La Cañada teachers seek higher wages, citing projected rise in school district revenue
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A crowd of La Cañada Unified teachers rallied at Tuesday night’s school board meeting — the third such appearance this month — to again plead their case for raises in the face of rising healthcare and retirement costs.
Members of the La Cañada Teachers Assn. officially opened contract negotiations with district officials in early February and are engaging in “interest-based bargaining” to set terms to which both parties can agree.
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Representatives addressing the school board in a public comment session Tuesday acknowledged the cumulative 10% increases they’ve received in the past three years, but said the increasing cost of what employees must contribute to their own health and retirement plans means paychecks are smaller today than they were in leaner, post-recession years.
Speakers decried such shortcomings, especially when LCUSD’s projected revenue for the current school year will have increased by more than $4.5 million over the last school year, largely due to an influx of state funding to fill “gaps” left by recession-year shortages since 2007-08.
“For the past few years we have been asked to wait for a more significant increase because gap funding would be coming in to cover the money we’ve lost over the last eight years,” LCTA President Mandy Redfern told the board. “(But) in January, we learned that most of that gap funding has already arrived.”
The second interim budget for 2015-16 passed by board members on March 1, however, contains no earmarks for potential teacher salary increases.
In a March 21 sit-down interview, Supt. Wendy Sinnette and Chief Business and Operations Officer Mark Evans opened the ledger to give a clearer picture of the district’s finances and explain why added revenues don’t necessarily translate into employee raises.
According to finance documents, LCUSD received $40,017,431 in revenue last school year. The district expects to receive $44,546,424 for the current school year.
Teacher salary increases cost the district roughly $175,000 to $180,000 annually for each 1% granted, Sinnette estimated. But where funds of that magnitude might be taken from remains to be seen.
Nearly $2.5 million of the district’s additional incoming revenue is “one-time” in nature, meaning there are no guarantees for a continued influx in future years. Evans said it makes better fiscal sense to fund one-time projects and programs, such as replacing the high school’s badly degraded field, than to make ongoing salary commitments with funds that can’t be counted on.
“The rule for [chief business officers] is don’t use one-time money on things that eat,” he said. “Because that’s ongoing; you have to keep feeding people.”
And while employees’ contributions to pensions and retirement benefits have increased, so too has the amount districts must contribute, Evans said.
Last year, LCUSD was required to pay 8.8% of its total certificated salary expenditures into the pension system. This year’s mandated contribution jumped to 10.73%, nearly $336,000 more than the previous year. It will increase incrementally each year until the district is paying 18.1% in the 2019-20 school year.
Factoring in the climbing costs of pension contributions, the 4% salary hike La Cañada Unified employees received last school year (roughly $1.1 million annually) and what the district must pay for the usual “step and column” pay grade increases certificated employees earn as their tenure grows, officials say most of the $2 million in extra ongoing funds from the state has already been dedicated.
Still, officials said they are open to looking at ways to reach some sort of agreement with LCTA employees.
“I think we’re doing some good strategizing and looking at the whole picture … to see what we can come up with,” Evans said. “We agree that retention is where our goals are.”
Sinnette said school board members strongly support the district’s teachers and want to keep them.
“They want to support teachers, but it has to be in the balance of all the other competing needs,” she said. “(Still), they very much want to find all the dollars available and assign those to wages.”
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
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