Forestville teachers vote to strike over terms in new contract proposal

Ryan Strauss returned a call on Wednesday from the fish hatchery at Lake Sonoma, where he and his combined class of fifth and sixth graders had spent the morning saying goodbye to some special friends. After raising 50 steelhead trout eggs in their classroom at the Forestville Elementary School, the time had come for the students to release the pinky-sized fish into the wild.

Because steelhead are a protected species, the students - and teachers - had put in extra time, including on weekends, training and securing permits.

“It’s not like we’re a bunch of babysitters sitting around, asking for a raise,” said Strauss, a fifth-year teacher and member of the bargaining team for the Forestville Teachers Association, a 16-member union now locked in an increasingly bitter standoff with this small, 263-student school district. Angered by salaries they say are a third below the statewide average of $80,680, the Forestville teachers had entered into mediation, which collapsed last week. On Monday, they voted unanimously to authorize a strike.

But don’t expect to see teachers picketing in front of the district’s Gravenstein Highway campus anytime soon. The union and the district will now each choose their own “fact-finder.” Both parties must also agree on a third, neutral fact-finder. After each side presents its case, that impartial arbitrator will make a recommendation, which, though nonbinding, could help sway public opinion. Ten days after that, the teachers have the legal right to go on strike.

The picketing could start just in time for the first week of the 2019-20 school year, reckons Strauss. “Not exactly what a new superintendent wants to be walking into,” he said.

Phyllis Parisi, the current superintendent, is retiring in June, but not before playing some hardball on her way out the door. In January, the union’s bargaining team was scheduled to meet with its district counterpart. Instead of negotiating, the district dispatched an attorney to deliver its proposal, which included no salary increase for the teachers. Neither Parisi nor the district’s chief business officer attended the meeting.

“I was in the room that day, and I can tell you it was a huge slap in the face,” said Talia Kilburn, a kindergarten teacher and member of the bargaining team. “It felt like they were saying, basically, you’re ?worth nothing to us.”

Parisi believes that $80,680 statewide average pay figure brandished by the union is “very misleading.”

In California right now, she said, “the majority of teachers are of retirement age,” putting them at the top of the wage scale and, she believes, inflating the average. Over the next five years, “the average teacher’s salary is going to be lower and lower” - narrowing the gap between Forestville and the rest of the state.

Because Forestville’s teachers are, on average, much younger, it makes sense that their salaries would be lower than the state average, Parisi noted.

“If we have so many young teachers,” countered Gina Graziano, a music instructor who is the union’s president, “than they can afford to give them this raise,” to help them earn a living wage in one of the most expensive counties in the state.

Parisi points out that the average salary of teachers in Sonoma County, $63,316, is only slightly higher than that of those in her district: $62,658. It’s only close, Strauss said, because teacher pay throughout west county “is so far below average.”

The debate seems to boil down to how one defines “unrestricted.”

In a release announcing the vote to strike, the union claimed the district “is violating its own policy by holding on to 43.63% in total unrestricted monies.” There’s plenty of money in the budget for teachers’ raises, in other words.

Parisi says that characterization is “incorrect,” and that the funds the teachers are eyeing have already been earmarked “for very specific projects that need to be completed.”

Those reserves, she said, “are like a piggybank.”

Hogwash, said Graziano, who contends that the money for raises is available, but the district “just hasn’t chosen to budget for the teachers.”

Both Graziano and Kilburn are cancer survivors. The district’s health care benefits, which also come in well below the state average, are a major issue for them.

Kilburn is from Sonoma. “Luckily, I was able to live with my parents when I was diagnosed with breast cancer as a 34-year-old,” she said. “Had I not been able to live with them,” she paused, to collect herself, “I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

Before moving to west county, Graziano taught for 17 years in Martinez, in the East Bay. “When I had breast cancer,” she said, “I didn’t pay a dime.”

“This contract they’re offering us, or trying to impose on us, does not allow for any negotiations over this p----poor health care package that is bleeding my people.”

The contract proposed by the district would impose a three-year freeze on negotiations over salary and health benefits.

Said Strauss, “It’s really an unacceptable deal.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ausmurph88