Employees Win Battle for Holiday : Oak Park: School district workers finally get an extra vacation day to commemorate victory in the Gulf War.

Two years after President Bush declared a national holiday to commemorate the Persian Gulf War victory, employees in the Oak Park Unified School District are finally getting their own small measure of liberation: the day off Bush promised.

The Oak Park school board agreed to the extra vacation day to settle a lawsuit that had been filed by classified employees.

Their legal war lasted nearly four times as long as the real war: 100 days for the real one, nearly one year for the court battle.

“We got ‘Bushed,’ ” Oak Park school board member Jim Kalember said. “I think Mr. Bush’s proclamation may not have been as carefully worded as it might have been.”

The settlement affects about 70 Oak Park employees, including custodians, groundskeepers and cafeteria and clerical workers. They have until June, 1994, to claim their extra vacation day.

Teachers and administrators were not eligible for the extra vacation day, said Dave Stewart of the California Teachers Assn., which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the non-teaching employees.

Stewart said teachers were not eligible for the vacation day because their contracts are based on teaching a specified number of days per school year, not including holidays.

Assistant Oak Park Supt. Stan Mantooth said the district hasn’t calculated the cost of the extra holiday, but the district will save significant legal fees involved in fighting the case in court.

“What we’re losing is one day of an employee’s time rather than actual wages,” Mantooth said.

But some workers didn’t look at it as a loss.

“It’s a gift from God,” said Hector Pinedo, a groundskeeper at Oak Park High School. Pinedo wasn’t going to wait until next year to take advantage of the settlement. He’s taking his day off Tuesday.

High school custodian Fred Dixon said the holiday was an unexpected bonus. And he’s already figured out what he’ll be doing when he takes his day off: “Nothing but enjoying it.”

The school employees weren’t the only ones who wound up working on the April 5, 1991, holiday. Bush’s proclamation caused confusion across the country. California schools and several city offices remained open, as did courtrooms in Ventura County.

The Oak Park district got off easy, said Madalyn Frazzini, staff counsel for the California School Employees Assn. The association sued about 70 districts--of the 730 school and community college districts where it represents employees--for failing to grant the holiday.

In one of those cases, the California Court of Appeal ruled April 28 that employees of the Marin Community College District were eligible for three paid vacation days because of Bush’s proclamation. Frazzini said that decision may influence other lawsuits pending in the courts.

Stewart said the Ventura Unified School District recently reached a similar settlement with about 600 classified employees. As in Oak Park, those workers will have until June, 1994, to claim one extra vacation day, Stewart said.