Compton District Approves Budget With $6.6 Million in Teacher Raises : Education: $149 million spending plan will increase district’s costs by about 17%.

School trustees Tuesday approved an overall budget of almost $149 million and will immediately begin revising the district spending plan, shifting money to cover a $6.6-million increase in teacher salaries.

Teacher salary increases will raise the district’s costs by about 17%, school officials estimate. The contract agreement was reached last week after more than a year of bitter negotiations.

Last year, teacher pay costs were about $35 million. The raises will increase costs to about $41 million this year, officials said.

J. L. Handy, the newly appointed superintendent of the Compton Unified School District, said after the school board meeting that he is confident that there is enough money in the budget to cover the raises.

“We looked at our budget, and we know how we can move line items to accommodate” the salary increase, Handy said.

The superintendent declined to say which budget accounts will be cut to cover the cost of higher teacher salaries. The district already laid off about two dozen workers early this summer to help cut more than $6 million from this year’s budget.

The budget contains a $5.8-million reserve for raises for all employees. The teachers union is the only one, however, to reach an agreement with the school board.

The unions that do not have contracts represent the district’s police force and blue-collar workers, such as clerks, janitors and bus drivers.

The district may get a larger-than-expected cost-of-living increase in state money. Controller Stafford Offerman said the current budget is based on a state cost-of-living increase of 3%. However, the state Legislature and the governor appear close to an agreement that would give schools a 4.7% increase, he said.

That 4.7% would be worth about $1.4 million to Compton, Offerman said.

Both Offerman and the district’s acting fiscal director, John Smith, acknowledged that a series of budget revisions are ahead for the trustees as the school year gets under way.

“That’s done all the time,” Smith said.

Teachers were in a largely conciliatory mood at the board meeting Tuesday, savoring their contract victory.

The teachers said they would have gone on strike the first day of school had the district not agreed to meet most of their pay demands.

Compton teachers were among the lowest paid in the county; hundreds left the district during the last two years to take higher-paying jobs elsewhere. The teachers union argued that the district was driving out its experienced teachers with low pay.

Under the terms of the new contract, starting teachers will earn about $26,000 a year; they earned less than $23,000 last year. The most experienced teachers will get about $48,000, in contrast with $39,900 last year.

About 25% of the approximately 1,100 teachers in the district are at the highest pay level, union officials said.

To obtain the pay changes they sought, however, the teachers had to forfeit last year’s raises, meaning that the three-year contract contains no retroactive pay for them.