culver City teachers voted 111 to 86 Tuesday to reject a tentative agreement with the school district that included a 6% pay raise and new health benefits for retirees. The agreement, however, also had higher health insurance co-payments.

Bess Doerr, president of the Culver City Teachers Assn., said the vote indicates that the rank and file “may think there’s lots more money than (the district) says there is” and “the 8% from L.A. is ringing in their ears.” Los Angeles teachers, after striking in May, won 8% raises for each of the next two years.

Doerr said she was not surprised that the agreement was rejected, but she still believes that it is “an excellent package.”

The no vote does not mean a strike, Doerr said. The union and the school district now must return to the bargaining table, and if face-to-face negotiations are not successful, a state mediator will be called in. At this point, she said, “We just start over.”

Starting salary for teachers in the Culver City Unified School District is now $24,000 and would have risen to $25,440 under the tentative agreement. Top pay is now $43,300 for those with 20 years experience and would have risen to $45,898 under the rejected agreement. Los Angeles teachers this year start at $27,346 and earn a maximum of $50,123 with 20 years experience and a doctorate.

Under the tentative agreement, the district would have increased its contribution by 7% for teachers enrolled in a fee-for-service health plan. But, because the cost of such health coverage is rising at a higher rate, a teacher’s payment for individual coverage would go up from $41 to $57 a month, Doerr said.

The agreement would also have adopted a new state provision which allows teachers to buy into Medicare by paying 1.45% of their salary, which would be matched by a district contribution.

Both Doerr and David Mielke, president of the rival Culver City Federation of Teachers that was ousted as the bargaining representative in 1988, said the ratification vote was not split along political lines. “There were several federation people for it, and some CCTA teachers who said they were voting against it,” Doerr said.

Doerr said the union will now survey teachers to plan its strategy.

James Lively, the district’s chief financial officer, insisted that the district does not have more to give. “I think they got the very best deal. We’ve given everything we could,” he said.

Ralph Villani, an assistant superintendent who is in charge of negotiations, said the teachers were “responding to the L.A. syndrome.”

The school district, he said, is “stretched to the very nth degree” and said there is “no way we can give everybody what they want.”

Doerr said two Culver City teachers have left for the higher salaries in Los Angeles this year. One of them, a bilingual teacher, is making $10,000 more than she did in Culver City, in part because Los Angeles gives bonuses to bilingual teachers and Culver City does not, Doerr said.