Burbank Teachers Who Staged Strike May Be Punished : Education: The school superintendent says the one-day walkout violated state laws and the teachers’ contract.

Burbank Unified School District Supt. Arthur N. Pierce said Monday that he may punish teachers from John Burroughs High School who staged a one-day wildcat strike last week.

Only three of the school’s 52 teachers reported for work Friday, the rest skipping school to protest a school board decision not to expel a student accused of hitting a teacher and threatening to kill him and another instructor. The Burroughs teachers, who returned to work Monday, said the board’s leniency in not expelling the student will encourage future assaults.

But Pierce said that regardless of the teachers’ reasons, the one-day walkout violated state education laws, as well as the terms of the teachers’ contract. He would not discuss the punishments under consideration, but disciplinary action under current district policy ranges from letters of reprimand to firing, officials said.

“The district’s position is that we all operate under the laws of our land,” Pierce said. “If there are differences, we need to resolve those within the legal process; it may take a little longer but that is the way to do it.”

The current two-year contract with the Burbank teachers union prohibits strikes, district officials said. The state education code prohibits similar actions under rules governing insubordination, officials said.

Pierce said he has agreed to consider three recommendations to improve classroom safety submitted Friday by Burroughs teachers. Those recommendations include hiring uniformed security guards and installing emergency buzzers or telephones in classrooms.

The recommendations, some of which had been considered by the district but deferred because of cost, will be discussed in a closed session of the board Thursday, Pierce said.

Sid Jurman, president of the Burbank Teachers Assn., said punishing teachers who participated in the walkout would be unfair.

“The teachers knew there was that possibility before the walkout,” said Jurman, a teacher at Jordan Junior High School. “But they didn’t go out for selfish reasons. They went out because we want a safe place to teach our kids.”

The board in a closed session last Tuesday decided against suspending a Burroughs student accused of striking teacher George Rosales in the shoulder. Rosales and teacher David Hermans were trying to break up a fistfight between two students last month in a school hallway when a third student joined the fray and allegedly hit Rosales, school and Burbank police officials said.

Rosales was not injured, but he and Hermans told police that the same student threatened to kill them. All three students were arrested and later released to their parents, Burbank police said.

Despite a recommendation by Burroughs Principal Tim Buchanan to expel the student who allegedly hit Rosales, the board--after hearing accounts of the incident from the teachers and students involved--decided not to take any action.

The teachers and students told “different versions of the story” to board members, said Tim Crowner, director of pupil services, who attended the closed session.

Meanwhile, teachers at Burbank High School voted Monday against staging their own one-day strike in protest of the board action, teacher Donna Troupe said. Teachers today will decide whether to donate one day’s pay to cover the costs of putting ads in local newspapers calling for increased classroom safety.

“The board made a decision behind closed doors and said, in effect, ‘Trust that we made a good decision,’ ” Troupe said. “But the fact remains that a teacher was attacked and a student was allowed to come back to school.”

Burbank school board President Vivian Kaufman said the board has always been concerned with classroom safety. “But personally, I don’t think the teachers’ action was called for,” she said.

An increase in gang activity and reports last year of assaults on teachers in the Los Angeles and Burbank school districts has heightened fears among Burbank teachers, who in the past had seldom encountered classroom violence, Jurman said.

Jerry Quell, faculty president at Burroughs, said teachers would consider launching a recall campaign against the five-member Burbank board if there are no improvements to classroom safety.

Saturday’s Story

Because of a production problem, the last two-thirds of an article Saturday about a one-day teachers’ strike at John Burroughs High School was not included in about 77,000 copies of The Times. The incomplete copies went mainly to Burbank, Glendale, North Hollywood, Tujunga, Pacoima, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys. The missing information is incorporated in this article.