Teachers, District Take Their Cases to Beverly Hills Parents

Both sides in the Beverly Hills teachers strike took their cases to hundreds of frustrated parents Monday night after a second attempt at talks broke down late Sunday night.

About 1,500 people attended a forum at Beverly Hills High School, the first opportunity for parents to hear both sides present their positions in the strike, which entered its second week.

Supt. Robert French appealed to residents for financial support. With Proposition 13’s ceiling on property taxes, a state Supreme Court ruling that the state must equalize funding to school districts and Beverly Hills’ own declining enrollment, the city’s schools have fallen on hard times, he said.

French compared the district with its high-quality education to a “lighthouse” and told parents: “All we’re asking you is to give us more fuel for that light . . . we can’t do it alone. You’re the controller of the purse strings.”

But Judy McIntire, president of the Beverly Hills Education Assn., the teachers union, charged that administrators and the Board of Education bear the responsibility for financing teacher demands.

“When you don’t have competitive salaries, you’re not going to be able to keep good teachers and you’re not going to be able to attract good teachers,” she said.

Spurred by parent pressure and with a state mediator acting as an intermediary, representatives of the teachers union and the district met for 5 1/2 hours before breaking off discussions shortly before midnight Sunday.

Although the union slightly lowered its pay demand--by 1%, to 17% over two years--the district refused to budge from an 11% salary increase over two years.

Bill Gordon, chief negotiator for the Beverly Hills Education Assn., said Sunday’s revised offer was “a tentative thing to see if (the district was) serious” about negotiating. He said that because the district refused to bend, the union is again seeking an 18% raise.

In addition to disagreements over teacher salaries, the two sides are also at odds over medical benefits. Teachers want full medical and dental coverage, while the district wants to continue only partial coverage.

Central to the dispute is how much the district has available to spend on salaries and health benefits for its 300 teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians.

French said the district’s $28.3-million budget for the current school year, including reserves of about $1.2 million, does not take into account any salary or benefit increases for district personnel.

The district said every 1% increase in salaries would cost $195,000 this year.

The district’s offer would cost about $3 million, French said, which would exhaust this year’s reserve.

To rebuild the reserve, the district would have to make $2 million in cuts in the 1990-91 budget, he said.

The superintendent said the district is considering a new tax on all parcels of land in the city for the June ballot. If approved, it would generate about $2 million for the 1990-91 school year but nothing for this year, French said. The district’s last attempt to levy such a tax was turned down by voters in March, 1987.

French also said that about $6 million--mainly income from renting out libraries and auditoriums, from private donations, from oil wells on the high school campus and from a line of Beverly Hills High School clothing--goes toward keeping class sizes at an average of 25 students. The money is also used for music, art, computer and other specialized courses.

Teachers, however, say the district could afford their demands by using reserves, funds allocated but not yet not spent, and through additional fund raising.

The average teacher salary in Beverly Hills is $42,659 a year. In the Los Angeles district, teachers earn an average of $42,460 a year.

Meanwhile, attendance districtwide rose Monday to 60%, up from Friday’s 43%.