Exodus of L.A. District Teachers Grows : Education: Union leaders call the turnover ‘disastrous.’

Ask Lauren Hartford why she quit teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and she gives two answers. The first is the official one--her commute was too long--and the second is the unofficial version--the district is too mired in annual labor strife and bureaucracy.

When Hartford tells the unofficial story, she is at turns regretful and passionate. Here she is, a bilingual teacher at San Fernando Elementary, a product of local schools, quitting in frustration after seven years to take a job in another district.

She says the district has cut money for supplies, increased class sizes and refuses to make the classroom the priority in budgetary and other decisions.

“I feel like if I had stayed with this district, I would have just burned out on my profession,” she said. “And I love teaching. But the way L. A. city schools are now, I wouldn’t send my daughter there.”

Hartford is one of more than 2,100 teachers--8% of the school system’s teaching force--who quit or retired this year. More teachers left the system this year than in any of the past seven years, records show.

Most of the teachers resigned, a trend that both the school district and the teachers union say is disturbing. Of the 2,127 who left the district, 1,452 quit and 675 retired.

Nationally, the annual attrition rate for teachers is about 5%, according to a new study by the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington. That study also found that more than half of nearly 7,000 public and private school teachers believed that higher salaries and better benefits would encourage them to remain longer in their classrooms. While district officials say they find the numbers worrisome, they say this year’s exodus was expected. They say the earthquake and the sluggish economy forced many to move, and the teaching staff is getting older and closer to retirement age. Those factors, along with the 10% pay cuts instituted two years ago, all contributed to the resignations, officials said.

Some Board of Education members say they anticipated even more resignations this year. “I expected a huge turnover this year,” said board member Leticia Quezada. “But even 2,000 is a lot, and as long as we’re in these economic conditions, it would take a miracle to turn this around.”

Union leaders say the teacher turnover is “disastrous” and does not bode well for reform efforts at local schools. “We have to keep starting all over again every year,” said Helen Bernstein, the president of United Teachers-Los Angeles. “Every year they’re retraining and indoctrinating teachers. The district could provide adequate wages and some stability so people think they have some reason to stick around.”

The turnover leaves the school district struggling to fill classroom vacancies. The district expects to have nearly 2,000 openings, despite projections showing about 1,500 fewer students are expected to enroll this year.

Hundreds of substitute teachers are expected to fill vacancies this fall. In the subjects that are hardest to staff--such as English, special education, math, science and social studies--officials said long-term substitutes could be assigned until permanent teachers are hired.

Compounding the problem is the fact that more schools are doing their own hiring and the district’s personnel office is unsure exactly how many teachers will be needed when most schools reopen this month. With an increasing number of campuses following a new reform plan allowing them to select their own staffs, the district no longer controls all the applications and keeps track of where teachers are being interviewed or assigned.

Nonetheless, Assistant Supt. Irene Yamahara, who oversees the personnel division, says the district is recruiting teachers, particularly in the so-called shortage fields. But she said not enough teachers are leaving local graduate schools to fill the vacancies.

Of the teachers the district expects to hire, more than half probably will be “emergency credentialed” teachers, who do not hold specific education degrees or credentials.

“It’s going to be tough--it always is,” Yamahara said.

Teachers such as Hartford are hot commodities. Hartford is a fully credentialed bilingual teacher; the district needs 234 teachers like her this year alone.

“Pretty much, teachers like that can go anywhere,” Yamahara said. “They can write their own ticket.”

But by far the greatest need for teachers in the district is in special education classes, where the numbers of students are swelling. The district anticipates needing more than 300 special education teachers and probably will have substitutes fill most of those positions.

The annual labor disputes with the teachers union are hampering efforts to attract teachers to the system, union and district officials said.

Bitter and protracted contract talks culminated two years ago with teachers taking a 10% pay cut, narrowly averting a strike. This year, the union again threatened to strike if teachers’ pay was not restored.

But under a new contract proposal, negotiated last weekend, the district is offering teachers an 8% restoration of the 10% cut.

The union has set a strike vote for Sept. 13-14, when teachers will decide to either accept the contract offer or walk out. Union leaders have recommended teachers accept the latest offer.

During the last few weeks, district personnel offices received numerous calls from prospective applicants asking about the labor situation and whether they should sign contracts or even interview at school campuses.

But district spokesman Bill Rivera said he believes the latest salary offer could entice teachers to the district. If the offer is accepted, a teacher without any experience would make $29,131 this year, up from $26,573 last year.

And a teacher with 25 years of experience could make $53,003, up from $48,349 last year, according to district data.

“Why go somewhere else when you can make as much or more here?” Rivera said. “The salaries will be higher.”

But the ongoing labor dispute led many teachers, from the newest to the more experienced, to leave the system this year. Pat Hillis, the librarian at Pacific Palisades High for 24 years, said she would have liked to retire later, but she believed she could no longer work for a salary that had been cut to help subsidize the district.

“If working conditions had been better, I would have liked to have stayed,” Hillis said.

Hillis and the 674 other teachers who retired this year were eligible for a one-time, 10% bonus negotiated with the teachers union two years ago, designed to help restore the salary cut. But to the surprise of the union and the district, fewer teachers than expected took advantage of the offer.

Many said that the money turned out to be negligible and had little, if any, effect on their retirement pensions.

Jon Lauritzen, a math and computer science teacher at Canoga Park High, said he is considering retiring in the winter, when he still would be eligible for the retirement bonus. Nonetheless, Lauritzen said that while he wants to return to school this month, there are few incentives to keep him at the campus, where he has taught for a decade.

“They’re not giving me any motivation to stay,” Lauritzen said.

The school board has established a new personnel committee designed to examine these issues. Quezada, chairwoman of the new committee, said she hopes to look at the ways in which the district can encourage teachers to remain in the system and to forge closer relationships on school campuses.

Under the district’s reform plans, teachers are becoming much more involved in local decision-making--a move that the board and district officials hope will encourage teachers to feel more a part of their local campuses.

But to their union, teachers are constantly being encouraged to leave--not to stay in their classrooms. “I don’t think it takes a wizard to figure it out--if they cut your salary, you leave,” Bernstein said. “It has to do with how they make you feel. They want us to do everything, but they treat us badly.”

Even teachers who say they were treated well say the pay cut and the continuous labor strife have led to job dissatisfaction. “I think most teachers are just saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Don Palmer, who retired recently from Madison Middle School in North Hollywood. “I enjoyed the school; we’ve had good administrations, and I always felt I could walk into their offices.

“But we’ve certainly had our problems, and I can’t help feeling--and many of the teachers feel this way--that there’s tremendous mismanagement in the district. It’s just increasingly frustrating dealing with the district.”

As a computer science teacher, Palmer said he needs more updated equipment and more training. He said the district has refused to pay for new computers and to provide him with the classes he says he needs to be more effective.

To Hartford, who graduated from Granada Hills High, the district has been a tremendous training ground. When she first began teaching--before she had her credential or graduate degree--she said she basically learned how to teach from her colleagues.

“There are wonderful, professional staffs . . . but there’s just so much else going on all the time. Every year, there’s something.”

* FILLING TOUGH JOBS: Course gives new teachers classroom survival skills. B1