Camarillo Teachers Picket Over Contract : Education: Negotiations have stalled over salary and health benefits. Teachers will stop working beyond regular school hours until a settlement is reached.

About 200 Camarillo teachers left classrooms at the end of the school day Monday and headed for picket lines to protest an impasse in contract negotiations in the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District.

The 248-member Pleasant Valley Education Assn. and district officials reached a deadlock in December over salary increases and medical benefits. Before the impasse, both sides had agreed on several other issues, including possibly changing the school calendar and revising policies under which teachers are transferred.

In an attempt to settle the salary and benefit dispute, both sides in December requested a state-appointed mediator to help them reach agreement.

But association president Ina Lea Parker said the union is hoping to arrange a meeting with the district before the state mediator steps in.

“We’re trying to get their attention,” Parker said of the demonstrations. “We want them back to the table.”

Board President Leonard Diamond said teachers had “no need to get the district’s attention. The district is focused on them all the time.”

Parker said teachers have stopped working beyond regular school hours until the contract is settled, although they will continue to work under the terms of the current three-year contract, which expires in December.

Demonstrations, which began last week, will continue at each of the district’s 14 schools, both before and after school hours, Parker said.

Before the impasse, teachers in the 6,400-student district were seeking an 11% salary increase and full coverage of medical benefits, Parker said.

But Diamond said the district was offering a 5.16% salary increase, plus a maximum increase of 1.04%, or about $500 a year, for medical benefits. Teachers now receive about $3,900 a year in health benefits.

In addition, teachers could receive another 2.7% increase toward salaries, Diamond said. That increase would depend on whether the district has to pay an estimated $163,000 property tax-collection fee that would be assessed by the county and whether the district has to return part of a cost-of-living increase from the state. Districts statewide initially received a 4.76% cost-of-living increase, but budget cuts later reduced the increase to 3%.

Pleasant Valley teachers have picketed school board meetings since last spring, complaining that teacher salaries are among the county’s lowest and are falling behind, especially when compared to neighboring districts.

For example, some teachers cited a three-year contract approved this month by the board of the Conejo Valley Unified School District in Thousand Oaks that will give teachers a 20% raise by July, 1992. Conejo teachers will vote on the contract later this month.

Meg Loretta, a teacher at Monte Vista Intermediate School, said Pleasant Valley teachers are also upset because many have to pay $400 a month or more from their salaries to cover medical benefits for their families.

“It’s a financial catastrophe,” said Loretta, who said many teachers are growing discouraged. “I’m personally one of the teachers considering quitting teaching and going into another career. Education is too important to think that every year you have to go to the district with your hand out.”

But Diamond said Pleasant Valley receives less income than other school districts in the county and that the district’s offer represents as much of an increase as officials can afford to pay. Because the district has fewer students from military families or with special needs, it receives less federal and state funds, another board member said.

About 70% of district income goes to teachers’ salaries, Diamond said.

Diamond said the district’s most recent offer would allow teachers full health coverage if they choose the health maintainance organization option of the medical benefit plan rather than another health insurance plan, Diamond said. Some teachers, however, have argued that the HMO plan is inferior.

Diamond said teachers “wanted all the money in the district for their raise, which would mean no other employee would get a raise. . . . If they get what they want, they won’t get clean rooms or clean campuses.”

Diamond said it will probably be at least another two weeks before the state mediator begins working with teachers and district officials.

“We haven’t had a mediator in this district for many, many years and it’s really a shame it had to happen now,” Diamond said.

But, he added: “It will be very welcome for us as far as we’re concerned. We’ll be happy to let someone else make the decision.”