Beverly Hills Board Won’t Budge Despite Parents’ Offer of $400,000

On Day 9 of the Beverly Hills teachers strike Thursday, representatives of the school system said they would not budge from their last offer of an 11% raise over two years, despite a local parents group’s promise to add more than $400,000 in donations to pay higher teacher salaries.

“The district has put its money on the table” and has no more to give teachers, Board of Education member Betty Wilson said at a press conference with other district officials.

The 11% offered would be built into the teachers’ permanent salary schedule, but Board President Dana Tomarken said the district has not ruled out the possibility that the parents’ money could be offered to teachers as a one-time bonus.

But Bill Gordon, chief negotiator for the Beverly Hills Education Assn., which represents the district’s 300 teachers, said the union would reject any such offer.

“If this is a bonus, then it’s no deal,” Gordon said.

If no progress is made at the bargaining table soon, the parents may withdraw their offer, Albert Gersten, a parent and organizer of the group called Children First, said Thursday.

The parents’ group, which claims to represent 900 parents, has offered to pay for half of any increase above 11% over the two years. Organizers say the group has raised more than $400,000 since Sunday and can raise up to $800,000 if it will help end the school system’s first-ever teachers strike. The teachers union’s demand of an 18% raise over two years would cost about $1 million more than the district says it can afford to pay, according to the district.

A negotiating session with a state mediator has been set for Sunday, the earliest date available with the mediator. District officials said late Thursday that they were attempting to arrange an earlier date.

Union officials have offered to meet informally with district representatives to try to end the strike, but the district so far has refused to meet without the state mediator.

Gersten, a Beverly Hills businessman whose two children attend district elementary schools, blasted district officials Thursday, saying that it is “absolutely obscene that they can’t find it in their hearts or budget to budge off their original offer.”

District officials had told parents that the district could afford to improve its offer, said Gersten.

“I’m sure now that we will have a lot of trouble holding off the parents that want to go for a recall” of board members, he said.

Representatives of the district, the union and parents agree that the long-term solution would be a city parcel tax that would raise about $2.5 million a year for the district. Supt. Robert French said the district wants to place such a measure on next June’s ballot. The district’s last attempt in 1987 to win passage of such a tax was turned down by voters.