Contract Accord May Avert Teachers Strike

Los Angeles teachers and the district on Tuesday trumpeted a far-reaching contract settlement that averts a threatened strike and gives teachers more than 15% in pay and benefit increases.

The three-year agreement, which is expected to get school board approval on a split vote, also shapes compromises on bitterly disputed educational policies ranging from merit pay to principals’ authority to assign teachers.

If ratified by the union membership and the board, the pact will raise average pay for Los Angeles’ 43,000 teachers from among the lowest in the county to about the median. And it will allow teachers to negotiate a new salary increase next year.

The raise--which exceeds the district’s initial proposal of about 10%--caused three board members to say they will oppose the contract because it would sacrifice funding for textbooks, counselors, teachers’ training and other key areas.

Supt. Roy Romer, who staked his job on avoiding a strike, however, said he would find the money in the district’s $8.5-billion budget to pay teachers more and to maintain vital programs.

“Over my dead body will we not have aggressive reading and math programs,” Romer said during a press conference at the union’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters.

Romer said he doesn’t intend to stop at mid-level teacher salaries.

“My objective in this negotiation was to raise the level of teacher compensation so we can be competitive,” he said. “I don’t think that raise was enough.”

Negotiators for the district and United Teachers-Los Angeles signed the tentative agreement late Monday night, bringing to a close talks that formally began last April and built to a series of 14-hour sessions this month.

Standing at Romer’s side during the press conference, UTLA President Day Higuchi praised the accord as the beginning of “an authentic partnership . . . good for the kids of the city and good for public education.”

Although escalating union rhetoric in recent weeks focused mainly on salary demands, the proposed contract changes disclosed Tuesday cover a range of issues. They touch on everything from student discipline to leaves of absence and encompass compromises on numerous points that both sides had considered sacrosanct.

The agreement would:

* Use the state school award program to replace a pay-for-performance plan that produced immediate strike rumbles when the district’s interim reform leaders proposed it last year.

* Set up procedures for teachers to demand clean and safe classrooms and adequate instructional materials.

* Expand the authority of principals to assign teachers, partly taking back a highly cherished perk in which teachers chose their assignments by seniority. The teachers gained the perk in the early 1990s in exchange for accepting 10% salary cuts.

“We got back a great deal of the ability to manage this district properly,” said Romer, who had focused almost exclusively on the talks during the past three weeks.

Thanks to Gov. Gray Davis’ school reform program, which provides awards to schools and individual teachers for improvements on standardized tests, the merit pay proposal drifted to the background early in the negotiations. In its place, the union accepted a plan in which 55 schools will seek $3.5 million in district awards for improving their reading scores. The pilot program will be largely voluntary, requiring a two-thirds vote of the teachers at each participating school. The district can draft 10 to 20 low-performing schools.

The restoration of principals’ authority, on which Romer repeatedly struck a hard line, revolved around the complaint that principals often must put their least experienced teachers in their most difficult classes because the desirable assignments are snapped up by senior teachers. A related problem affects year-round, multitrack schools whose most experienced teachers tend to take summer breaks.

The teachers eventually agreed that all tracks and grade levels should have about the same proportion of experienced and inexperienced teachers.

Each principal would accomplish that by first assigning nonpermanent teachers--primarily those without credentials and on probationary status--who make up about 40% of all faculties across the district. Permanent teachers would then divide up the remaining slots by seniority, subject to the principal’s veto for a specific educational purpose.

Disputes would be decided by panels of one retired teacher and one retired principal each.

For both the union and the district, the pay settlement continues to be the most contentious part of the agreement.

The complicated agreement provides a base raise averaging 11.6%, with some teachers receiving as little as 8% and others as much as 15%.

“It’s loaded [higher] at the places where we are least competitive in the county, Higuchi said.

In addition, the district will make permanent a 2% bonus given for the first time last year. The district will also pay 1.8% more to accommodate the rising costs of current benefits.

Several union members who attended the press conference grilled Higuchi over the negotiating team’s long slide from its initial demand for a 21% raise, foreshadowing a potentially tough battle over ratification.

Although the board has not yet scheduled a vote, all seven members tipped their hands Tuesday, signaling that Romer will probably get a badly divided ratification.

Four members said they would support the contract, including Valerie Fields, who last week rebuffed an attempt by Mayor Richard Riordan to craft a 4-3 vote against the contract, and in doing so lost the mayor’s endorsement in her bid for reelection this April.

Board members Genethia Hayes, Mike Lansing and Caprice Young all oppose the contract. They were elected two years ago with heavy backing from Riordan.

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Times education writer Duke Helfand contributed to this story.

Contract Highlights

The Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers-Los Angeles have tentatively agreed to a three-year contract thats meets the teachers’ demand for a large pay raise and contains both accountability measure sought by the teachers. Following are the main elements:

Pay and benefit increases

Average salary (varies from 8% to 15%)..........11.5%

Convert one-time 1999-2000 bonus to permanent ....2.0%

Maintain health and other benefits ...............1.8%

Total...........................................15.3%

*

Merit pay and accountability

* Substitutes the state school awards program for district proposals.

* Establishes a volunteer pilot program offering awards to 55 schools.

*

Professional development

* All schools will conduct professional development four hours per month on Tuesdays.

* Half that time will be dedicated to district initiatives.