150 Teachers Protest Over Stalled Talks : Colleges: Mandatory staff meetings on the Ventura, Moorpark and Oxnard campuses are boycotted by some faculty members.

About 150 teachers at Ventura County’s three community colleges boycotted mandatory staff meetings Friday morning to gather in outdoor protests and vent their frustration over stalled contract negotiations.

The boycott of the twice-annual President’s Hour was not honored by all the colleges’ teachers, though some instructors who attended the official meeting said they sympathized with the protesters.

At Ventura College, nearly 100 faculty members refused to attend college President Jesus Carreon’s meeting, leaving fewer than 25 teachers, the college president, other administrators and some office staff members inside a sparsely filled auditorium.

At Moorpark College, most teachers attended the meeting held by President Jim Walker, saying they did not want to offend the campus’ popular president. Only about 30 of nearly 150 full-time faculty members boycotted the meeting. Some of the instructors wandered between the two gatherings.

At Oxnard College, about 20 teachers attended the protest, leaving about 30 to attend the official meeting. The rest of the 78 full-time faculty members avoided the dilemma by not showing up or calling in sick, faculty members said.

The President’s Hour is a gathering of each college’s entire staff during which the president gives staff members an update on the state of the college and news from the district office.

If contract negotiations remain stalled through the end of the month, many teachers said they would support a districtwide walkout Feb. 1 and picket college district headquarters that night as board members arrive for their monthly board meeting.

“We are being realistic in what we are asking for,” said Barbara Hoffman, teachers’ union president and a counselor at Ventura College. “It has been since 1990 since you got a raise. We want to continue to turn up the heat!” she told the group of protesting teachers at Ventura College.

The teachers’ union and the district have been at an impasse over the teachers’ 1993-94 contract negotiations since early fall.

The teachers, who have not received a raise since the 1990-91 school year, are asking for a cost-of-living adjustment and a 3% salary raise.

Yet college district leaders want to keep salaries at their present levels while asking teachers to contribute more to the cost of their health benefits and make other concessions.

“They can demand and demand and demand, but they don’t have to be responsible for a balanced budget,” said district board President Allan Jacobs, with a touch of exasperation in his voice.

Jacobs, like other board members and administrators, said he is “empathetic” to the faculty’s grievances. But he said the district must first find out if state leaders in Sacramento plan further cuts to community college budgets before negotiators can make a deal with teachers.

“Our board is very adamant that until we know there is enough money in the budget to do something, we’re not going to do anything,” he said.

Teachers say they are getting tired of waiting.

“Our morale is low,” said Diane Lopez, a Moorpark College English teacher. “We feel we are not respected.”

Robert Rithner, a Ventura College English teacher, said he has never seen such frustration and low morale among instructors in the 45 years he has taught at the college. Not only are faculty members upset with the college board of trustees, he said, but they’re also fed up with college district administrators.

“I don’t trust the central administration of the district,” Rithner said. “I feel they treat the faculty with contempt.”

Rithner said a walkout “is not my kind of thing,” but he added that given the way things are going he might join one for the first time in his career.

Many faculty members say the stalled salary negotiations are only the most galling symptom of a larger problem: that district administrators and board members seem to care more about finances than education.

“Education should be the No. 1 priority in the district. Right now education is the least important thing,” said David Murphy, a Moorpark College chemistry teacher.

For instance, Murphy said, Moorpark College cut back on pay for substitute instructors, forcing his class to go without a teacher when he was sick last year.

Lopez, the Moorpark College English teacher, said she is disheartened by the district’s neglect of its computers. Often, she said, there are not enough computers for students during a writing course she teaches, or the computers are too old.

Administrators and board members vociferously disagree that education is a secondary consideration. The problem, they say, is that teachers have no idea of the district’s tough financial situation.

“If there’s some money somewhere, we would like them to show us where it is,” said Jeff Marsee, the district’s vice chancellor for administrative services. “We wish we had a solution. We really do. There just isn’t enough money to go around.”

Times staff writer Christina Lima contributed to this story.