Ventura Considers 8% Raise for Teachers

In an effort to make teachers’ salaries more competitive with those in other districts, the Ventura school board tonight will consider giving 8% raises to its more than 700 teachers and increasing the minimum pay for entry-level educators.

If approved as expected by the Board of Trustees, the pay hikes will be retroactive to July 1 and the minimum teacher’s salary will increase to $30,000 a year from $25,623.

In addition, board members will consider a 7.5% increase for about 750 other employees, 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 minimal or nonexistent pay hikes for district employees.

They also come at a time when the competition to attract 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 there are qualified educators to fill them.

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

A recent survey of 18 school districts along the Central Coast ranked Ventura second from the bottom in average teacher pay.

Average salaries in the Ventura district were 9.2% below what teachers in the nearby Conejo Valley Unified School District were earning.

As a result, some of Ventura’s best teachers have been lured away by neighboring 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 the teachers association. “[The pay increase] is really going to be good for our school district and good for our kids. 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 leaner times, district employees gained little.

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

Teacher salaries have fallen well behind those of surrounding districts.

The minimum teacher salary in Thousand Oaks, for example, was $30,700 last school year. And in the Hueneme school district, the minimum was $28,500.

Ventura educators say the pay raises plus the boost in minimum salary should help their district stay competitive as the search for qualified teachers escalates.

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