ORANGE : Teachers Union Proposes 5-Year Plan

The teachers union for the Orange Unified School District has outlined a plan to improve the district’s image while setting a foundation for the future.

Orange Unified Education Assn. leaders say they would like to see the school board adopt their “Partnership Plan for Excellence” as a five-year framework for the future.

But some district officials say the union proposal took them by surprise and that the OUEA has created the plan to position itself for 1992 contract negotiations. The teachers’ three-year contract, including a multimillion-dollar health and welfare benefits package, expires June 30.

The union’s five-part proposal calls on teachers, the community and the district to cooperate in the rejuvenation of a school district that has been plagued by fiscal crisis and mismanagement for the last decade.

“This district has gone from one crisis to another,” said OUEA President Hazel Stover. “Everybody is talking about long-range planning, but nobody is doing anything.”

Under headings such as “Improving the Academic Environment,” “Establishing Fiscal Integrity” and “Creating a Professional Working Environment,” the union plan includes proposals to strengthen neighborhood schools and stresses the need for teachers to be paid a competitive wage that would make it possible for them to live in the district.

“This should be a catalyst for discus

sion,” said Steve McDonald, executive director of OUEA. “It would be ideal if they would adopt this as a framework for a five-year plan.”

Orange Unified officials said the district will begin strategic planning this year, but adoption of the union’s plan is unlikely.

“While (the union’s plan) has many good key issues in it, which can be addressed as part of a strategic planning, it is not the answer” by itself, said school board President Alan E. Irish.

“Everything that’s on that wish list means negotiation with our labor unions,” Trustee Russell Barrios said.

Irish said that the union plan “could be misinterpreted” as a setup for contract negotiations next year. However, board Vice President Barry P. Resnick said he hoped the union’s effort would “bring some kind of unity.

“The system has to work as a family,” he said. “Not the McCoys versus the Hatfields.”