Simi Teachers’ Resolve to Back Strike Builds : Labor: Instructors halt participation in unpaid activities as tension rises. A course of action by the union may be decided as early as today.

Ellis Zison thought he’d be retired by now. Instead, the 31-year veteran of the Simi Valley Unified School District is rallying other teachers for a possible strike to protest an impasse in budget negotiations.

“I can’t retire,” said Zison, a fifth-grade teacher at Madera Elementary School. “I couldn’t afford it.”

Like many teachers in the district, Zison is waiting for a contract that will provide him with a retirement package and health benefits. And again, like many, he is willing to strike to get one.

In the wake of the Simi Educators Assn. announcement that it is proceeding with plans for a strike, classroom teachers interviewed Monday said they are willing to walk off their jobs.

“It’s not something we feel good about,” said Bonnie Kaufman, a math teacher at Sinaloa Junior High School. “But if we don’t do anything, we don’t have a voice. We would rather be in the classroom helping kids.”

This fall, many teachers who used to stay after school--holding parent conferences or leading volunteer choirs--now march quickly to their cars when the final bell rings.

Many show up early to school, heading not to classrooms but to grab picket signs and march up and down the streets.

And lately they have been waiting for word from union leaders on the next course of action and wondering what a strike would mean for their students as well as their bankrolls.

The tension in the Simi Valley district has been building slowly since spring, when negotiations between the district and the teachers union broke down.

Both sides have been meeting with a state mediator to come up with a compromise. But the union raised the stakes this week, by preparing to file charges of unfair labor practices against the district and calling in a strike coordinator from the California Teachers Assn.

Rank-and-file teachers, meanwhile, are waiting for instructions that could come out of meetings as early as today. The strike coordinator is meeting with union leaders this afternoon to chart a course of action. But before declaring a strike, the union would have to poll its members.

Meanwhile, schools are trying to carry on business as usual.

At Sinaloa, where teachers have discontinued their homework hot line and refused to participate in district committees, Principal Pat Hauser said the tension is palpable.

“You can feel something is going on,” Hauser said. “People are under stress. It doesn’t feel like a typical year. But is it really bad? Are we having real problems? Not at this point in time.”

Part of that stress stems from the fact that teachers would have to sacrifice pay to strike. Union leaders say their crisis fund contains about $100,000, which would not meet the payroll of striking teachers for even one day.

At issue is a pay raise and an agreement requiring all teachers to pay union fees. The district has offered a 2% pay raise this year and a 2% raise in 1996-97, an early retirement package and a chance to renegotiate in the third year.

But union representatives want a 2.7% raise and permission to vote on a fair-share agreement, which would require all teachers, not just those in the union, to pay fees for representation.

Meanwhile, many are refusing to volunteer for activities for which they are not paid. They have not shown up for committee meetings to plan a proposed performing arts and technology magnet school. And as many schools plan for parent-teacher conferences in the coming weeks, school administrators are in the awkward position of having to schedule them during class time.

Madera Elementary teacher Sharon Steffek said she expected about 25 teachers to come to a recent after-school workshop she sponsored on the district’s new report cards. But no one showed up.

“Being a person on the other side, putting on an event, it didn’t feel good,” Steffek said.

But she didn’t blame her colleagues, and, like most of them, said she would support a strike.

“The only way to show all of the things that we do is not to do them,” Steffek said. “We hate this. It’s hard being out there carrying signs.”

Those carrying signs often have been greeted by honks of support from passing parents.

Marilyn Genser, who waited to pick up her granddaughter from Madera on Monday, said the teachers deserve every penny they get.

“I know on a day-to-day basis what kids can be like,” Genser said. “These kids are so far ahead of what I was doing when I was their age.”

But Madera teacher Maureen McKenna said it is a fine line, and she senses some parents getting nervous. “It’s difficult to cut back, make your point, and not irritate parents,” McKenna said.