Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

Loma Prieta Elementary School teacher Christie Sanden waves to drivers passing by as she and fellow teachers from Loma Prieta and C.T. English Middle School picket along Summit Road. The teacher eventually received a raise and a new contract.

Teachers receive boost in pay and new contract

By Rebecca Ray

Teachers in the Loma Prieta Joint Union Elementary School District are getting a new contract with higher salaries after a month of picketing that culminated in an overnight mediation session.

"This is a tremendous success for the teachers in this district in that it's the first time teachers have been made a priority," said Jason Willoughby, history and math teacher at C.T. English Middle School and a member of the negotiation team.

Although the teachers aren't getting the 15 percent salary increase they wanted, they will receive a retroactive 12 percent raise from the period that covers Feb. 1 to June 30, and will receive a 13 percent raise after June 30. All of this money will come from the district's budget for the 2000-2001 school year.

Starting in September, teachers will get another raise, the amount of which has not been determined and will be tied to the district's budget for 2001-2002. Teachers are also getting two-year contracts that will last through the end of the 2001-2002 school year.

Last summer, districts in the state received 11.2 percent base increases, because the California Teachers Association, the union representing the teacher, and about half of the districts in California gave teachers raises at the beginning of the year, O'Regan said.

But, according to the Loma Prieta district's superintendent, Mary Ellen Lewis, the district received only about an 8 or 9 percent base increase because of its declining enrollment, and the money wasn't enough to give the teachers the raise they wanted. The district currently has 775 students and between 35 and 40 teachers.

Even if the teachers in the district had received a 15 percent raise, the district would still have the lowest average salary of the 33 school districts in the county, O'Regan said.

Lewis said that she knew of at least one other district in the county that had a lower average salary. According to Lewis, the district would like to move its average teacher salary up to the county's median-average teacher salary.

The teachers didn't ask for a higher raise because they didn't want to take any money away from current programs, O'Regan said.

Even though the teachers union, in general, was satisfied with the outcome, there's no guarantee that teachers won't leave the district, Willoughby said.

"If we don't get this raise, we will lose teachers," C.T. English Middle School journalism and Spanish teacher Paddy O'Regan said before the impasse mediation took place from Feb. 28 to March 1. Losing three or four teachers from the middle school, which has 11 teachers, would really hurt, since it would be almost 50 percent of the teachers on the staff, O'Regan explained.

One of the reasons why teachers wanted a raise was to preserve the quality of teaching in the district, which has a low turnover rate and a mostly fully credentialed staff, O'Regan said.

Both schools in the district, C.T. English and Loma Prieta Elementary School, have also received high scores on the Stanford Achievement Test (Ninth Edition) a mandatory annual standardized test for student in California's public schools. Both schools received scores of more than 800 academic performance index points last year and in 1999, when the test was first administered. Last year, C.T. English received a score of 861, the same score as Fisher Middle School in the Los Gatos Union School District.

During the impasse mediation, the district and teacher's union also agreed to get rid of the longevity early retirement bonus clause. The clause specified that teachers who had taught in the district for 20 years or more would get retirement benefits of $20,000, if they retired between the ages of 55 and 59.

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