Trustees Vote Themselves 67% Raise : Lancaster: The increase to $400 a month will cost a maximum of $9,600 a year, but one trustee questions it because some classes lack essential items due to a budget squeeze.

Despite recent staff layoffs and complaints of a funding shortage so severe that some schoolrooms lack dictionaries and other student essentials, trustees in the troubled Lancaster School District have voted themselves a 67% pay raise.

By a 3-2 margin after an emotional debate, the district’s board members decided Tuesday night to take advantage of a state law that allows their salaries to increase from $240 to $400 a month because the district’s enrollment exceeded 10,000 students last year.

Officials said the increase would cost the district only an extra $9,600 a year at most. But the vote still was sensitive in the Antelope Valley community because of past management and school problems in the district, which grew to 11,100 students this year.

“Do we truly need this raise above all else, and do we deserve this raise above all else? My answer is hell no,” said board member Michael Huggins, who joined with colleague Melinda White to vote against the raises. They complained the money could be better spent on students.

However, board President Frank Astourian and members William Taylor and Richard White approved the salary increase, retroactive to July 1, saying board members deserved it and were entitled to it under state law.

In protest, Huggins and Melinda White said they would not accept the added pay. But in a peculiar twist, Richard White vowed that he too would not accept the extra money, even though the raise would not have passed had he not voted for it. He said voting for the raise was “a matter of principle” but did not explain.

During the debate, Huggins complained that several of the district’s 14 schools are severely short of audiovisual equipment, such as television sets. And Melinda White said she had been to classrooms that lacked even dictionaries and encyclopedias because of the money shortage.

On Sept. 11, after weeks of struggle, the board adopted a nearly $40-million budget for the coming year. It contains a wide range of program and staff cutbacks, including the elimination of about 110 jobs, mostly part-time teachers aides.

District officials blamed reductions in state school funding, although they said that district miscalculations also were to blame. On Sept. 4, the board narrowly avoided eliminating the 14 library clerk jobs, which would have closed all school libraries.

Under the board’s action, which was finalized Tuesday, members’ annual stipend will increase from the current $2,880 limit to a maximum of $4,800. Board members can be paid less if they miss too many of the twice-monthly board meetings. They also receive about $6,000 a year worth of district-paid health insurance.

Huggins and Melinda White said the stipend is not meant as a part-time salary, but rather to cover members’ expenses not reimbursed by the district. Both said the $240 amount was more than adequate to cover expenses. “Let’s put the money where it belongs, with our kids,” Melinda White said.

Taylor, who spearheaded the drive to approve the raise, called it “a good thing to do” and complained that he and other board members now must pay for legal liability insurance policies because of the threat of being named as individuals in lawsuits.