CAMARILLO : District, Teachers Request Mediator to Aid Negotiations

With contract discussions deadlocked, Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley School District and the local teachers’ union have jointly requested a state mediator to help them negotiate a new teachers’ contract.

The move comes less than two years after the union, the Pleasant Valley Education Assn., staged a bitter one-day strike to protest the district’s stance on negotiating the previous contract.

This time, the dispute revolves around health-care benefits, district and union officials said.

Beginning Oct. 1, all district workers, including management and non-teaching employees, had to begin paying an additional $65 per month for medical coverage, bringing the monthly payment to $144 for each employee, union President Susan Zeigler said. Because of the increase, the Pleasant Valley Education Assn. wants the district to begin footing the bill for medical coverage for the union’s 334 members, Ziegler said.

But Supt. Shirley Carpenter said the premiums would cost the district about $500,000 annually, which it can’t afford.

She said the district has instead offered the union a one-time bonus for its members, either 2% of salaries paid in a lump sum or 2.5% paid over a five-month period.

The 2% bonus would cost the district about $300,000 and the 2.5% option would be slightly more than $300,000, Carpenter said.

Union and district negotiators will resume talks after the state Education Department appoints a mediator, Carpenter said.