$10 Million Earmarked for Schools in County : Education: Wilson plan would hike state funding 2.7%. Salaries of long-suffering employees--including teachers--are expected to rise.

Teachers, secretaries and administrators in Ventura County schools are poised to receive the lion’s share of a $10-million increase in public school funding for the coming school year, the first inflationary allowance in four years.

Gov. Pete Wilson last month proposed that education be given a 2.7% cost-of-living adjustment for the 1995-96 school year. That increase, expected to receive approval from the state Legislature, translates into $10 million in new dollars for Ventura County’s 21 public school districts.

The infusion of cash ranges from $1.5 million for the sprawling Conejo Valley Unified School District in Thousand Oaks to $3,445 for the tiny Santa Clara School District near Santa Paula.

On average, about 80% of the money will be used to give raises to employees who have gone with little or no pay increases in recent years, budget managers for the county’s school districts said.

The remaining 2O% will go toward paying rising utility and insurance costs, buying new books and supplies, updating computer technology and fixing aging school buildings, officials said.

For many educators, the increase represents a much-needed boost in public education funding that has remained stagnant since 1991, when the state economy dived into recession.

“I hope it’s not just a onetime fluke,” said Richard W. Canady, assistant business manager for the Oxnard Union High School District.

“The economy does seem to be turning around and if that continues, it will be good news for education.”

But others are asking whether the bulk of the money should be used for raises when there are so many other pressing needs in public schools.

California is near the bottom in national rankings on a number of education-quality indicators: the number of students per teacher, library books per student and computers per classroom, critics say.

Michelle Erich, a Port Hueneme lawyer who heads up a local group called Citizens for Accountability in Public Education, said she would rather see the money spent on such items as new band equipment, arts classes and driver’s education.

“I don’t begrudge teachers a decent salary,” Erich said. “But I hope local school boards would weigh the needs of students higher than the needs of teachers.”

That kind of thinking underestimates the crucial role teachers play in student learning, said Jeffrey Baarstad, associate superintendent of the Hueneme School District.

Education is a labor-intensive service and the money rightfully should flow to school employees, particularly teachers, he said.

“Teachers are the heart and soul of education,” Baarstad said. “You can have the greatest books in the world, but if you don’t have a confident, caring teacher in that classroom, to some extent, textbooks are irrelevant.”

The issue stirs passionate debate in part because schools have spent the past four years staving off budget deficits by laying off employees, cutting programs and postponing new purchases.

And a 2.7% increase simply does not go far in making up for all that has been lost during those lean years, said Sandra Herrera, budget director for the Oxnard Elementary School District.

“We’ve cut almost $3 million from our budget since 1991,” Herrera said. “We’ve cut secretaries, teachers and administrators, and there isn’t enough to add any back. This [increase] means that we don’t have to cut any more. Now we can just try to maintain the status quo.”

Citing an upswing in the state’s economy, Wilson in January proposed giving education a 2.2% boost to cover increased costs from inflation. And after announcing that he may seek the Republican presidential nomination, Wilson last month proposed increasing education’s cost-of-living adjustment to 2.7%.

If Wilson’s proposal stays intact as the budget winds its way through the state Senate and Assembly, education will get a $545-million increase statewide, said Sandra Silva, a fiscal consultant in the state Department of Education.

“We’re still a long ways from having a real budget,” Silva said. “But we certainly have high hopes that the 2.7% will survive because the governor proposed it.”

Less certain is the fate of another $536 million in Proposition 98 funds that the Wilson Administration has proposed withholding. That proposition, approved by voters in 1988, guaranteed public schools a stable funding base.

But Wilson contends that a later law invalidated education’s claim to the money and is withholding it, Silva said. Until that battle is resolved, she said, local school districts should not count on receiving more than the 2.7% increase.

Silva said she is not surprised that 80% of Ventura County’s funding increase will be used for salaries and benefits. Education funding historically is weighted toward teacher and support-staff salaries, in part because those groups are backed by powerful labor unions.

“It’s going to go toward those things that have the largest pressures,” she said. “And that obviously means teacher salaries.”

Salaries and benefits for teachers, who make up the bulk of school employees, typically are a district’s largest expense. In Ventura County, teacher salaries range from $22,000 for new hires to about $50,000 for those with years of experience.

In the past four years, most Ventura County teachers have received raises between 1% to 3% each year. But some, such as those in the Ojai Unified School District and the Santa Paula Elementary School District, weathered years with no pay hikes.

“Our employees got a 2.5% salary increase for 1994-95,” Santa Paula Elementary Supt. David Philips said. “It was their first raise since 1990.”

Some Ventura County districts have not yet determined how they will spend their cost-of-living increase.

In the Simi Valley Unified School District, for instance, educators have not decided how to spend the additional $1.2 million they will get.

Supt. Mary Beth Wolford said Simi Valley teachers, whose contract expired nearly a year ago, will probably not get all of the money because some is needed to make up for a decrease in district revenues that is the result of a drop in enrollment and special grant money.

Ron Myren, president of the Simi Educators Union, said the teachers have asked for a 2.2% raise. But the district’s latest counter-offer was a onetime 2% bonus, he said.

Jerry C. Gross, superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District, said contract negotiations with his employees are also under way. But administrators won’t decide how much of the district’s increase employees will get until the Legislature has passed a budget, expected by the end of this month.

In the Moorpark Unified School District, teachers have worked for two years without a contract and have staged several demonstrations over stalled negotiations. Supt. Thomas G. Duffy said the $390,000 the district expects to receive is not targeted for any specific use.

“It will be applied to our budget,” Duffy said. “It will make funding all the district programs just a little bit easier.”

The Rio Elementary School District is one of the few Ventura County districts that is not planning to use any of its new money for salary increases. Employees got a 2.5% pay raise this year, Supt. Peter D. Rogalsky said.

So the $245,000 Rio expects to receive will be used to beef up reserves that have become perilously low in recent years, Rogalsky said. Money will also be spent on expanding computer programs and buying new textbooks for the classroom, he said.

In other districts, money that is not eaten up by pay raises will be put to a variety of uses, educators said.

In the Fillmore Unified School District, where a year-round calendar requires students to sit in hot classrooms during the summer, officials will use part of the money to begin installing air-conditioning and insulation, officials said.

The Ojai school district will spend $100,000 on computer technology to generate student transcripts, report cards and attendance reports, said Ronald Barney, budget manager.

And the Ocean View Elementary School District plans to buy new furniture and begin updating its computer technology, Supt. Donald Hodes said.

Trying to meet so many needs with so little money is “the hardest part of my job,” Hodes said.

“On the one hand, you know people need money to live on,” he said. “The cost of food alone keeps going up. But on the other hand, we have school buses that break down, plumbing that needs repair and books that need to be updated.”

Hodes and several other educators said California has a lot of catching up to do in terms of per-pupil spending if it is to return to the golden age in the 1950s and ‘60s, when the state was considered a national leader in public education.

California taxpayers spend about $4,200 per pupil each year, Hodes said. “We are about $1,000 below the national average in per-student spending,” he said.

That may be true, said Assemblyman Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos), who urged an Assembly budget committee to keep education’s 2.7% increase intact. But California taxpayers will not continue to pour money into public education unless they see improvement in academic achievement, he said.

Firestone said he was appalled by a recent national assessment test that ranked California fourth-graders dead last out of the 50 states for reading ability.

“That money must go into the classroom,” he said. “But we must send a message to schools that we expect to see improvement.”