Brown and Teachers Union Hold Discussion : Schools: The Assembly Speaker’s mediation effort is said to be the last hope for preventing a strike.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown met with top Los Angeles teachers union officers for more than two hours Thursday in a fledging mediation process that union and school officials say is their last hope for averting a February strike.

After the meeting, Brown and United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein indicated that the only conclusion reached was the need for more meetings.

“The Speaker made it clear he is in for the duration and he is committed to trying to help us to forge a resolution to the problem,” Bernstein said. “Whether he can do that or not is another issue.”

Brown met a day earlier for more than two hours with school board President Leticia Quezada and District Supt. Sid Thompson to discuss how to avert the strike, prompted by the district’s move in October to impose a cumulative 12% pay cut on teachers.

After negotiations languished for more than a month, both sides asked Brown to mediate.

Brown, who is also an attorney, said he just listened to the union representatives, told them their conversations with him are not publishable, and that he plans more meetings before next Thursday.

“I haven’t done anything but listen, period,” Brown said. Asked if he planned to bring both sides into the same room, he replied: “No, I am not ready for that yet.”

Both sides are on a 24-hour notice to return to Sacramento for further talks.

Brown also appeared to back away from a statement that he might request several other Assembly members to join him on a strike mediation team. Asked who the other members would be, he said only: “I will use my membership if it is appropriate.”

While mediation is expected to continue for several weeks, the union is moving forward on a second front: organizing for a strike.

Officials decided to push the strike date back by one day, to Feb. 23, to ensure that teachers would retain district-paid health benefits for at least the first month of a potentially lengthy walkout.

Union officials said that teachers must work at least one day in their monthlong pay period for the district to pay their benefits. Quezada said Thursday that school officials are studying the effect of a strike on health insurance and that no decision has been made on how the benefit payment will be handled in the event of a walkout.

In another move, the union sent letters to retired teachers last week urging them to apply as substitute teachers. It then urged them to decline the jobs when offered so as not to replace picketing teachers. The letters stated the action would “create all sorts of confusion in the district” in the event of a strike.

Quezada said such tactics stir the anger of teachers and make it more difficult to reach a settlement.

“It’s very difficult to be preparing for a strike and then conducting viable conciliatory negotiations at the same time,” Quezada said.

She said the mediation process with Brown “is our last hope” to avert a strike, but maintained that the district has “nothing else to offer” when it comes to giving teachers more money.

She believes that room for negotiation lies in both sides agreeing to a set of terms to “manage the situation in the absence of money.”

After the meeting Thursday, Bernstein told reporters: “Whenever you are talking, you are accomplishing things.”

The union president said she agreed with Brown that the talks should be kept confidential, that briefings for the press would undermine the process.

“We are going to have a new offer to offer our membership (by Feb. 23) or we’ll be on strike,” she said. “I hope for everybody’s sake that we have a new offer. What the members of the UTLA want is a fair settlement to a very complicated problem that affects not only us but the students we work with on a daily basis.”

Gillam reported from Sacramento and Chavez from Los Angeles.