Ventura School Board Weighs 8% Boost in Salary for Teachers

In an effort to make teachers’ salaries more competitive with those in other districts, the Ventura school board tonight will consider handing 8% raises to its nearly 800 teachers while boosting the minimum pay for entry-level educators.

If approved by the board of trustees, the pay hikes will be retroactive to July 1 and the minimum teacher salary will increase from $25,623 a year to $30,000.

In addition, board members will consider giving a 7.5% increase to about 750 classified employees and managers, also retroactive to July 1.

The raises were hammered out during months of negotiations between administrators and union representatives, and they come after years of providing little or no pay increases for district employees.

They also come at a time when the competition to lure and retain teachers is at an all-time high, with districts across the state scrambling to keep pace with a class size-reduction program that has resulted in more job openings than qualified educators.

“For years, our teachers were getting very, very little and they were falling further and further behind,” Ventura Unified School District Supt. Joseph Spirito said. “What we are basically trying to do now is get back in competitive form and reward our teachers for doing a good job.”

A survey of 18 school districts in the region of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties ranked Ventura second from the bottom when comparing salary scales.

In fact, average salaries in the Ventura district lagged 14% behind average pay in the Oxnard high school district and 9.2% below what teachers were earning on average in Thousand Oaks.

As a result, some of Ventura’s best teachers have been lured away by other districts, officials said. And administrators have had some difficulty finding enough new teachers to fill those slots and to push forward with efforts to shrink class sizes in the primary grades.

“We are attracting good people, but not as many as we would like,” said Buena High School teacher Steve Blum, who heads Ventura’s teachers association.

“This is really going to be good for our school district and good for our kids,” he added. “We’re going to have better teachers, we’re going to have happier teachers and we’re going to be able to attract new, quality teachers.”

For years during lean economic times, district employees made do with minimal salary increases, and some years got no raises at all.

During the 1991-92 school year, union leaders even agreed to cut off lifetime retirement benefits for more than 700 former and present employees and teachers to keep the then near-bankrupt district afloat.

All of that combined to put teacher salaries in Ventura well behind those of surrounding districts.

For example, the minimum salary was $30,700 in the Conejo Valley Unified School District last school year. And in the smaller Hueneme district, the minimum salary was $28,500. The minimum salary in the Ventura district was $25,623.

But the situation has started to improve recently. As the economy has gotten better, the state has started funneling more money to local school districts.

As a result, the Ventura district was able to give teachers and employees a 7% raise last school year.

And educators say this year’s raise, plus the boost in minimum salary, should help them stay competitive with surrounding districts.

“With class size reduction, it’s just a matter of economics: The best teachers go for the best money,” Ventura school board member John Walker said. “We know what teachers in other districts are making and we’re behind. And we know we need to do something about that.”

The raises will cost the district about $4.8 million, the bulk of which will be paid with additional state money. In addition, the extra money will put the district near the middle of the pack in Ventura County when it comes to teacher salaries.

“We’re not looking to be top dog,” Blum said. “All we want is what is good for the school district and good for the kids in this town.”