Strike update: Talks resume Saturday
Day 2 of settlement talks between the Capistrano Unified School District and its striking teachers ended Friday afternoon without a resolution, although the two sides were expected to reconvene Saturday afternoon.
District and union bargaining teams met for about four hours Friday, ending just after 6 p.m., but had nothing to report, a union spokesman said.
Teacher pay cut
How it breaks down:
Permanent – 6.68 percent
- 3.7 percent: Salary cut
- 2.16 percent: 4 non-instruction furlough days spread over this year and next
- 0.82 percent: Employees pay more for health insurance
Temporary – 3.44 percent
- 2.7 percent: 5 furlough days spread across this year and next; all instructional days
- 0.74 percent: Suspend for 6 months step and column raises
Dispute: Teachers want the district to make the entire cut temporary, among other concessions.
2008-09 O.C. teacher base salaries
- $76,349: O.C. average K-12 salary
- $76,384: Capistrano average salary
- $91,127: Highest average (Laguna Beach)
- $70,336: Lowest average (Orange Unified)
With pay cut by 6.68 percent, average compensation (using 2008-09 figures) would drop to $71,281, ranking Capistrano Unified 10th among the 12 unified districts.
Note: Many O.C. districts are also taking furloughs, so their salary figures will also change.
If an agreement can’t be hashed out this weekend, the district’s teachers union says teachers will return to the picket lines Monday. It would mark the third day of a strike that has crippled programs and activities across Orange County’s second-largest school district and pushed student attendance rates down to about 30 percent.
“No one was reporting any great progress, but the conversation will continue tomorrow (Saturday), which is a sign of progress,” Capistrano school board President Anna Bryson said Friday. “We remain hopeful, and 52,000 children are looking forward to having their education move forward smoothly.”
As the two sides met Friday afternoon at district headquarters in San Juan Capistrano, more than 300 students, teachers and parents gathered outside to stage a lively protest.
Chanting “Teachers united, will never be divided” while waving handmade signs outside the sprawling administration building, the demonstrators demanded that the school district resolve a bitter dispute over a 10.1 percent pay cut that was imposed on the district’s 2,200 teachers last month.
(Click here to view footage of the protest.)
“We totally understand in this economy we have to take a cut just like everyone else,” said demonstrator Colleen Harnett, an English teacher at Tesoro High School in Las Flores. “It’s the way they did it.”
Capistrano’s teachers union is not fighting the imposed 10.1 percent pay cut, but is demanding that the imposed cut have an automatic expiration date and that it be restored if the district receives additional, “unforeseen” funding over the next 15 months, among other demands.
The school district has offered to discuss the demands, but says it can’t legally agree to them upfront.
“It affects us a lot because the teachers aren’t there,” Ladera Ranch Middle School student Taylor Midland, 12, said, explaining how the strike has impacted her.
SCHOOLS REFINING OPERATIONS
Capistrano Unified schools spent Friday refining their operations and adjusting their lesson plans on Day 2 of a teacher strike that has sunk attendance rates below even Thursday’s levels.
Overall student attendance hovered at 30 percent Friday, although all 56 schools in Orange County’s second-largest school district remained open Friday.
Some students reported that the substitute teaching staff seemed to be more organized Friday.
At San Clemente High School – where a few classrooms were trashed Thursday by unsupervised students – students were separated by those who brought their own work to do, such as studying for upcoming college-level Advanced Placement Exams, and those who didn’t have school assignments.
“Yesterday was more chaos because it was the first day,” San Clemente High senior Alissa Vandenbelt said. “Today more substitutes were paying attention.”
Hundreds of Capistrano Unified teachers continued to walk their picket lines Friday, joined by students and parents.