Teachers Picket Over Pay, Class-Size Issues

About two dozen teachers picketed before this week’s Santa Ana Unified School District board meeting. Their signs carried messages such as: “Broken promises won’t pay my rent!”

Teachers with the county’s largest school district have been working without a scheduled annual pay raise since July and hope that a tentative agreement will be reached when district negotiators and representatives of the Santa Ana Educators Assn. meet next on Jan. 4.

“The bottom line is we’re tired of waiting until May to get our retroactive pay,” said Martha Correll, president of the association.

But Santa Ana teachers aren’t the only ones waiting for salary increases. More than half of the school districts in Orange County have not reached settlements with their teachers.

Like Santa Ana, the Cypress School District will have its next salary negotiation session in early January. Cypress Supt. William D. Eller is hopeful that an arrangement can be reached. “Our objective is to always be at the median [of county teachers’ salaries] or above,” Eller said.

At the Orange Unified School District, teachers and district officials have been bitterly fighting for more than two years and are still some distance from a settlement.

“We know that teachers in Santa Ana should probably be paid more for the challenges of working in a district like ours,” said Audrey Yamagata-Noji, a Santa Ana Unified board trustee. “But we’ve been doing well comparative to other districts over the years.”

Correll agrees that first-year teachers and teachers with the most education have been paid well, “but where we’re hurting is in the mid-range. I know a teacher who went to Fullerton and got $7,000 more per year.”

And money isn’t the only issue, Correll said. The teachers association also is asking for a cap on class sizes and extra compensation for year-round teachers who often spend all of their paid prep time moving into and out of classrooms.

“There’s a piece of me that says we are so far apart, we’re never going to reach an agreement,” Correll said. “But I am the eternal optimist and believe that if we’re reasonable human beings we can come to an agreement.”

Chris Ceballos can be reached at (714) 966-7440.