2 on Temple City School Board Face Recall Campaign

TEMPLE CITY —  Some teachers and a parents group were starting a door-to-door petition drive this weekend in an attempt to oust two Temple City Unified School District board members. They also hope to remove two other trustees whose terms expire in November.

The recall effort, led by resident Kenn Miller, comes in the wake of protracted and often bitter teacher contract negotiations and amid charges that the district intimidates teachers to suppress criticism.

If the petition drive is successful, board members Lewis Moulton and John Gera, whose terms expire in 1991, could face recall in November. Miller, head of Citizens for a Responsible School Board, said he hopes to turn in the required 3,260 valid signatures, or 20% of the district’s registered voters, by the July 1 deadline.

Four-Year Terms

Some teachers and Kenn Miller’s group also have been critical of Trustees Linda Miller and Shirley Norman and have said they will opppose them if the two run for reelection this fall. Their four-year terms expire in November. Linda Miller and Kenn Miller are not related.

“We want all four out,” said Janice Murasko, president of the Temple City Education Assn., which represents about 85% of the district’s 200 teachers. Murasko said she was speaking for many teachers, but that the association has not taken a formal position.

The petition blames Moulton and Gera for declining teacher morale and loss of trust between teachers and the administration. It also says that are unresponsive to the community’s needs.

“Their accusations are totally false,” Moulton said. “This whole thing is centered around the (salary) negotiations.”

Gera said the teachers are really trying to force the ouster of Supt. Wesley Bosson. “It’s just a group of teachers upset at Bosson who are orchestrating the whole thing,” he said. The director of business services for the El Monte City School District, Gera has been on the board since 1983.

Miller said members of his group will be at the Ralphs supermarket and the post office off Las Tunas Drive every afternoon this week to collect signatures.

Tensions began rising early this year during salary negotiations in the usually quiet school district, which has often been praised for its high California Assessment Program scores.

After an impasse in negotiations was declared last fall, a fact-finding panel, chaired by an arbitrator from the state Public Employment Relations Board, was formed.

The panel recommended a 6% salary raise for the 1988-89 school year, as the teachers had been demanding. The district had offered raises of 4% and refused to accept the panel’s recommendation.

4% Pay Raise

On April 25, the five-member board ended negotiations by adopting, in a 3-1 vote, a contract with a 4% increase retroactive to September.

Moulton voted in the majority. Gera was absent but said later that he agreed with the 4% figure.

Board member Charlotte Bria, who cast the dissenting vote, said she didn’t feel she “could approve it unilaterally without continuing some dialogue.”

Norman said it was inappropriate for the fact-finding panel to consider the more than $2 million that the seven-school district has in reserves when deciding whether it could afford to give the teachers a 6% raise.

“We would like to pay the teachers the maximum, but we cannot bankrupt the district either,” Norman said, adding that she opposed the recall drive against Moulton and Gera, whom she described as “conscientious men.”

The new contract includes a salary schedule that the teachers proposed so that, beginning next year, teachers will move up on the pay scale for every 15 rather than 18 additional college credits they complete.

Insurance Grievance

However, increases in health insurance premiums, which the district had previously paid, must now be paid by teachers. The California Teachers Assn. has filed a grievance on that issue with the Public Employment Relations Board on behalf of more than 50 teachers, who contend that the board action breaches an earlier contractual agreement.

Gera said there was a “gentleman’s agreement” between the board and negotiators for the teachers that this provision of the contract would only apply for the first two years of the three-year contract, which will end this summer.

But Murasko said that was never the teachers’ understanding.

Parents who had urged the board to accept the panel’s higher salary recommendation formed a watchdog group, Accountable Decision-Making In Our Schools (ADIOS), which picketed outside district headquarters for several weeks to protest the board’s decision.

“Fact-finding is great for the side in whose favor it falls,” said Moulton, a deputy sheriff with the county who has served on the board since 1983. “Four percent was all we could come up with this year. We were not caving in to the demand of the union.”

Flyers Sent

ADIOS, Kenn Millers recall group and the teachers association mailed out informational flyers to 4,000 homes in the district last week, Murasko said, adding that disclaimers were included saying that the groups do not necessarily support one another on all points.

Since early May, many of the district’s tenured teachers have refused to put in extra hours after school, leading clubs or organizing special events, to protest the board’s approval of the contract, she said.

Mary Valencia, who will be on the teachers’ negotiating team for next year’s contract, was among at least 15 teachers who quit their advisory roles with after-school clubs, Murasko said. The Spanish club she was leading at Temple City High School was preparing for a Cinco de Mayo performance when she left. Her application for a summer school job, which she has taught for three years, was denied about three weeks later, Valencia said.

“I think it was totally retaliatory,” she said. Valencia and two other teachers, Don Bickel and Beth Espenschied, plan to file a grievance with the Public Employment Relations Board, alleging that they did not receive summer school assignments because of their outspokenness, said Tom Brown, an official with the California Teachers Assn. who represents Temple City teachers.

Teacher Out of Job

CTA has already filed a complaint for Mary McNevin, a probationary teacher who was told she would not be needed next year, Brown said. McNevin was one of the teachers who filed the grievance about the insurance contending that the district violated contractual agreements by refusing to continue paying increases in health insurance premiums.

Murasko said teachers are afraid to criticize the administration because they fear that they may not get the assignments they prefer.

District officials would not comment on the teachers’ allegations, saying they are prohibited by law from discussing personnel matters. Bosson would not comment on these or any other allegations raised by the teachers and parents.

But Norman, a trustee since 1977 who is deciding whether she should try for a sixth term in November, said “there is no attempt at intimidation whatsoever.”

Better Communications

Bria, who declined to take a position on the recall effort, said a more informal line of communications with teachers needs to be set up in the future.

Board members rejected charges by recall proponents that they are unresponsive to the public.

Gera said that board meetings are an opportunity for the public to make comments, but that the board should not have to explain all of its actions at that time.

“We listen, we take notes. No matter what we say ,they boo us down so we quit responding,” he said.