School board approves raises for district employees

The employees of the Victor Valley's single largest employer have new contracts -- almost.

The Hesperia Unified School District school board approved new contracts with teachers, classified personnel and administrators Monday night. The board approved the proposed contracts with a unanimous 4-0 vote. Board president Bruce Minton was absent due to illness.

Classified employees -- non-managerial staff not including teachers, members of the local chapter of the California School Employees Association -- approved their contract on November 2.

"Classified's going to receive a raise of 4.16 percent to their salary schedule," said George Landon, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services for the Hesperia Unified School District.

In fact, every group of employees -- classified, teachers and managers -- received a raise, although each group spent theirs in different ways.

"In our negotiation, we give every ... group a 6.53 percent increase to their compensation package, and we give each group the choice of how to apply their increase," Landon said.

"We got a little bit higher pay increase than what we would have gotten under our old contract," said CSEA chapter president Jean Campbell. "We also were able to raise our medical cap. ... There's no out of pocket expensive for premiums for this year."

They also chose to have more money in the paychecks of veteran classified employees.

And after months of lobbying, the CSEA successfully brought campus proctors fully into their bargaining unit as fully recognized classified employees, a change that increased the total number of CSEA union members in the HUSD by 10 percent.

"Up until now, they've been at-will employees and could be fired at any time," Campbell said. "The proctors have been sort of represented by CSEA for the past seven years, but haven't been really entitled to it."

The teachers union contract had not been approved by Hesperia Teachers Association members by press time, but the proposed contract that came out of negotiations also featured applying some of their increased compensation to lowering the costs of their benefits.

"Their net effect for salary for this year was 5.4 percent," Landon said. The raise is retroactive back to July 1, and the beginning of the current fiscal year. In all cases, there are smaller raises in the next two years. "They chose to take a percent and apply it to decreasing their out-of-pocket for health and welfare benefits."

Management in the HUSD is not represented by a union, but instead by a committee drawn from management personnel.

Classified managers received a 5.32 percent salary raise this year, while certificated (teacher) management received a 5.83 percent salary raise.

This year's negotiations were reportedly very positive, in contrast to some previous years.

"Negotiations can be difficult at times," Landon said. "This year we tried to take a different approach with not having an attorney or legal counsel at the table. Both sides were very principled in their discussions. There were times we had some tough discussions ... and we had to agree to disagree."

"We were very, very happy with the contract," Campbell said. "It was a long process, and it got heated a few times, but we were able to walk out of there with respect for one another."

The next meeting of the Hesperia Unified School District school board will be held Monday, November 26 at 6 p.m. at the Administration and Educational Support Center at 15576 Main Street.

Beau Yarbrough can be reached at 956-7108 or at beau@hesperiastar.com.