Teachers’ union signs contract for 3.5% raise

The Huntington Beach City School District and its teachers’ union are expected to vote on their new contract in coming weeks, officials said. On Wednesday they ended nine months of negotiations and signed a tentative new deal that is expected to pass without difficulty.

Teachers will get a 3.5% raise this year, effective as of last July, Supt. Roberta DeLuca said. For next year, they will get a pay raise equal to any state funding to keep up with the cost of living.

While the tentative deal still has to be voted on by the board and the members of the Huntington Beach Elementary Teachers Assn., officials on both sides said they didn’t expect much opposition.

The two-year contract, which is retroactive to last summer, lasts through July 2009.

“We’re very grateful that it finally did settle,” the union’s lead negotiator, Normajean Janssen, said. “It’s been a long and grueling year for that. It’s a decent settlement, but it’s disappointing that it took us the entire school year.”

Coming to an agreement got a lot easier when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released a new budget proposal May 15 that had smaller cuts for education, School Board President Celia Jaffe said.

“There were less severe cuts than was indicated in January,” she said. “It changed our budget outlook by enough to have something that was more satisfactory to the teachers.”

Last year, teachers got a 6.5% raise, but they cried foul when principals and superintendents got an extra boost after the negotiations closed. Board members said they were just trying to keep administrators’ salaries competitive in the area.

Teachers were suspicious of the district’s offers for most of the year because previous negotiations left a bad taste in their mouth, Janssen said. That slowed negotiations significantly, she added.

“I would really like to see the district able to rebuild trust between us and the administration again,” she said. “It is going to be difficult.”

The Huntington Beach City School District was the last in the area to finish negotiating with its teachers; Ocean View School District wrapped up in November with a 4% raise, and the Huntington Beach Union High School District’s current contract offers a 4.54% raise.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.