By Theresa-Marie Wilson

Tensions remain high between the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association and the district over contract negotiations. District Superintendent Jim Hogeboom said he agrees that teachers should have higher salaries, but what they are asking for will drastically strain the budget.
“I totally get the teachers’ frustration,” Hogeboom said. “It’s not fair. We have great teachers. I would argue that our teachers and staff are better than and work harder than other teachers.”
Teachers have been without a contract since June 2014. Through the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, the district has received about 10 percent more funding than it did last school year.
The union is asking to see a similar increase for teachers and is asking for a 10 percent bump in pay and the district has offered 2 percent.
Hogeboom said that the 10 percent, about $6.6 million, in funding is not a bucket full of cash. Money also has to be earmarked for the state-required Local Control and Accountability Plan ($2.3 million) as well as the State Teachers Retirement System and other new costs ($3.2 million).
“It is not money that we have total discretion on,” he said. “We don’t have 10 percent to just hand out. A 10 percent raise for the district would cost us $6.8 million ongoing. In order to do that we would have to lay off teachers.”
About 92 percent of the district’s unrestricted general fund money goes towards salaries and benefits, still teachers make considerably less than those in neighboring districts.
The average salary for a teacher in the Lucia Mar district for the 2013-2014 school year was $62,800, according to the California Department of Education. Teachers in the neighboring San Luis Coastal Unified District average $71,524 and in Santa Maria Joint Union High average $76,671.
In a previous interview, LMUTA Association President Donna Kandel said, “We want to impress upon the board that our teachers are united, our community is united, and it is time for them to do what is right and settle with the teachers. We have huge (salary) gap between our district and teachers in other districts. We are losing valuable teachers. New teachers are coming here and leaving after a couple of years. The board does have the money to help close that gap. It is just a matter of them changing their priorities and that is what we are asking them to do.”
Hogeboom said there is more to the financial story.
“We are still a low revenue district,” Hogeboom said. “One of the differences between the union and the district, and this even came out in fact-finding, is that we use different comparable districts. The reason we do that is so that the comparable districts we use are funded similarily to what we are. This year we got $7,189 per student, so we compare ourselves to districts in the area that get funded at about that level, primarily Atascadero, Paso and Templeton.”
By comparison San Luis Coastal received more than $10,000 per student and elementary schools in Santa Maria Bonita USD receive slightly more than $9,000 per student.
“It is fine to compare us to other districts, but it is really not fair in the sense that they are getting $2,000 to $3,000 more per kid,” Hogeboom said. “For us, if we were funded like San Luis Coastal, we would get $30 million more in our budget.”
Hogeboom said he believes that the new Local Control Funding Formula would ulitmatly create a more even financial playing field, but that LMUSD will never be equal to that of San Luis Coastal.
“If we were funded at the same level, then our teachers would have every right to say that we should be funded as such, and they would be right,” Hogeboom said. “It is an unfair system, and it stinks. It puts us at a disadvantage because we cannot pay what San Luis Coastal pays. We just don’t have the resources to do that.
“Even though we have those situations where we don’t have a lot of money and we don’t have as much as our neighbor, we made improvements in compensation a priority in our strategic plan four years ago,” Hogeboom said. “It hasn’t all come at once. When I got here in 2008, we gave nothing for like four years in a row, pretty much no one else did either. We also didn’t have furlough days, so teachers didn’t have to take cuts either.”
In school year 2012-2123 teachers were give a 2 percent raise and the following year, they received a 4.3 percent raise Hogeboom said. With the 2 percent currently on the table, that amounts to an 8.3 percent increase over three school years.
“Our goal is really 12 percent, but it is going to take us time to get there,” Hogeboom said. “I would argue that, within our means, we are doing a good job in trying to reach that goal.”
A Feb. 27 fact-finding meeting left educators and the district at an impasse, and the union is threatening to strike.
At the most recent Board of Trustees meeting, the board approved a contract for James Whitlock, a strike consultant, who will be compensated $155 an hour.
“If there is going to be a strike, then we have to prepare for it,” Hogeboom said. “I don’t know how to go through a strike; there is no one in our district who has ever been through a strike. Our responsibility is to keep our doors open, and we will do that. I think it is entirely appropriate and responsible to plan an eventual strike.”
A second fact-finding mediation session between union and districts representatives takes place on March 25.