Beverly Hills Teachers Prepare to Strike Today : Education: With no movement made to resume talks, instructors plan to conduct the district's first-ever strike. The major issue involves wages.

By BARBARA KOH

Oct. 16, 1989 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Beverly Hills teachers fashioned placards and huddled over picketing strategies Sunday in preparation for the first-ever strike in the district, set to begin today.

After negotiations collapsed last week and no movement was made over the weekend, the teachers were planning to march at Beverly Hills High School and the district’s four other schools starting at 6 a.m.

Bill Gordon, chief negotiator for the Beverly Hills Education Assn., said that more than 90% of the 300 teachers, nurses, librarians and counselors in the district would walk out. Teachers and union officials from Los Angeles planned to join the picket lines in support, according to Frances Haywood, a vice president of United Teachers-Los Angeles.

At Beverly Hills Unified School District headquarters, school board President Dana Tomarken was helping to sign up last-minute substitutes on Sunday. The district has hired more than 200 substitutes at $185 a day, and “school will be open as usual,” Tomarken said.

Supt. Robert French said eight extra security guards have been hired and that substitutes would be transported, in school buses, to the campuses from “a collection spot” that he refused to identify.

But Gordon said the striking teachers would be out early to make sure that “these gutless wonders” would not be “able to slip by without looking teachers in the eye.”

Each side was sticking to its guns, saying that the other side should make an overture first. “Because we made the last offer, the next action is up to the association,” French said. “If a bolt of lightning came out of the sky, we’d sure be willing to talk about it,” said Gordon.

The teachers walked out of a mediation session last Thursday, saying they were disgusted with the district’s refusal to significantly sweeten its last offer, which calls for an 11% salary increase over two years. The union wants an 18% increase over two years or 10.5% for this year. The district is offering little or no improvements in health insurance and teaching time, the union said.

Teachers were told by the union to leave their room keys but not lesson plans on Friday. “It isn’t incumbent upon us to make things easier for (the district) to carry on a facade of an educational program,” Gordon said.

The teachers are “willing to stay out as long as it takes,” said Don Walker, a high school computer teacher and 29-year veteran of the district. “I have never seen teachers so angry and so disillusioned.

“If L.A. can (pay) it, why can’t Beverly Hills?” he asked, referring to the 16% pay raise over two years that Los Angeles teachers won after their spring strike.

Current starting pay for Beverly Hills teachers is $21,604, with a top salary of $46,270 for nine years of experience plus training credits. The average salary is $42,659.

The district offer includes raising starting salaries nearly 30%, to $28,041. For the vast majority of teachers already making more than that, it would give a 5% pay raise this year and 6% in 1990-91. That would put Beverly Hills teachers roughly on par this year with their counterparts in Los Angeles, where salaries range from $27,346 to $50,123, but behind in 1990-91.

Of the 42 school districts in Los Angeles County, Beverly Hills spends the most--more than $5,000--per pupil. Classes are smaller in Beverly Hills and teachers spend less time in the classroom than in Los Angeles.

French insists that the district’s $28.3 million budget, with reserves of about $1.2 million, does not leave room for the salaries and working conditions the teachers want, a claim the union rejects.

With Proposition 13’s ceiling on property taxes, a state Supreme Court decision that ordered the state to equalize the funding among school districts and the district’s declining enrollment, Beverly Hills schools have fallen on hard times, he said. To generate additional income, the district rents out libraries and auditoriums to the city of Beverly Hills, solicits private donations and has launched a line of Beverly Hills High School sweat shirts.

The district has never had a strike. But in 1987 and 1986, last-minute negotiations--spurred by parent and community pressure--averted threatened teacher walkouts over pay issues and staff cuts.

This year, “everybody’s saying (a strike) has to happen,” said parent Sharon Klinger, who is on the board of directors of the Beverly Hills Education Foundation, which raises about $500,000 a year for the district. Klinger said she would send her fourth-grader, Amanda, to school because she is “confident some instruction will be going on, and it won’t just be somebody sitting in a seat.”

But, “We should pay Beverly Hills teachers more than in surrounding communities,” Klinger added, noting that she and many other parents moved to Beverly Hills specifically for the school system that produces high test scores and sends many graduates to Ivy League colleges.

THE BEVERLY HILLS TEACHER DISPUTE The contract between teachers, represented by the Beverly Hills Education Assn., and the Beverly Hills Unified School District was signed in 1987 and runs until June, 1990, but provides for interim negotiations on salaries and fringe benefits. The district has 4,700 students; the contract covers about 300 teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses and others. What teachers want * An 18% pay raise over two years if the contract is extended, or 10.5% for the current year. * Full medical and dental coverage paid by the district, estimated by the union to cost about $4,300 per teacher per year, with a tax-shelter annuity option. What the district is offering * To raise starting salaries more than 29%, to $28,041. For teachers making more than that, the pay increase for 1989-90 would be 5%. * To continue to pay $3,070 per teacher per year for partial health benefits, with each teacher having the option of depositing the money into a tax-sheltered annuity. Alternatively, the district would pay $3,900 without an annuity option. * A one-year extension of the overall contract to 1991. It is offering a 6% pay increase in 1990-91, with the same benefits as in 1989-90, or a 5% salary increase, with benefits of $3,070 with an annuity option or $4,300 without the option. The two sides also disagree over teacher time required under the current contract. Teachers say they agreed to a regular maximum of 20.8 hours of teaching time, which includes playground supervision, and a maximum of 22.5 hours per week under extraordinary circumstances. The district says the agreement was for a range of hours between 20.8 and 22.5 per week of time in the classroom and not including playground duties. What Beverly Hills teachers earn*

BEGINNING AVERAGE MAXIMUM Beverly Hills 1988-89 $21,604 $42,659 $46,270 Beverly Hills 1989-90 $28,041 $44,792 $48,584 district’s 5% offer Beverly Hills, 1989-90 $23,872 $47,138 $51,128 union’s 10.5% demand Los Angeles Unified $27,346 $42,460** $50,123 1989-90

* Basic annual salary without benefits ** This figure is from the Los Angeles Unified School District. The teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, disputes this figure, contending it includes benefits; without benefits, the figure is about $38,000.