Union holds off on offer

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District offered its teachers a 3% salary increase for the current school year but has yet to reach an agreement with the teachers union, district officials confirmed Monday.

At last week’s school board meeting, hundreds of teachers picketed outside the Newport-Mesa headquarters and then crammed the boardroom to air their complaints to the trustees. A number of teachers, addressing the board, said the district had offered them a 2% increase for the 2006-07 school year and later augmented the deal with an additional 1%.

Asst. Supt. of Human Resources Elizabeth Novack declined to verify the numbers at the time, but at Monday’s districtwide PTA meeting, she and Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard said the figures were correct.

The teachers union has been in negotiations with the district for several months. In January, district and union members released a report showing that Newport-Mesa paid the lowest teacher salaries of any unified district in Orange County.

Union President Jim Rogers, who attended the PTA meeting along with a number of Newport-Mesa administrators, expressed optimism that the district and union could work out an agreement.

“I’m a firm believer that this will pass,” he said. “We will get by it and move on.”

The district offered a 2% salary increase to both of its unions — the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers and the California School Employees Assn. — on the salary schedule for 2006-07, then offered another 1% last spring when revenue provided extra funds. The California School Employees Assn., which represents classified workers, accepted the total 3% increase, but the teachers union did not.

Cindy Means, the president of the classified union, said her colleagues had considered the raise small at the time, but still opted to take the district’s offer.

“At the time we negotiated, we wanted to get our benefits taken care of and we wanted to be in a good place,” she said. “At the time, that’s what the district had, so we went ahead and agreed on it.”

She added, however, that she supported the teachers in their campaign for higher pay.

“I just wish them luck,” Means said. “We need our teachers.”