Teachers react to salary pact

Teachers in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District expressed mixed feelings about the tentative agreement between the district and teachers union, with some praising the salary increase while others called it insufficient.

On Tuesday, the district and union ended six months of negotiations with a plan that would give teachers an extra 1% retroactive pay raise for this year, followed by a total 19% increase over the next three years. The union’s goal, spelled out in its 1999 contract, is to bring teacher salaries between the mean and the 75th percentile for unified districts in Orange County.

The agreement predicts that Newport-Mesa will be the third-highest-paying district within three years, but some teachers expressed dismay with the small increase for the current year.

Sandra Kaszynski, a union representative for Wilson Elementary School, said the additional 1% wasn’t enough.

“I think the majority of teachers felt insulted by that,” she said. “It didn’t have anything to do with the money. It had to do with how much that 1% showed that they [the district] valued us.”

Union President Jim Rogers presented the agreement late Wednesday to a large group of teachers. Even though some had complained, Rogers said he felt optimistic that teachers would vote to accept the agreement later this month.

“We had a few people from different sites who were saying they had talked to their members, and their members were pleased,” he said. “There’s one thing people ought to understand, and that is that when you go into negotiations, you’re not going to get everything you want. There are some compromises that are going to be made.”

According to the union’s projections, the agreement wouldn’t bring Newport-Mesa’s teacher salaries above the mean until the 2008-09 school year. TeWinkle Middle School history teacher Todd Eversgerd said he and his colleagues hoped that Newport-Mesa would reach the mark sooner.

“I think what the ideal is, is to get us at least at the mean this year,” he said. “That’s what we were looking for initially.”

Paula Gibbons, a special education teacher at Ensign Intermediate School, said the planned 7.5% raise for next year might not be enough to keep pace with other districts.

“When you haven’t had a drink of water in two months and they give you a little sip, it looks like a lot,” Gibbons said. “But we’re at the bottom. Even with this 7.5% raise, we’re just at the mean.”

Still, Bob Kelly, the union’s vice president and a teacher at Newport Heights Elementary School, said the agreement was probably the best possible for the moment.

“What some of the teachers would like is parity with the other districts immediately,” he said. “But the reality of doing that, given the restrictions the district has in terms of a balanced budget, is probably something that can’t be handled that quickly.”