School board approves raises for teachers

Pay raises were approved by the Glendale Unified School Board on Tuesday for more than the 1,000 teachers working in about 30 local schools, bringing an end to months of negotiations between district officials and the Glendale teachers’ union.

All Glendale teachers will receive a 3% salary bump, retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year. This coming January, the teachers will receive an additional 5% salary increase.

The ongoing cost for the school district to pay for the raises comes to $10.1 million annually, said Robert McEntire, chief business and financial officer for Glendale Unified.

The result will bring about more “harmony” and “trust” between teachers and district officials, said school board member Nayiri Nahabedian.

“Now, we can move forward,” she said.

The raises come months after Glendale teachers rallied for them, under the leadership of Taline Arsenian, president of the Glendale Teachers’ Assn. .

One morning in late September, many teachers wore red shirts, stood outside their schools before the first bell rang and held posters that stated “Fair Settlement Now!” as they tried to educate parents who were dropping off children about their cause.

Many teachers wore buttons with the same phrase when they packed school board meetings earlier in the school year.

The teachers had received a 3% pay raise in 2014, the first they had seen after seven years of state budget cuts to education. However, the hike did not cover the cost of inflation, which Arsenian sought to match in her pursuit for larger increases.

Glendale teachers did receive automatic salary bumps during those seven years as they accumulated more years of experience or earned degrees, however.

Over the last several weeks of negotiations, district officials and Arsenian indicated they were growing more optimistic in reaching a deal that would satisfy both parties.

“I believe this overwhelmingly positive result is a testament to the hard work that the bargaining teams did at the table — particularly the last couple of sessions — to bring about an agreement that we think is fair,” Arsenian said, adding that teachers could now move on to “doing what we do best — educating our students.”

Moments before the board took a unanimous vote to authorize the raises, school board member Greg Krikorian said they were deserved.

“It need[s] to be done,” Krikorian said. “I see what our teachers do every day. It is truly priceless what they do. At the end of the day, it’s beyond well deserved … When they leave that classroom and they’re being drained, they can know that the board did everything possible to compensate them to the best of our ability.”

--

Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan