Since it seems neither the School Board nor the School District is in any hurry to draw public attention to its failing attempt to bring District employees up to L.A. County’s median salary figure, I guess it is left to me to report facts on why they have failed to reach their goal.

There are 48 unified school districts in Los Angeles County. Culver City, with 6,650 students enrolled, is one of its smaller school districts.

Annual Reports

In 2011-12, the California economy was still in the doldrums due to the earlier sub-prime mortgage lending crisis bursting the California housing bubble. The future seemed bleak.

To help balance their budgets, four L.A. County districts actually cut district salaries, 39 others gave no raises and only three districts increased their staff’s pay. One was Culver City which gave a modest 2 percent retroactive raise. This was the state of the state’s economic conditions when our district first set out on a salary program to raise its staff salaries to the combined median level of all the other 47 USDs in LA. County.

In 2012-13, with the County’s economy still tanking, El Rancho USD cut its salaries. Only 10 districts– including Culver City–negotiated raises, averaging 2.2 percent. Over 70 percent of the 48 USDs (34) didn’t negotiate any staff raises that year.

The county’s J-90 report on salaries that year listed Culver City as being 2.28 percent below the County’s median salary. Again, the School District only gave its employees another across-the-board 2 percent increase.

In 2013-14, the economy began to pick up, and Gov. Brown laid out his new state educational funding program—Local Control Funding Formula. Most every district in L.A. County gave raises that year. Only eight didn’t. Culver City bumped up its annual raise percentage to 2.5 percent, but that amount did not keep pace with the other 38 unified school districts in L.A. County, which gave raises averaging 3.2 percent.

In 2014-15, the third year of our district’s salary increase program, 37 L.A. County districts negotiated higher salaries, averaging 3.9 percent. The District raised District staff’s salary by 5 percent. But the District still found itself 2 percent below the county median.

Last school year, 2015-16, the program’s fourth year, 42 districts raised teacher salaries an average of 4.7 percent across the County. Culver City negotiated another 5 percent raise only to find itself being shown in the County’s annual J-90 salary survey further behind the median salary, at 2.7 percent.

Hindsight Is 20-20

So looking back, it turns out 2011-12 and 2012-13 were the most favorable years for our District to have made inroads in bringing district salaries closer to the county median. But the District failed to take advantage of the county salary stagnation when over 90 percent in 2011-1, and almost 75 percent in 2012-13 of the other school districts were either holding steady or cutting salaries. In those two years, School Board members missed out when they decided to offer meager increases of 2 percent.

Top Five in County

In totaling up the raises given in the past five years, our District is ranked fifth in the County in salary increase percentage, at 17.64 percent. But even after shelling out millions of dollars in one-time savings from our Reserve Fund, negotiating district-wide raises of nearly 25 percent, and in some cases over 40 percent–when including certificated Step & Column increases– the School District still finds itself still situated well below L.A. County’s median salary figure.

Raises Trending Up

Two years ago, the School Board negotiated a 6 percent raise for this current school year and a more modest increase of 3 percent next year, in 2017-18. But with the current, trend of the other 47 County school districts increasing their own annual percentages of raises these past years from 3.2 percent in 2013-14, 3.9 percent in 2014-15 and 4.7 percent in 2015-16, it’s hard to imagine that this year’s 6 percent is going to significantly close our District’s median salary gap.

Sounded Good at the Time

How did we get on this seemingly endless roller-coaster ride? Who actually came up with this money-sucking monster of an idea in the first place? It all started with the Teachers Union president David Mielke suggesting that his members were feeling underappreciated on the job and that they felt they deserved to be paid at the County median. The School Board heartily agreed, voting five to zero and then, later, naively expanded the program to include all District staff.

An Unsure Future

Does the School Board members’ proposed, modest 3 percent increase for 2017-18 signal an end to the District’s costly trial-and-error attempt to reach their still elusive median salary figure?

At its current rate, it could take the School Board another five years and another $10M–all of what’s left in our District savings—to reach its ever-increasing, ephemeral salary goal.

Next time you see one of your child’s teachers, ask if he or she now feels better appreciated on the job. You just might be surprised by the answer.

Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com