Beverly Hills Parents Give Funds to End School Strike : Financing: Citizens pledge more than $400,000 to sweeten an offer to teachers, who accuse the board of ‘stalling.’

Beverly Hills parents, digging into their pockets to help settle their prestigious school district’s first-ever teacher strike, had pledged more than $400,000 by late Wednesday to sweeten the district’s salary offer to teachers.

One parent wrote out a check for $20,000, although most contributions have ranged between $200 and several thousand dollars, said Albert Gersten, a Beverly Hills parent and organizer of a group raising money for the teachers.

One real estate company, Asher Dann & Associates, has even offered to donate 15% of its sales commissions for the next eight months, Gersten said. Officials of Asher Dann could not be reached late Wednesday.

Bill Gordon, chief negotiator for the union, the Beverly Hills Education Assn., said that he is ready to reopen talks and that the board was “just stalling in the face of community pressure” by not deciding to return to the table Wednesday evening.

There have been two attempts at negotiations since about 300 teachers, nurses, librarians and counselors walked out Oct. 16, but both efforts quickly collapsed.

Board President Dana Tomarken said the board met in closed session Wednesday night to consider the district’s next step.

After the meeting, she said the board was pleased with the “generosity of the parents” and the board would issue a formal statement this morning.

Gersten said his group, Children First, had collected more than $400,000 since late Tuesday to help finance pay raises for teachers.

Teachers are seeking an 18% salary increase over two years. The district has stuck to its offer of 11%, saying it cannot afford more.

Gersten said parents would pay for half of any salary increase over the 11%. He urged the board to “bend a bit, because if parents are willing to match (a raise) . . . (the district) should be negotiating.”

The district estimates that the teachers’ salary demands would cost about $1 million more over two years than the district is offering. The teachers say their total salary and benefit demands over two years would cost about $800,000 more.

Gersten said checks from parents started to flow in near the end of a meeting Tuesday night at his home to discuss the strike. Most of the parents had already left, but 20 families there gave a total of $150,000, and more than $250,000 in checks and pledges came in Wednesday, he said.

On Wednesday morning, Gersten said, he and parent Eli Blumenfeld offered the contributions at a meeting with district Supt. Robert French, Tomarken, board member Frank Fenton and Mayor Max Salter.

“We want a settlement more than 11%, maybe less than 18%,” he said. “We have provided a mechanism the (district) cannot refuse.”

Parents were prepared to raise as much as $800,000, “but we’re not willing to tell the school board that they do not need to re-prioritize the budget” Gersten said.

He also warned that the parent support might not last. “The Board of Education has the opportunity to act now. Today, (parents) will give whatever it takes to settle. If they don’t settle, parents will retract (the offers),” he said.

Gersten said he proposed that the talks between the district and the teachers be face-to-face and include two parents. In negotiations in the last several months, including the two sessions during the strike, the district and the union met in separate rooms, with a state mediator shuttling between them.