PORT HUENEME : Teachers Oppose Raise for Administrators

Hueneme School District teachers are angered by plans to raise salaries of school and district administrators 3% to 10%, said Bill Stoll, president of the Hueneme Educators’ Assn.

Stoll, a fifth-grade teacher at Williams School, said the plan to increase salaries is particularly disturbing given the state’s current budget problems and because the district’s teachers have gone two years without a raise.

“We’ve got a lot of things going on in the state right now that is giving education fits,” Stoll said. “We had known for some time that they were looking to upgrade the salaries of the principals, and frankly they are underpaid, but the timing is very bad.”

District Supt. Ronald Rescigno said the raises are just in the planning stages and probably would not be brought to a school board vote until next fall.

“Probably sometime this year we hope to do something with raises for everybody. Down the line, we’ll look at it very closely,” he said. “We’re trying to make the salaries comparable to teachers’ salaries.”

Rescigno said the Hueneme district teachers are the highest-paid or second-highest-paid teachers in the county.

“The administrators have always been seventh or eighth,” he said. “What we are doing is just trying to catch up.”

Rescigno said the teachers last year received a 2.5% bonus, as did the administrators. “They have not received an increase in salary structure (in two years),” he said, “but that’s par for the course for everybody.”