With Talks Halted, Beverly Hills Teachers Union Hints at Strike

Two months ago the S-word wasn’t in the vocabulary of teachers negotiating a new contract with the Beverly Hills school system.

The head of the teachers union said he and his colleagues bitterly remembered their one and only strike, in 1989.

“We went on strike for three weeks and got nothing. It was a poor choice on everyone’s part,” Beverly Hills Education Assn. President Steve Taylor said in late September.

But contract talks between the prestigious school district and teachers collapsed this week. And now the 330 teachers are no longer ruling out a strike.

“Things have changed,” Taylor acknowledged Friday.

A state mediator has been summoned to restart the salary talks. But the two sides are still far apart--with teachers demanding an immediate 11% raise and the district offering what amounts to 4% this year and another increase the following year.

To complicate matters, the school system’s chief negotiator announced that he is resigning this month. Meanwhile, school officials await an independent financial audit due next week that could show that the district is in even worse shape than indicated by this year’s projected $219,000 budget deficit.

Both sides have launched public relations campaigns designed to line up allies in case the stalemate continues.

Newly hired Supt. Gwen Gross has written Beverly Hills community leaders suggesting that cutbacks may be coming. “When I joined the district in mid-August, I was presented with a deficit budget, which had been inching out of control for the past two years,” she said.

Nonetheless, Gross wrote, the district is attempting to “meet the expectation for a 10% across-the-board” pay increase for teachers.

On Friday, the teachers union issued its own “community response letter” to complain that the district’s 10% figure was something akin to fuzzy math.

“When held up to the light, the district’s current proposal is an actual salary increase of only 4% for 2000-2001 and an 8% increase for 2001-2002,” the teachers contend.

Taylor, a history and economics teacher at Beverly Hills High School, said the district quit negotiating Oct. 18.

“The 10% offer is a facade,” he said, asserting that it did not provide for retroactive pay (teachers are currently working without a contract) and that it includes money already allocated for teacher training.

According to Taylor, teachers are being penalized by “poor choices” made by the school board in hiring a series of superintendents who did not last in the job and by spending money to air-condition district offices this summer.

Taylor said teachers are preparing to ratchet things up through “informational picketing.” And real picketing could come after that if the impasse doesn’t end, he hinted.

“I don’t want to go on record saying it will happen, but we are taking the first steps toward that ultimate end,” Taylor said of the strike option.

“We believe we have to do a better job of organizing ourselves. We believe the ’89 strike was not organized as well as it could have been,” he said.

The loss of district negotiator John Tennant, who is leaving this month as assistant superintendent to take a school district administrative job in Merced, could set back the contract talks, Taylor said. “He’s been the only district employee there for 125 hours we’ve spent negotiating. He’s been more than fair and reasonable.”

Gross was unavailable for comment Friday.

Tennant, referring to the teachers union analysis, said: “The only thing I disagree with what they’re saying is that we ‘manipulated’ something. Every dollar we have is available for analysis. It’s impossible to hide; it’s all public money.”

Tennant said the audit, being done by a private accounting firm, will be presented next week at school board study sessions.

“It could have a positive impact on negotiations. Or it could go the other way. It could say, ‘You have more problems than you think; even your current offer is too high,’ ” Tennant said.