L.A. Unified Offers Teachers 1.5% Raise

Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer offered teachers Tuesday a 1.5% pay raise -- the first official offer in 18 months of contract negotiations -- just hours after teachers union officials announced that almost a third of school district employees lacked confidence in his leadership.

Romer said the offer’s timing had nothing to do with the no-confidence petition drive, which gathered more than 23,000 signatures from teachers, principals and other school-site employees. The district employs 78,000 people.

But an initial reaction to the offer appeared to indicate that it would not be enough to quell efforts by United Teachers-Los Angeles to draw public attention to its fight for a raise.

Union President John Perez said he did not think that the offer, which would be retroactive to January, “would be acceptable to our members.”

Still, he said, “at least there’s something on the table we can negotiate over.”

Earlier Tuesday, Perez said the petition should serve as a “loud warning” to the superintendent as labor negotiations continue.

Both Romer and Perez have been under pressure to settle the lengthy contract dispute. Perez is up for reelection as head of the 45,000-member union in June. Romer has increasingly butted heads with the union-backed majority on the Board of Education. Board members themselves have expressed a desire to settle the dispute and give teachers a raise.

Many Los Angeles Unified School District employees “were hopeful when Roy Romer arrived in 2000,” Perez said at a news conference. “Our optimism has faded as the superintendent has continued to expand the LAUSD bureaucracy at the expense of our students.”

Romer denied that allegation. In the last four years, he said, the district had trimmed about $2 billion from its budget. Under union pressure last year, the district cut the number of local administrative district offices from 11 to 8.

The 1.5%, across-the-board teacher raise would cost the district about $60 million, Romer said.

The school board plans to pay for the raise -- whose funding source or sources, by county decree, must be identified before it can be implemented -- from a variety of cuts and other cost-saving measures, he said. He declined to give further specifics but said some of those cuts might affect teachers’ working conditions.

The district already has indicated that it would have to cut about $167 million from its 2004-05 budget, and said that figure could increase because of lower-than-expected revenue from the state. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed state budget would withhold $2.3 billion that school districts were owed under Proposition 98, the law that guarantees school funding. And the governor wants school districts to pick up the nearly $500 million that the state contributes to teacher retirement funds.

Romer called the petition drive “a traditional tactic of unions to mobilize” members amid contract negotiations.

“I respect unions who gather their petitions,” he said, “and receive it within that spirit.”

Perez said at the news conference that despite the statement of “no confidence,” union officials were not seeking the ouster of Romer, who recently renewed his contract. Rather, Perez said, the union hoped to use the petition drive to help ensure that contract talks were successful.

Besides getting a raise, teachers want to preserve their benefits package, which grants them and their spouses lifetime healthcare coverage, among other things. In addition, Perez said, the union hopes for assurances about other serious contract points, including how teacher coaching is conducted.

The current offer will be discussed in detail at a meeting today between the district and the union’s negotiators.

Teachers received their last pay raise -- 3% -- in 2002. In 2001, the board approved a far-reaching contract settlement that averted a threatened strike and gave teachers more than 15% in pay and benefit increases, a decision that divided the trustees.

Two of the three board members who voted against the pay raises in 2001, Caprice Young and Genethia Hudley-Hayes, were targeted by the teachers union for defeat in subsequent elections. Both lost their bids for reelection in 2003. The third, Mike Lansing, remains on the board.