School and Unions Forge Labor Terms for Charter Status : Pacoima: The tentative accord calls for state mediators, not the teachers’ unit, to resolve disputes.

Hurdling a major obstacle in its bid to gain independence from the Los Angeles Unified School District, Vaughn Street Elementary School and two of the district’s unions Thursday announced a tentative agreement on how employees would be represented if the Pacoima school’s charter petition is approved.

At a public hearing on the charter proposal, Janet Humphries, president of the bargaining group that represents teacher aides, said her organization, Local 99, had reached a compromise with United Teachers-Los Angeles and Vaughn Street, to be finalized today at a meeting between school and union officials and Board of Education President Leticia Quezada.

Previously, Local 99, with 56 members at Vaughn Street, and the district’s bargaining unit for clerical workers had opposed a provision in the petition establishing the teachers union as the sole voice for all of Vaughn Street’s 100-member staff.

But in a compromise hammered out earlier this week, Local 99 and UTLA agreed that employees could choose to remain affiliated with their current unions but that both bargaining groups would play substantially reduced roles at Vaughn Street, acting mostly as advisory bodies. Internal disputes, over pay or other issues, would be resolved by state-provided mediators, not by UTLA, as was previously proposed.

However, the clerical workers union and the two other employee groups represented at Vaughn Street--covering administrators and maintenance workers--have yet to sign off on the compromise and will discuss the issue at today’s meeting with Quezada.

“We feel that UTLA would not meet our needs,” Diane Stephens of the California School Employees Assn., which represents clerical staff, told the school board at Thursday’s hearing. “We would like fair representation by our own union and by an unbiased mediator.”

The hearing--required by the state charter school law that went into effect Jan. 1--was the school board’s chance to gauge public opinion on Vaughn Street’s ambitious proposal to become a largely self-regulating body. Several Vaughn Street teachers told the board that approval of their charter would give them cause to remain in a profession that has been battered by salary cuts and a precipitous drop in morale in the nation’s second-largest school system.

“This gives me an opportunity to stay and do what I do best,” said instructor Stephanie Moore, who helped write the petition. “We know what’s best for the children.”

“We need more flexibility,” added teacher Jeff Chalfant, “and we’re willing to take on the added accountability and responsibility required.”

Under the charter legislation, the board must vote on the Vaughn Street’s petition by the middle of next month.