School Board Grapples With Teacher Pay Issue : Education: Union considers ‘some action’ Friday, when employees receive reduced paychecks. Sticking point is whether there will be more cuts.

Los Angeles school board members met nearly all day and into the evening Monday, saying they are determined to forge a new contract offer to present to the teachers union by Friday when deep pay cuts take effect.

Board member Warren Furutani said he is pushing for around-the-clock negotiations beginning today. Although United Teachers-Los Angeles leadership has not set a strike deadline, the Friday payday is viewed by both sides as a critical turning point for negotiations.

“My deadline is Friday,” said school board President Leticia Quezada. “We are frantically trying to figure this all out by then.”

UTLA President Helen Bernstein said the union is prepared to take “some kind of action” Friday and that union leadership has begun to organize for the possibility of a walkout. Two weeks ago, union members overwhelmingly authorized their leaders to call a strike if negotiations fail to win an agreement.

Work actions under consideration could include teacher protests or boycotts, Bernstein said. She would not describe the nature of the boycotts, adding that any work action that takes a teacher out of the classroom has to be carefully defined to legally protect their jobs.

All district employees, including teachers, will be hit with reductions in pay ranging from 6.5% to 11.5% on Friday on top of a 3% cut in place. For teachers, this means their salaries will be 12% lower than two years ago.

The major sticking point in the negotiations centers on next year’s pay. The union is demanding a district guarantee that there will be no further reductions. Board members said they are unwilling to make a contractual guarantee because of uncertainties over the economy and state funding levels. A shortfall of about $100 million is projected for next fiscal year, district officials said.

“It’s very tempting to say we won’t cut salaries again,” said board member Mark Slavkin. “At this point we are not willing to make an open-ended commitment,” he said, because it could force the district to make deep program cuts or further increase class size.

In the closed-door meetings, the board and district staff were trying to work out a number of contingencies that will enable them to give teachers some measure of security that their pay will not be reduced again.

“It’s coming down to what people define as a guarantee,” Furutani said. “The talks are all around how we protect their salaries for next year.”

Bernstein said the issue is simple.

“They don’t have to grapple for very long,” she said. “If there is no guarantee, there is no point in continuing talks. Without that, it tells me they are cutting our salaries and laying us off next year.”

To avert future pay cuts, the union has proposed a number of complex measures that teachers would be willing to undertake to save the district money. They include a teacher hiring freeze, restructuring the workdays of kindergarten teachers and asking high school instructors to give up a planning period to teach.

She said selling such measures to teachers will be difficult, “but without a guarantee, I’m not going to bother.”