Teachers Approve Acton-Agua Dulce Contract

By a nearly unanimous margin, members of the teachers union have ratified a tentative contract with the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District, apparently ending a 4 1/2-year labor dispute.

The nearly 100 teachers in the sprawling 200-square-mile district between Palmdale and Santa Clarita have worked without a new contract since Vasquez High School opened in the fall of 1993.

Union members--about 95% of the teaching staff--prepared for a strike vote earlier this month after negotiations failed to produce a settlement.

But late Thursday, they approved a deal that, if endorsed in March by the district’s board of trustees, will give teachers who worked during the 1995-96 school year one-time payments of $1,800 and raise their current salaries by 5.5%.

The tentative contract covers only the 1997-98 school year. New negotiations for 1998-99 are planned for the summer.

The contract will cost the district $300,000, said Diana Baker, co-president of the Acton-Agua Dulce Teachers Assn.

“It is such a relief to have an agreement our teachers could accept,” Baker said. “Although the agreement is not all the teachers had hoped for, we feel it represents the best deal we could get at this time. Our teachers can now concentrate their efforts on instructing our students.”

Grady Box, a California Teachers Assn. negotiator based in Lancaster who has worked with the Acton-Agua Dulce teachers, also expressed relief. But he stressed the need for continued union-district cooperation.

“We’ll be right back bargaining again for next year,” he said. “But other than additional economic benefits, we’re hopeful that there doesn’t have to be a whole lot of contract changes.”

The tentative agreement caps years of upheaval in Los Angeles County’s smallest unified school district.

Since voters decided to add a high school in November 1992, the district has withstood serious financial instability, a showdown with the state over the district’s refusal to give students the California Learning Assessment System tests and the resignations or recalls of several of its leaders.

The latest key person to depart is former Supt. Joseph Crawford, who is negotiating a contract buyout with the district. County figures indicate his base salary was about $85,000 per year. Earlier this month, the board put Crawford on paid administrative leave and installed Interim Supt. Don Banderas.

Neither Banderas nor Jim Duzick, president of the district’s board of trustees, could be reached Friday. Duzick did not return telephone messages.

Board member Steve Harbeson said the apparent labor resolution “helps heal the scars of these 4 1/2 years. . . . My blood pressure is going down because of it.”