Teachers planning protest to raises

Huntington Beach City School District teachers say they will pack the next school board meeting April 17 to protest pay raises for administrators after they felt pressured to settle for less.

The teachers’ union is scheduled to meet with the board April 10, union lead negotiator Norma Janssen said. But teachers are also meeting in small groups to plan their next move, she said.

When they signed their contract with the district a few weeks ago, union leaders settled because they were told it was the best they could get. But teachers cried foul after a March 12 board meeting gave raises to principals and Supt. Roberta DeLuca.

Teachers were frustrated to find principals getting extra money, but they called DeLuca’s raise shocking. They were also angered that school board members found more money to promote an administrator to a new assistant superintendent position.

The money didn’t necessarily have to go straight to teacher salaries, said Tony Zini, a third-grade teacher at Hawes Elementary. But it should have at least funded supplies or library hours, he said.

“When you have money, the first place it should go should be a classroom,” Zini said. “A lot of things have been cut [over the last five years]. Things were tight.”

Brian Rechsteiner, president of the district’s school board, said the board tried to make salaries competitive for all district jobs.

“We’re trying to get all our employee groups at least to about the average of all the comparable school districts,” he said.

“The superintendent was basically at the bottom of those comparable schools. It took her a little more to get up to the average.”

Even the amounts of the raises are disputed. Teachers got a 6.5% cost-of-living adjustment this year, as did principals. But the board voted principals an additional 2% in their pay schedule from January on. Janssen said that according to her calculations, DeLuca’s pay increased 20% or 30%, though she said it was difficult to be sure because many benefits were folded into the salary this year. DeLuca and Rechsteiner say it was 10.9%.According to district Human Resources Asst. Supt. Kathy Kessler, DeLuca’s old salary plus allowances, expenses and a doctoral stipend was $159,150. The new salary, plus the one remaining stipend, is $187,500, making for an 18.3% difference over the old salary, 11.8% more than the cost-of-living adjustment all employees got.

Janssen said it was hard to trust the board — or the superintendent — now.

“You want to believe the people sitting across the table from you,” she said. “We felt confident there was enough coming in from the state this year to reinstate programs and boost teacher morale. It’s sad to think we have a superintendent who has now put herself first.”

DeLuca said that before the raise she was the lowest-paid superintendent in the county, even though she had guided the district through “probably the biggest changes in any district,” including seriously restructuring the budget.

At the same time, DeLuca said she was disappointed to be singled out and that funding decisions are a school board issue that is out of her hands.

She also disputes the teachers’ assertion that schools are lacking in resources.

“Actually, last year we were able to increase supplies to school sites by 15% over the year before,” she said. “We’re using discretionary funds to bring programs back to the schools, as opposed to using them in the district office.”

Rechsteiner said there was no intent to mislead anyone. He attributes the decisions to changing finances.

“A budget changes daily, and we look at the budget daily to see where funding is,” he said. “We were fortunate this year in that some of that funding came because only one teacher” moved to a higher pay grade by receiving more education.

Such decisions are always a balancing act, he said.

Janssen said teachers were still unsure how to respond.

“There are so many angry people that we need to have the anger simmer down,” she said. “It’s good to get it out, but then we need to be thoughtful in how we proceed.”

Rechsteiner said those with concerns should call the board and discuss them directly.

“We’ve got great people in this district,” he said. “If they feel hurt, we need to heal those wounds.”’