Teachers union, school district settle

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has signed a tentative agreement with its teachers union, following six months of negotiations during which the union sought higher pay.

The agreement, signed Tuesday afternoon, allots a 9.5% raise to teachers for the coming school year, with a combined 9.5% over the two years to follow. Union President Jim Rogers said that within three years, the raises should make Newport-Mesa the third-highest-paying unified school district in Orange County.

“We’re not quite at the mean, but we agreed that this had to be a process that required a few steps to get where we needed to be,” he said.

With the district and union having approved the agreement, teachers are expected to vote on it May 21. The school board has final authority to approve the pay raises.

Newport-Mesa’s teachers began demonstrating for higher pay after a January report, compiled by district and union officials, showed that they earned the lowest salaries in any unified district in Orange County. According to the report, the average Newport-Mesa salary was $64,292 — more than $14,000 behind the highest-paying district, Laguna Beach Unified.

The district gave teachers a 2% raise in this year’s salary schedule and offered them a 1% retroactive pay raise at the end of the year, but the union held out for a higher retroactive increase. The union’s contract, signed in 1999, expressed a goal of bringing Newport-Mesa teacher salaries between the mean and the 75th percentile for Orange County.

Tuesday’s agreement would give teachers a retroactive pay raise of 2% for this year, but that increase would only cover the months from February on — meaning that the district would spend about the same amount that it would have on a 1% increase for the whole year. The overall 2%, however, would factor permanently into the teachers’ contract when the new school year starts July 1. In addition, the district is offering teachers a 7.5% increase, which brings the total of the first scheduled raise to 9.5%.

Administrative services coordinator Laura Boss said the district could find extra money for teacher salaries by cutting programs. A team of administrators reviewed 36 Newport-Mesa programs this year and suggested trimming a few, although Boss noted that the study was not intended specifically to free money for salaries.

She praised the union and district for their work during the negotiations.

“It’s a difficult thing to go through, and they’ve done a stellar job,” Boss said.