SANTA ANA : School Board OKs Contract With 5% Raises

Teachers, maintenance workers and other school district employees will receive 5% pay raises under an agreement approved by the school board Tuesday.

Unions representing Santa Ana Unified School District teachers and other workers must still vote on the one-year agreements later this month. Approval is expected.

About 2,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers will be affected by the new agreement. Their salaries now average $40,000 a year.

Another 1,600 classified employees, a job description that includes custodians, aides and building inspectors, also will get pay raises. Classified employees, such as school bus aides, earn more than $13,000 a year, while building inspectors earn more than $65,000.

The agreements with the classified and certificated employees, or teachers, were approved 5 to 0 by the school board.

“I’m really thrilled,” board member Tom Chaffee said.

“We went from a school district that was going to be broke without a half-cent sales tax,” he added, referring to a failed ballot measure earlier this year, “to this.”

The pay raises will cost the district $6.5 million, Bob Giritz, the district controller, said. The money will come from the district’s general fund and was not earmarked for any other projects.

Giritz said the district was able to afford the pay raises, in part, because of increased money from the state and lower-than-expected health-care costs.