Picket Lines May Greet Students : Moorpark: Teachers are expected to protest stalled contract talks before the start of classes at some district campuses today.

Teachers protesting stalled contract negotiations and four years without a pay raise are expected to greet students with picket lines this morning on Moorpark’s first day of school.

Local union representatives said most of the district’s 200 teachers are fed up with what they feel is a lack of commitment on the part of the district to negotiate a new contract.

Teachers are expected to protest before classes start at about six of the district’s nine schools, which serve 6,000 students. The teachers will then assume their classroom duties once school starts, they say.

“The teachers of Moorpark aren’t interested in playing power politics like the district,” said Richard Gillis, president of the Moorpark Educators Assn.

“We’re growing weary of their excuses,” he said. “We were without a contract last year and we still don’t have one this year, which is business as usual for them. We won’t tolerate it anymore.”

Last year negotiations stalled. Union members resorted to picketing meetings of the school board and a state labor mediator was finally used to help facilitate negotiations.

In April, an interim agreement was reached in which teachers were given a one-time bonus averaging $700 each to cover the previous year in which they had no contract. But an agreement on a new contract for last year and the coming school year still has not been settled.

Dissatisfaction with the district’s tactics led the union to file an unfair labor practice lawsuit Wednesday, accusing the district of negotiating in bad faith. This is the second such lawsuit in as many years, Gillis said.

The union made a formal offer to the district in June asking for a 4% raise over current salaries, which start at $24,236 and go up to $48,486 for teachers who have taught for 30 years or more.

The school district has yet to make a counteroffer, and the two sides have not sat down to discuss the issue since the spring.

School board member Tom Baldwin said the district would probably not be able to give the teachers the raise they want.

“The money is just not there,” Baldwin said.

He estimated the raise would cost the district about $1 million. He said the school district is facing a possible $800,000 deficit, adding that this would make any raise difficult, if not impossible.

According to Baldwin, the lack of any developer’s fees for new building in the city combined with payments still owed on Mountain Meadows School and a new high school athletic stadium have hit district coffers hard.

“That’s money that would otherwise be used to give raises or fund facility improvements,” Baldwin said.

Union officials said they doubt the district’s figures because last year’s projections of a several-million dollar deficit proved to be false.

“Frankly, we don’t trust those figures,” union President Gillis said. “We’d like to be able to go over them and make our own judgments, but we haven’t been able to do that.”

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District Supt. Tom Duffy countered Gillis’ assertions that officials were stalling or negotiating in bad faith. He attributed delays in the negotiations to late receipt of the union’s offer, the summer recess and requirements that the district formally notice the public.

Responding to questions on the rocky relationship between the union and the district in an interview Wednesday, Duffy said he hopes a compromise can be reached.

“I don’t know how far apart we are right now because we haven’t had an opportunity to discuss these issues one-on-one,” he said. “We’ve really just begun this process.”

The union is asking to sit down with the district for contract talks before the end of the month, but no date has been set.