A Deal Should Be a Deal : Board of Education must honor its agreement with teachers

A deal’s a deal.

The Los Angeles Board of Education begged teachers and other employees to take, in effect, a 3% pay cut to keep the district solvent in the face of an unprecedented shortfall. Also, the board promised to pay back that “loan” with future revenues. The teachers reluctantly agreed to make the sacrifice. But the board has now put everything on hold until the latest budget deficit is resolved.

The projected $150-million shortfall is certainly an unwelcome surprise. But neither the teachers nor the schools should bear even greater burdens because of the district’s miscalculations. The contract should be ratified as soon as possible. The board needs to end any uncertainty about whether the teachers will strike before the children return next week from the long winter break.

It’s up to board President Warren Furitani to take the lead. He needs to call a special session and urge board members to approve that deal despite the new budget problems.

Furitani and the board must also determine exactly why the district faces the huge projected deficit. The initial public review by outside auditors pinpoints some of the problems but reveals few of the causes that led to major miscalculations. What was said secretly about public dollars in the board’s closed-door meetings? Why wasn’t that information made public?

Does the board know, for example, exactly why health costs rose $27.7 million over projections? Part of the gap is blamed on the additional expense of providing full benefits for teachers who were laid off and then returned to the classroom as substitutes. Part of the gap is blamed on increased use of health benefits. Don’t district officials know how many more employees are going to the doctor, and how often, and for what reasons, in order to anticipate costs?

The district’s chief financial officer, Bob Booker, believes the district can cover about $120 million of the latest shortfall without further hurting the schools by drawing on emergency funds and delaying payments to self-insurance funds. Taking those steps perhaps would spare the schools--for now.

Borrowing against future funds may be the best the school board can do to preserve its current deal with the teachers. As the economic news gets even grimmer, the school board must also figure out how to keep its deal with the 640,000 children who attend the public schools.