Top Managers of L.A. Schools Get Pay Raises

A divided Los Angeles Board of Education narrowly approved hefty salary raises for administrators late Monday, despite complaints from teachers and some state legislators that district managers already are overpaid.

The board voted 4 to 3 to give top management a 16% raise over two years. The vote was 7 to 0 in favor of giving middle management, such as principals, a 24% increase over three years--the same raise teachers won after a nine-day strike in May.

At the same time, the board formally ratified a new teachers’ contract, which provides a 24% three-year salary raise and a larger role for teachers in making decisions on how schools should be run.

As of late Monday the board had approved cuts totaling $43 million, although it had not yet voted on a tentative $3.8-billion budget for 1989-90. This year’s budget was $3.5 billion. A final budget vote is expected in August.

District officials said the cuts were needed to pay for employee raises. They included sizable reductions in central office operations, per-pupil allotments of lottery money to schools and “combat pay” to administrators on inner-city campuses.

More Cuts Possible

The board may make additional cuts if it decides to add or expand programs, such as a new $6.5-million plan for raising student achievement across the district.

The cuts were made despite the fact that the district expects to receive about $75 million from the state as a result of Proposition 98, the voter-approved initiative that guarantees schools at least 40% of the state’s general fund.

Voting for the 16% top management raise were Leticia Quezada, Rita Walters, Alan Gershman and board President Roberta Weintraub.

Quezada said that holding back the raise for 98 top managers would save only $100,000. “We’d save that at the expense of the morale of some hard-working individuals,” she said.

But board member Jackie Goldberg countered: “Can you continue to have the gap between the person in the classroom and the person in the superintendent’s chair grow? I just don’t think that’s a good practice.”

Goldberg, Warren Furutani and Julie Korenstein voted against the raise.

Freeze Rejected

A motion by Korenstein that called for freezing all administrator salaries above $125,000 and giving all administrators a flat $6,000 increase this year failed to pass.

Included in the top management raises are Supt. Leonard Britton, whose $141,000 annual salary will increase to $164,000 in the fiscal year starting July 1, and the two deputy superintendents, Sidney Thompson and William Anton, whose $125,000 annual salaries will increase to $145,800 next year.

The management raises had angered a group of Los Angeles-area Assembly members, who urged the board to hold off on approving the raises until after a new board member, Mark Slavkin, takes office next month, and threatened to conduct a special investigation into district salaries if the increases were approved.

Speaking in support of the administrator raises Monday night, Ray Tolcacher, president of the Assn. of California School Administrators, said that Los Angeles district administrators are not overpaid when compared to the 20 largest districts statewide. He also said the increases take into account the extraordinary difficulties administrators, particularly those based in schools, faced during the last year of teacher unrest that culminated in the strike.

The new teachers’ contract will increase the average teacher’s salary from $35,000 this year to $42,460 in the fiscal year beginning July 1. In 1990, the average teacher salary will increase to $45,700.