Orange District Coaches to Walk : High schools: In an attempt to stop trend of cutting stipends, they approve boycott of fall sports by a vote of 85-2.

Coaches of the Orange Unified School District voted overwhelmingly Sunday evening to walk off their jobs until their stipends, which are scheduled to be cut 50%, are completely reinstated.

Hoping to send a message of solidarity to the district and their teachers union, the coaches--from Canyon, El Modena, Orange and Villa Park high schools--voted 85-2 for the boycott after listening to a brief presentation by the district athletic directors at the meeting in Hart Park.

Immediately affected are the athletes who were scheduled to start practice today for the fall sports of football, water polo, cross-country, girls’ volleyball and girls’ tennis. If every coach were to honor the boycott, approximately 1,000 athletes would be without their coaches.

Attempts to reach district officials were unsuccessful Sunday night.

Judging from the sentiment at the meeting Sunday, district practice fields will be empty today. In often impassioned tones, coaches talked of taking a stand to stem the trend of cuts in athletic budgets. No one spoke in favor of accepting the reduced stipends.

“Deep in our hearts, it’s not what we want to do,” El Modena football Coach Bill Backstrom said. “Money is not that important--we’ve all said that before--but I’ve seen too many cuts in programs in this district during the past decade. And it’s not just in high school athletics. It’s elementary music programs. It’s junior high school sports.

“We are the conscience of the area. We are the people who can motivate the most people to do the right thing.”

Backstrom said it is an issue of community values. He wonders if there isn’t a correlation between the decrease of support for extra-curricular activities and the increase in local gang activity. “What does our community want? Does the community want to dump kids off the streets?” he said.

The issue came to a head last week after word of the cut in stipends for supervising extra-curricular activities started reaching the district’s coaches and athletic directors. The Orange Unified Education Assn., the teachers union, voted to accept the cuts Aug. 12 as part of a collective bargaining agreement, which also included a pay cut of 2.59% for teachers.

Many coaches said they were not informed of the meeting or that they didn’t realize the significance of the ratification vote. Others didn’t hear about the meeting until they returned from vacation. About 400 of the 1,100 union members were present at the Aug. 12 meeting. Orange Athletic Director Dave Zirkle said only 15 coaches were there.

“Our own organization sold us out,” said El Modena boys’ soccer Coach Jim Schultz, who told others that he was thinking about relinquishing his union membership.

The athletic directors held two lengthy meetings with district officials last week to try to negotiate a compromise. Zirkle said the district agreed Thursday that full stipends for all extra-curricular activities might be reinstated if the athletic directors could come up with $150,000 in budget cuts.

However, a half hour after the athletic directors made such a proposal Friday, it was rejected, Zirkle said.

Zirkle and other directors at Sunday’s meeting declined to give specifics on the rejected proposal but said it was a desperation move that would have cut deeply and eliminated some teams and coaching jobs.

Zirkle said his hopes for a quick resolution of the labor dispute now lie with a petition to re-open the contract negotiations. He said the district’s union representative told him the contract could be renegotiated if 20%--or 220--of the teachers sign the petition. Zirkle hopes that union members would then agree to another .5% pay cut to save stipends.

But most of the talk Sunday was about how to bring pressure to bear on district officials.

“We’re professional people,” Zirkle said, addressing the crowd of about 100 people. “We professionally have to channel our anger to our kids and our parents.”

Later Zirkle added: “I’m hoping the pressure of athletics will be enough to turn things around, so we can get back to what we want to do. I got into teaching mainly because I wanted to be able to coach.”

The job action might threaten the beginning of the football season. Orange is scheduled to play Newport Harbor on Sept. 10 and Villa Park, Canyon and El Modena, are scheduled to play Valencia, Sonora and La Habra on Sept. 11. Southern Section rules mandate a team have at least 14 practices before its first game. Excluding Sundays, on which practices aren’t allowed, there are only 15 possible practice days between today and Orange’s first game.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Orange football Coach Buddy Bland said. “We want to get busy. I’m worried about the kids. I don’t want them to think we’re just coaching for the money. I’m confused. I don’t know how it came down to this. The teams, the players, the coaches, everyone is being hurt. I hope it can be solved pretty quickly.”