Teachers Angered by Plan to Cut Pay : Education: Many instructors see themselves in a no-win situation. The L.A. school board has voted to reduce their salaries by 3%.

Like many of his colleagues at Fairfax High School, English teacher George Schoenman has never been afraid to strike.

He walked off the job without hesitation in 1970, when Los Angeles Unified School District teachers won their first union contract with a bitter four-week strike. And he marched on the picket line for nine days in 1989, when they won a groundbreaking power-sharing plan and salary increases that made them among the nation’s highest-paid public school instructors.

On Tuesday, the day after the Los Angeles Board of Education voted to impose a 3% pay cut on all of its 70,000 employees, the stage was set for yet another bitter labor dispute involving the district’s 36,000 union teachers, counselors, librarians and nurses. But this time, the Fairfax High classroom veteran and other teachers in the nation’s second-largest school system are torn by what they view as a no-win situation.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein said that, based on the volume and tenor of calls to her office on Tuesday, “I can guarantee you, teachers will not accept the cut. They are livid about this.” She predicted that the membership will vote to strike immediately or at a later date if further negotiations prove fruitless.

Strike authorization ballots will be mailed out in two weeks, and the earliest a walkout could begin would be Dec. 2, according to Bernstein.

At Revere Middle School in West Los Angeles, the pay cut dominated lunchtime conversations in the faculty lounge Tuesday.

“We feel we should keep going until the district is bankrupt and then close the schools,” said physical education instructor Wayne Briggs. “And send all the kids home to their parents.” The other four instructors seated around the lunch table looked somber, but nodded their assent.

Elsewhere in the district, however, teachers spouted angry rhetoric about the forced salary reduction. But when the subject of a walkout was raised, many questioned what could be gained by it. Some simply fell into an uneasy silence.

The unprecedented salary cut--combined with a two-day furlough--could decrease by about $1,800 the average teacher’s earnings of $45,000 a year. The cut actually amounts to 4.5% a month because it will be retroactive to last July.

It has all made Fairfax’s Schoenman angry enough to walk out.

“But I don’t know what I’d be striking for,” he said Tuesday during a class break. “No one, not even the union, is pointing out where the money (for a raise) would come from.”

For some, the news was like a knockout punch delivered to a fighter already on the ropes. “I feel totally powerless,” said Cindy Simmons, a second-grade teacher at Castlebay Lane Elementary in the northwest San Fernando Valley. “Every time I look up, they’re hitting us again.”

Allen Masuhara, who has taught for more than 20 years at Castlebay, said teachers would “rather do almost anything than strike. Nobody wins in a strike. You lose the money and you never make it back.”

Only about half of Castlebay’s 30 teachers stayed out of class for the nine days the union struck in 1989, and bitterness still divides the staff. Many say they hate the lingering rancor from the last strike almost as much as the pay cut that the board has approved.

Simmons walked out with her co-workers then, but crossed the picket line to return to her students after a few days. Her sister, who taught at a nearby elementary school and stayed out the full nine days, was angry with her for months.

Unlike in 1989, when teachers say they were certain the district was holding back in its salary offers and could afford to grant hefty raises, most teachers concede that the district cannot afford raises this time around.

“We’re all reasonable people,” said Fairfax teacher Dan Victor. “We know the state is in a recession. We know education isn’t getting its fair share. But the school board hasn’t made the case that they’ve made all the other cuts they need to before coming to us.

“If we felt they were taking care of business downtown, the cut might be palatable, but we don’t get any sense that they’re sacrificing in the same way they’re asking us to.”

For teachers, the pay cut is the most recent in a long line of budget cuts that they feel have made their jobs harder. They complained of having to sweep their own classrooms and dip into their own pockets to buy basic classroom supplies--daily realities that most of the district’s highly paid administrators do not directly face.

Says Victor: “The board says if they cut all the administration, it would only save $8 million. Well, we’d like to see them cut all the administration. It might only save $8 million, but it would make us feel a lot better.”

The package approved unanimously by the board Monday also included unpaid employee furloughs, teacher reassignments and the loss of paid conference time. The matter was subject to union approval, but because months of talks failed to produce an agreement, the district administration was able to unilaterally impose the cuts. Only the union representing administrators has agreed to the pay reduction.

Other teachers worry that if they go on strike, they may not enjoy the strong parental support many of them experienced in 1989. They say they realize that many of their students’ parents have lost their jobs or suffered pay cuts of their own in the past year. So parents and other community members may not be as likely to sympathize if teachers walk out seeking higher pay.

“It makes it tough for us to say we don’t want to take a 3% cut when the unemployment rate is 7.8%,” said Mary Ann Farber, a second-grade teacher at Castlebay.