Orange Unified Strike Could Be Settled Today : Teachers Agree to Return to Class; Union Chiefs Hopeful That a New Contract Is Within Reach

Striking teachers from the Orange Unified School district agreed to end their three-day walkout Monday after state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig asked for a “cooling-off’ period and offered to assist in negotiations.

Teachers are returning to their classrooms today, and union officials were optimistic that a contract settlement would be reached in renewed negotiations today.

Honig’s intervention brought a dramatic change in the tense labor negotiations in the central Orange County school district, which serves the cities of Orange and Villa Park and parts of Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Anaheim.

The 24,500-student district has had 15 months of unsuccessful negotiations for a new contract and pay raise for its 1,100 teachers. Deadlocks in the talks led to a one-day strike on April 12, two massive “sickouts” by the teachers, and then the continuing strike that began last Thursday.

Monday afternoon, Honig sent a telegram to both the school district administrators and union officials stating: “I am requesting a cooling-off period, during which time I urge the board of education and the OUEA (Orange Unified Education Assn.) to sit down and reach a settlement.

“From my perspective, the parties are close enough that (a) compromise settlement will be obtainable. If the parties need my assistance, I will make myself available,” Honig said in his telegram.

A mass rally of teachers is scheduled at 7:30 tonight at the Grand Hotel in Anaheim. Mark Rona, president of the Orange Unified teachers union, said members hope to have a contract settlement to vote on by tonight.

“I’m almost afraid to be optimistic, because I was optimistic last week. But it sure looks like a settlement is in the wind,” Rona said late Monday.

The note of optimism and the unexpected decision of the teachers to go back to their classrooms came less than 12 hours after strikers, at a mass rally, had vowed to stay out indefinitely. A rally of striking teachers Monday featured militant speeches and pessimistic outlooks for settlement.

“This is war!” one speaker said at 6:30 a.m. rally.

But at 5:15 p.m., Rona announced that teachers were returning to their classes beginning today. He said the teachers decided to suspend the strike after Honig’s request for the cooling-off period.

The school district’s last offer to the teachers was for a 2.54% one-time-only pay bonus and a commitment to pay all health and other fringe benefit costs for the current school year.

The union’s last proposal, submitted Sunday, was for a 3.41% regular pay raise for this school year. A regular pay raise, unlike a bonus, is a continuing increase that other raises are built on.

Despite the scheduled mass meeting, which signaled a possible resolution of the contract dispute, Rona said teachers could just as easily call for a resumption of the strike if no “fair and equitable settlement” is negotiated today.

“In other words, if they screw up at the negotiating table, we could be out on strike again,” he warned.

A state labor mediator, Draza Mrvichin, has scheduled a 1 p.m. meeting today with union and district negotiators. Officials on both sides said late Monday that they now believe a settlement can be reached.

Honig had been making phone calls to both sides for the past four days, according to union and district officials. Last week, he deplored the onset of the strike, saying some unnamed union leaders in Orange County were “renegades” who were not acting responsibly.

The charge initially angered Rona and several other Orange County union leaders. By Sunday, however, Rona said he no longer had any hard feelings after talking with Honig several times by telephone. He added that Honig’s efforts to help in the dispute were good and welcome.

William G. Steiner, a member of the Orange Unified school board, said he was pleased that the teachers were returning to their schools “and ending this no-win situation.”

Asked about Honig’s intervention, Steiner said: “It’s sort of ironic, given that part of the financial problem has come because of disagreements between the governor and the state superintendent of public instruction. But I certainly am glad for his (Honig’s) moral support, if not direct financial support.”

Honig has frequently clashed with Gov. George Deukmejian over school financing. He has said that money problems this year stem from inadequate state funding, which gave schools only a 2.54% increase. In Orange Unified, as in many other districts in the state, officials said the increase was all the money available for teacher pay hikes.

Honig, in his blast last week at Orange County teacher unions threatening to strike, urged teachers and others to work instead for passage of initiatives in June and November that would divert more state money to education.

At Monday’s rally, there at first seemed no end in sight for the Orange Unified strike. The most militant speech came from Lidia Biancolino, a second-grade teacher at Jordan School in Orange.

“This is not a sports event. This is war! In a war you endure a lot of suffering,” said Biancolino to thunderous applause from fellow strikers.

Afterward, teachers returned to the picket lines at the 37 schools in the district, which is the third largest (after Santa Ana Unified and Garden Grove Unified, respectively) in Orange County.

District officials said fewer teachers were out on strike Monday--561 compared to 651 on Friday.

Student absenteeism also was down Monday, a district spokeswoman said. No specific figures were released, but she said high school attendance on Monday had increased to 74%, compared with 64% on Friday, and elementary school attendance was “nearly normal” on Monday.

Two other Orange County school districts, Huntington Beach City Elementary and Newport-Mesa Unified School District, have yet to settle labor negotiations with their teachers.

But in the Magnolia School District, a teachers’ union spokeswoman Monday announced ratification of a new two-year contract and pay raise. She said Friday’s secret-ballot vote “overwhelmingly” favored the new contract. Magnolia provides schools for part of Anaheim and Stanton.