Avoiding a Teacher Strike: A Proposal : With imagination and goodwill, catastrophe need not occur

As furious, hurt and exasperated as they are, Los Angeles’ teachers secretly do not want to go out on strike in February. And, in their hearts, they know it.

But what they don’t know is how to avoid that strike. To capitulate would be humiliating; but to leave the kids behind would be, for everyone involved, devastating.

So, a teachers strike is inevitable, right? No--there’s a way out.

1. It’s understandable that the teachers want salary reassurance.

No one wants to take a pay cut, and a cut of 12%, roughly the amount that many teachers will have to accept under the revenue-strapped school board’s budget, is a lot to ask. If teachers take their lumps this year, how do they know they won’t be clobbered with another salary cut next year? Fair question: Teachers, like the rest of us, have mortgages, bills, car payments. They must have a basic income stream.

2. Therefore, the Board of Education should make a new offer.

For starters, the board ought to assume that Gov. Pete Wilson is as good as his word: that state funding for L.A. schools will not dip below where it is now. Indeed, if the board proposes a new package based on that assumption, it is unlikely that Sacramento will fail to deliver. The board should therefore put on the table a new offer that includes the assurance that no effort will be spared--indeed, no priority would be higher--to guarantee base-line teacher salaries. To make this promise as credible as possible:

3. The Board of Education should promise to launch and promote a new local financing measure for L.A. schools, if that is necessary to underwrite salaries and school reform.

Intelligent government is often a matter of prioritizing. In recent years voters have been asked to approve major bond, property tax and sales tax measures. Two years ago voters passed new statewide gasoline taxes. In November Los Angeles voters backed a property tax increase to modernize the 911 emergency communications system. On the same ballot an additional local property tax to raise money for more police officers--though opposed, bizarrely, by the police union--almost gathered the two-thirds vote needed. What did these tax increase ballot measures have in common? Their revenues were all targeted--to a single, clear and popular cause. Accordingly, a local ballot measure to raise money to support our schools should be promised to our teachers. The Times would certainly support such an effort; indeed, it’s a flag that all Los Angeles could rally around. The Board of Education should promise to take the lead in such a campaign.

4. Voters will support more taxes for public schools if they are assured that the product is getting better.

A Harris survey not long ago showed just that. And on the drawing board is a terrific new plan to reform L.A. schools. It’s the LEARN reform plan, put together by a coalition of education, business and community leaders, and the plan is now all but complete. All in Los Angeles who truly care about improving education need to rally behind it to reassure voters that any new tax monies will not go down a black hole but in fact will help underwrite teacher compensation and school reforms.

5. With a plan like this, outside mediation could break the logjam.

That’s what is promised by the entrance of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown into the picture as a mediator. He is a figure who has the confidence of virtually all the parties, understands the union’s concerns and also is attuned to the heartbreaking realities of the fiscal situation.

Mediation and the promise of a vigorous campaign for a local tax measure--and for adoption of the LEARN reforms--could offer an escape from the current cyclone of negative and self-destructive emotionalism and defeatism. The children deserve an all-out effort.