Simi School Board Approves 3-Year Contract, Ending Threat of Strike : Education: The district’s teachers will receive 2% raises each of two years as part of a package that is expected to cost at least $2.7 million.

After months of tenuous negotiations, picketing and yelling matches, the threat of a teachers strike this year has finally been laid to rest in Simi Valley.

The school board unanimously approved a three-year contract with the teachers union Tuesday night, providing teachers with 2% wage hikes both this year and next, an expanded retirement package and additional money if certain state funding comes through.

“I think we can all agree that we’re very glad we finally have a contract and can get on with the education of kids,” board member Debbie Sandland said. “At least morale is much better. I hope teachers are happy.”

The contract, which is retroactive to July, will cost the district at least $2.7 million during the first two years, plus additional costs to pay for voluntary retirements. Several teachers at the higher end of the pay scale are expected to retire early as a result of the district offering financial incentives. Although the added cost would be paid immediately, the move is eventually expected to save the district money.

The extended contract negotiations--which dragged on for more than a year--have scarred the relationship between teachers in the county’s largest school district and the board that governs them.

Leaders of the teachers union had been holding out for a 2.7% raise and a chance to negotiate for even more money when a state mediator helped shape a contract that prevented a strike. The average teacher makes about $42,000 annually.

Teachers could end up receiving an additional 0.77% pay increase for 1995-96 and even more money in 1996-97, but the payment of such funds is contingent upon additional money coming from state educational funding.

Union leaders said they reluctantly presented the pact last month to their members, who ratified it on a 394-110 vote. The contract must now go to the county superintendent’s office, which is expected to approve it.

Teachers had picketed before and after school several days since September as negotiations stalled earlier this fall, and many ceased volunteering for after-school activities. Union leaders also called in a strike coordinator from the California Teachers Assn. and threatened to file unfair labor charges against the board.

Although the picketing stopped and charges against the board were dropped after teachers ratified the contract, several teachers say they will no longer perform activities for which they are not paid.

The district has had a rocky history of negotiating teacher contracts. Negotiations for the previous contract reached an impasse in 1991, prompting union leaders to request a state mediator. Before it reached that point, however, a contract was approved.

In 1985, 300 teachers, who had been working without a contract for six months, protested their pay during negotiations by picketing district offices. The last time Simi Valley teachers actually walked off the job was in 1969, for one day, in a salary protest.