School District, Unions Agree on 2% Bonus

All Los Angeles Unified School District employees would receive a 2% bonus this school year, the first pay increase since 1990, under an agreement reached by district and union negotiators on Monday after months of behind-the-scenes discussions.

The proposal, which school board members indicated will receive their formal endorsement in two weeks, also calls for reducing class size districtwide by at least three students over the next four years.

The resolution surprised dozens of employees who had flocked to the district headquarters to lobby for a raise.

“Really? Oh great!” said Cecilia Durante, a special education assistant at Stevenson Middle School on the Eastside, who was wearing a neon orange sticker reading, “Local 99. We deserve a raise!”

The timing of the district’s offer--which prompted the agreement for a March bonus for all 60,000 workers--coincides with its efforts to get full union support for a second attempt to pass a school bond measure. The district hopes to ask voters to approve the $2.4-billion bond in April, after narrowly missing the needed two-thirds majority earlier this month.

“They realized by the narrow margin of defeat of the school bond that they needed the enthusiastic support of all the unions,” said Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles. “We supported it. We told our members to vote for it. But they’ve realized there’s a difference between support and enthusiastic support.”

The class-size reduction--from an average of 33 to 30--reflects a provision in the 1992 contract for each teacher to take on three more students until the fiscal crisis had passed. The teachers union successfully persuaded the district that growing enrollment and several years of increased state funding meant that time had come.

But because space is in short supply following a massive effort to shrink class sizes in primary grades, a teacher-administrator committee will be formed to probe alternatives, such as adding more enrichment teachers to pull students out for classes such as music and physical education.

Paying for the bonus and some additional health benefits will cost the district at least $60 million this year alone, money that Chief Financial Officer Henry Jones said would come from various sources, including state funds to support the district’s skyrocketing enrollment.

Union leaders, who will take the proposal to their members for a vote, said it grew out of a rare liaison among many of the labor organizations that represent school workers. They hope to turn it into a permanent raise next year, as has been the case with temporary salary restorations in the past two years.

Negotiating together for the first time on salary issues “gives us a stronger voice,” said Janett Humphries, president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 99.

But representatives of two unions said their members will probably hold out for more money and concessions. The district’s newest labor organization, classified managers represented by the Teamsters, plans to ask for a 7.5% raise, said Assistant Director Wanda Robinson. The school Police Officers Assn., which has been without a contract for more than a year, is also expected to reject the offer.

“My gut feeling is they’re trying to buy us off,” said Richard G. Keith, general manager of the police officers union.