Orange Unified Teachers Stage Surprise Strike

The second Orange County teachers’ strike in two days unexpectedly hit the 24,500-student Orange Unified School District on Thursday and threatened to continue into next week.

The strike was hastily called by union leaders after negotiations broke down about 4 a.m. Thursday. By class time, four hours later, 565 of the system’s 1,100 teachers were missing from the 37 schools in the sprawling district, which serves the cities of Orange, Villa Park, and parts of Anaheim and Santa Ana.

Angry teachers carried placards and chanted “Recall, Recall”--a threat against district trustees who have been locked in marathon negotiations with the teachers union for 15 months over salary demands.

Overflow Crowd

The anger spilled over into a meeting Thursday night of the Orange Unified school board, where about 500 teachers and parents, some carrying helium-filled balloons colored black to signify mourning, tried to squeeze into a hearing room that holds 250. They were chanting, “Two, four six, eight, why don’t you negotiate?”

But no new negotiations are scheduled.

“We will not negotiate while a strike is going on,” board president Russell Barrios said earlier in the day.

Mark Rona, president of the Orange Education Assn.--the teachers union--said the teachers would stay out today and continue to strike until the matter was settled.

As in the scheduled one-day strike Wednesday by 180 teachers in the 5,350-student Huntington Beach City Elementary School District, the Orange Unified strike centers on pay-raise demands. The Orange Education Assn. is asking for more than the 2.54%, one-time pay bonus offered by the school district.

According to school administrators, Orange Unified teachers average $33,307 a year, with salaries ranging from $21,686 to $40,628.

The teachers held a one-day strike April 12 and also have had two sickouts that the union said it did not authorize.

School officials said Thursday’s strike cut into school attendance.

Josie Cabiglio, a district spokeswoman, said about 40% of the district’s high school and middle school pupils were absent Thursday. But she said that attendance in the elementary schools was about normal.

Cabiglio said that an adequate number of substitutes were found for the schools Thursday, although she added that some classes had to be combined.

Striking teachers contended that conditions inside the schools were “chaotic” and that little learning was taking place. Cabiglio, however, said that administrators and substitutes were maintaining order.

But there was little order at Thursday night’s board meeting.

The hearing room was so jammed that Orange police officers and private security guards had to periodically clear observers from the aisles, herding people into the building lobby and into the yard outside.

At the beginning of the meeting, California Teachers Assn. official Hazel Stover attempted to read to the school board the full text of the union’s proposed contract. After about four minutes, she was cut off by Barrios, who noted that speakers are limited to about three minutes.

The packed hearing room erupted into a chorus of boos and catcalls, and the school board announced a recess and left the room. The board returned about 10 minutes later and heard a string of parents and teachers expressing diverse views about the strike.

The vast majority spoke in support of the teachers and their strike. They included William Fitzgerald of Orange, who criticized the trustees for allegedly allowing the quality of education to decline.

Another critic, Gordon Enders of Orange, said: “The Orange Unified School District has already suffered enough black eyes. . . . It’s been investigated because some employees left with their pockets full of money.”

He was referring to the Orange County Grand Jury indictment of a former school maintenance supervisor and three other persons on charges of bid-rigging and misappropriation of public money. Their trials are scheduled for fall.

Two women who spoke against the strike and criticized the teachers drew frequent catcalls from the audience. Donna Sigalas of Orange said she was “appalled at the teachers’ behavior” during the strike and accused some unnamed teachers of encouraging students to misbehave or skip classes. She was frequently interrupted, and one man in the audience yelled, “Move out of the district!”

The meeting finally had to be ended prematurely about 9:15 p.m. when Barrios was unable to stop the rush of people who wanted to speak. The board declared the meeting over and filed out under police protection amid boos and more chants of “Recall.”

Earlier in the day, Union leader Rona explained that it was the school district’s insistence on fiscal “contingency language” that caused negotiations to collapse.

Rona said the district wanted the union to agree to possible cutbacks of proposed pay raises if the state budget to be passed by the Legislature this summer gives less than a 4.1% pay increase to education.

But board president Barrios said the school district is worried that the state budget for 1988-89 will fall substantially below an expected 4.3% increase.

“We in the district will be taking a risk (in agreeing to a pay increase), and we want the union to share in that risk,” said Barrios, explaining the proposed contingency language. “We are saying that if our budget is cut back, the pay raises would have to be cut back proportionately next year.”

The common plight of all the school districts is a budget essentially limited to money coming from the state.

This year, the state provided a 2.54% increase to school districts, but all the teacher organizations in Orange County have asked for a bigger raise than that amount. The teachers have pointed out that the consumer price index, generally referred to as a “cost-of-living increase” factor, rose 4% from March, 1987, to last March, according to the state’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Teachers have said that a pay raise of less than 4% makes them slide backward in earning power.

But Barrios said Thursday that school districts cannot spend more than they take in. Barrios said that the union negotiators were seeking “a blank check” on all new money coming into the district and not specifically earmarked for instructional programs.

“The union wanted us to guarantee that 50% of all new money would go to the teachers, and we just can’t do that,” Barrios insisted. He said this proposal was in addition to the union’s demand for at least a 2.54% “on-the-schedule” pay raise this year and a 6.3% pay increase for next year.

Barrios said that when negotiations broke down Thursday morning, the district negotiators were proposing a one-time-only 2.54% pay bonus for this year. A bonus, unlike an on-the-schedule pay raise, is not compounded year after year into a basic salary.

Rona, at the noon rally of striking teachers at Hart Memorial Park in Orange, praised Barrios but denounced the other six members of the school board. Rona also repeatedly criticized Orange Unified Supt. John Ikerd. “The district lacks leadership,” Rona declared.

The strike on Thursday came as a surprise because Rona and other union officials had said that a contract agreement was very near after 15 months of negotiation. On Tuesday, Rona called off proposed participation of the Orange Unified teachers in a joint strike with the Huntington Beach City Elementary School District union. He said he was calling off the joint strike because Orange Unified administrators had intensified negotiations.

On Thursday, many of the striking Orange Unified teachers accused the school board of “deception” in the negotiations earlier this week.

“They (the school board) blatantly lied,” said Karen Esparza, a Yorba Middle School history teacher, as she walked in a picket line. “They just didn’t want us to join in with the Huntington Beach strike on Wednesday. They’re not playing with a full deck, and it’s very unfair, very unfair.”

Other teachers at the noon rally, and later in a protest march in front of school district headquarters, similarly charged that the school board had “plotted” to keep Orange Unified teachers from joining the Huntington Beach strike.

“Absolutely not true,” Barrios declared. Barrios said he attended the marathon negotiations this week, and he had believed than an agreement could and would be secured.

School officials Thursday asked that students continue to go to school and stressed that student absences cut into the district’s finances.

State funding for schools is based on a complex equation called “average daily attendance.” That funding is geared to how many children attend daily classes. The lower the daily attendance, the less money a school district receives.

Barrios said he hoped all parents in the district would continue to send their children to classes during the strike. “This is something they can do while being neutral--not being for either the union or the district administration,” Barrios said. “If the children don’t go to school, everyone loses--the teachers, the schools and the students.”

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this report.