Moorpark Board Ratifies Teacher Salary Contract

Moorpark’s school board Monday ratified a three-year salary contract with the district’s teachers, capping a negotiating process that little more than a year ago would have seemed a marvel of cooperation and good will.

Previous contract-renewal talks between the school district and the Moorpark Educators Assn. bogged down in disputes over proposed increases in class size and teachers’ salaries. Last year, parents and teachers even picketed school board meetings to push for their demands.

This year, salary negotiations took less than two full days and led to a contract giving teachers a 3.72% pay raise during the coming school year. The difference, several board members said, was increased funding from the state and a willingness on both sides to negotiate.

“This is the best contract we’ve had, and we got it with the least amount of friction,” said board member Tom Baldwin, shortly before the board unanimously approved the contract.

“You had two groups who really wanted to come together and sign,” said Barbara Glass, a fourth-grade teacher and member of the association’s bargaining team. She said the contract would give teachers the pay raises they deserve without leaving the Moorpark Unified School District strapped for cash.

“It is fair, and it will give the school district enough left over to fund its programs,” she said.

The teachers association ratified the agreement last month.

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One of the contract’s key features is a clause that bases future pay raises on the salaries of teachers in other school districts.

After the 1996-97 school year, salary increases will be adjusted to ensure that Moorpark teachers receive almost 95% of what teachers in Ventura County’s best-paying school district receive. If, for example, the Conejo Valley Unified School district pays its teachers more than any other district in the county during the 1997-98 school year, the Conejo district’s salaries will be used to determine how much Moorpark teachers make.

However, this formula has its limits. The contract states that if the formula calls for a pay raise of more than 4%, the district can renegotiate salaries for that year.

Glass said that by bringing teachers’ salaries closer to those in nearby districts, Moorpark schools will be better able to compete for good teachers and administrators. She also said Moorpark’s approximately 280 teachers deserved to be paid as well as their colleagues throughout the county.

“There is no reason why we shouldn’t be paid comparably to other school districts,” she said.

The agreement will cost the district about $466,000 to implement during the upcoming school year. Since pay raises for the following two years have not yet been worked out, the cost for those years has not been calculated.

Board member Greg Barker, who also teaches history and geography at Thousand Oaks High School, said the contract should reassure Moorpark’s teachers that their salaries won’t fall far behind other Ventura County educators.

“I believe in compensating our professionals as best we can,” he said. “That’s what education is first--the contact between the teacher and the student--and they deserve to be compensated.”