Teachers Press Their Demands

In a sign that contract negotiations may be heading for a showdown, more than 300 teachers converged on the Conejo Valley school board Monday to demand salary increases that they say were earmarked in the state budget.

The overflow crowd, waving signs that read “Show Me The Money” and wearing black ribbons to exhibit their disappointment with the district’s undisclosed salary offer, called on the board to offer at least a 10% raise.

“Teachers should be able to live in the communities they work in, and we should be able to send our children to college if we so desire,” said Susan Falk, president of the teachers union and an eighth-grade science teacher at Los Cerritos Middle School.

Although the salary issue was not on the agenda, more than a dozen teachers addressed the board during a public comment period.

The fight is over an extra $10 million that the state sent the district after reporting a record state budget surplus of more than $12 billion. School districts throughout the state are sharing $1.8 billion.

Union leaders say the money was meant to pay for at least a double-digit raise for teachers, reflecting the desires of the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis to keep qualified teachers in the classroom.

District Supt. Jerry Gross disagrees, saying the money was sent with the understanding that the district could spend it as it saw fit.

But although the Conejo Valley Unified School District doesn’t want to give all of the windfall to teachers, it has offered a raise that would make its teachers the highest paid in the county, Gross said.

“The current salary offer would place the district above the others in the county and would place us among the highest in the state,” board President Timothy Stephens said Monday night.

The top salary would be more than $73,000, and starting pay would be nearly $38,000. A beginning teacher in Thousand Oaks now makes $35,519, the highest starting salary in the county. The second-highest is in Oxnard Union High School District, where teachers start at $35,010. The state average is $34,000.

Union leaders, though, ridiculed the board, saying it’s not enough.

“What does it mean in a profession that doesn’t pay teachers what they’re worth,” Falk said.

Negotiating teams from the district and the union are scheduled to meet today.

Falk said the teachers wanted to emphasize to the board that they would settle for nothing less than 10%.

Falk said the union was not threatening to strike yet, but the issue was raised indirectly during Monday’s meeting.

“Members of the board, you have awakened a sleeping giant,” said David Ayers, a fourth-grade teacher at Weathersfield Elementary School.

The last job action by Conejo Valley teachers occurred in the 1970s when they conducted a one-day walkout.

“People are angry,” Falk said.

Falk, who has taught in the district for 24 years, also said other districts had received big pay raises, such as Oxnard Elementary, whose teachers in June negotiated for a 2% raise this year and a 10.98% raise in 2001.