by Caitlin Pham, News Editor
The Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD) recently announced its offer of a 3 percent raise instead of the 6.5 percent raise requested by the teachers’ union without any explanations as to why the district decided on that number.
Teachers are concerned about the lack of response from the district.
“Maybe if we knew why, we wouldn’t be so angry about it. It’s the fact that they’re not saying anything about it that makes it shady, for me anyway,” said biology teacher Emily Barro.
The district’s lack of explanation is compounded by the fact that the district received its highest ongoing funding increase since Proposition 98 in 1988.
“For a while they’ve been telling us they’re not giving us a raise because they didn’t have enough money, but since they just got a big lump sum from the government, which is bigger than normal, we are looking to get a little bit of that piece of the pie and just at the same ratio than we did before,” said English teacher David Theriault.
According to Spanish teacher Gerardo Gonzalez, teachers willingly took a pay cut during the 2007 recession, and let the district pay them with the 2006 salary schedule. It wasn’t until the 2013-2014 school year that teachers began to get raises again. For the past two years, they have received 4.25 and 4.75 percent raises respectively.
The district’s initial offer was a 1.75 percent raise and it was only after 14 rounds of negotiations that they raised it up to 3 percent, which is still less than half of what the teachers are requesting. Yet, according to Gonzalez, some district administrators have received salary increases of approximately 6 to 10 percent.
Teachers in neighboring school districts have received raises between 6 and 8.6 percent for this current school year.
“We go above and beyond here and we do our best for our students because we love them, and to have a request as small as ours turned away was disappointing, honestly,” said English teacher Sara LaFramboise.
If the teachers are denied the raise, tension and resentment might arise between teachers and the administration. Ideally, the two would have a nice, healthy relationship but this relationship could potentially become damaged if the circumstances change. Some teachers might even reconsider putting in overtime, especially if they are not being paid for these extra hours.
“We all want education and each and every student’s welfare to be the highest of priority,” said Gonzalez. “We do not want inferior teachers hired in the future, nor do we want to break down the teacher’s morale, to the point where they treat their daily routine as work instead of their passion.”
