Culver City Teachers Accept 7% Pay Raise, Still Trail L.A.

Culver City teachers will get a 7% pay raise this year, but their new contract still leaves them behind other Westside and Los Angeles teachers in salary.

Teachers ratified the one-year contract on a 137-88 vote Tuesday. It provides for increases in the school district’s contributions to health plans, and it introduces a program of basic health coverage for future retirees. The Culver City Unified School District board, which has declared its support, will formally approve the agreement at its Dec. 5 meeting.

Under the contract, salaries for beginning teachers will rise from $23,420 a year to $25,059. Teachers with 20 years’ experience will see their pay go from $44,140 to $47,230. The average teacher’s pay will rise from $36,221 to $38,756.

The district will increase its contribution by 8% for teachers who are under a fee-for-service medical plan. But because the total costs will be higher, teachers will also have to pay more. Employee contributions for individual medical coverage will go up $9 a month, from $47 to $56, said Bess Doerr, president of the Culver City Teachers Assn.

Taking advantage of a new state law that allows public employees previously not enrolled in the Social Security system to obtain Medicare coverage after they retire, the agreement gives teachers the option of paying 1.45% of their salary to qualify for Medicare. Teachers who enroll will have their contribution matched by the district.

The district also agreed to pay $1,250 a year for each future retiree 65 and older to provide additional insurance to supplement Medicare.

Previous labor contracts had no medical coverage at all for retired teachers 65 and older.

Last month, teachers rejected an earlier tentative agreement that provided a 6% pay increase. But the contract ratified this week provides an almost identical amount of money, said Ralph Villani, assistant superintendent in charge of negotiations.

The 7% pay hike in the approved contract was made retroactive only to Oct. 23. The 6% increase in the first agreement would have been retroactive to the beginning of the school year, said James Lively, the district’s chief financial officer.

Villani said the pay raise will also be funded from money saved by postponing the date teachers are allowed to enter Medicare--from Jan. 1, in the original proposal, to July 1.

Doerr called the contract solid and said teachers realized that the district has no more money to offer. She said the teachers also voted yes after seeing that Bevelry Hills teachers, after a two-week strike, got only a 5% guaranteed salary increase this year, plus a one-time bonus of 2% using money contributed by parents.

But David Mielke, president of the Culver City Federation of Teachers, a rival of Doerr’s union that was ousted as the bargaining representative in 1988, said the association had not fought hard enough.

Mielke said the “collective frustration” that led teachers to reject the first agreement “could have been used and harnessed to get a much better settlement. The negotiating team worked hard to sell (the second agreement), and I guess the teachers bought it.”

He said “the fact that Beverly Hills teachers struck and got hammered” may have spurred some Culver City teachers to vote yes on the contract. “But we weren’t talking about a strike . . . just about turning up the heat a couple of degrees.”

Another vocal critic of the contract was Howard Bennett, a veteran Culver City teacher who has campaigned for comprehensive lifetime health benefits.

“This contract is an insult,” Bennett said, contending that any gain in buying power from the 7% raise will be negated by the increase in teacher contributions for health coverage, the later retroactive date for the pay increase, the postponement of the Medicare provision and increases in the cost of living.

But Doerr said the contract became a source of dispute only because of the battling unions and other issues in the district.

“Howard Bennett wants (a particular system of lifetime health benefits); Dave Mielke want to discredit CCTA,” she said. “This is a good contract. Why wouldn’t people vote for it?”

Doerr and district officials agreed that the district, which has a $16.5-million budget, has no money for a sweeter deal for teachers.

The new contract, which covers about 275 teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians, will cost the district about $665,442 this year, Villani said.

The pay increases will still leave Culver City teachers behind Santa Monica, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills teachers in pay. But Villani said Culver City pays more than $5,200 a year per teacher in medical, dental and life insurance, more than Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District pays about $4,000 a year in medical and dental benefits per teacher, according to Art Cohen, assistant superintendent for fiscal services.

Villani said the Los Angeles Unified School District has higher salaries and better fringe benefits than Culver City because it is much bigger and rapidly growing in enrollment. “There’s no way we can compete with their kind of income,” he said.

Mielke of the rival teachers union predicted that the pay gap will cause Culver City teachers to defect to other districts. “Every day at lunch, teachers are asking for salary schedules around Los Angeles County,” he said. “Three blocks away, a teacher is making $3,000 or $4,000 more.”

Doerr said two teachers have left for the higher salaries in Los Angeles this year. One, a bilingual teacher, is making $10,000 more than she did in Culver City, in part because Los Angeles gives bonuses to bilingual teachers.

But Villani said four teachers from Los Angeles took pay cuts and came to Culver City “because Culver City is a nice place to work.”

“It’s smaller,” he said, “there’s strong parent interest in our community, and we dont have the drug problems, gang problems . . . to the extent L.A. has.”

SALARY COMPARISONS

Culver City Unified BEGINNING AVERAGE MAXIMUM Previous contract $23,420 36,221 44,140 1989-90 contract $25,059 38,756 47,230

Culver City has 4,500 students and 275 certificated employees--teachers, nurses,

counselors, and librarians.

Beverly Hills Unified BEGINNING AVERAGE MAXIMUM 1989-90 contract $28,041 44,792 48,584 With 2% bonus raised by parents $28,575 45,645 49,509

Beverly Hills has 4,700 students and about 300 certificated employees.

Santa-Monica-Malibu Unified BEGINNING AVERAGE MAXIMUM 1989-90 contract $27,000 41,481 49,445

Santa Monica-Malibu has 9,300 students and 500 certificated employees.

Los Angeles Unified BEGINNING AVERAGE MAXIMUM 1989-90 contract $27,346 42,460 50,123

Los Angeles has 595,000 students and 32,000 certificated employees.