Update: Ramona Teachers Face 13% Pay Cut, Health-Care Hike Under Plan

Updated at 2:40 p.m. June 6, 2012

Ramona teachers would take an immediate 13 percent pay cut, work nine fewer days a year and pay as much as $5,800 a year for their health benefits under a proposal to be presented at Thursday night’s school board meeting.

According to schools Superintendent Robert Graeff, the 6,100-student K-12 district hopes to save $2.75 million a year with the actions, which would take effect July 1 if OK’d by the Ramona Teachers Association.

“It’s the last thing left we can do,” Graeff said in a phone interview Wednesday, noting that further layoffs are not possible since the mid-May deadline has passed.

“This is all we got left” to keep the district “solvent,” he said.

Graeff said reopening contract talks with the RTA was made necessary by the governor’s so-called May revise of state revenues and Assembly Bill 103 passed two weeks ago.

A public hearing is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at the Wilson Administrative Center, 720 Ninth St. 

Graeff said he expects contract talks with the teachers union will begin next week—the first such talks since October.

“We’re trying to invite [the union] into the conversation,” he said. “Since October, we have not had that conversation. It’s been nine months.”

In an email to Patch on Tuesday, a teacher in the district wrote: “I don’t know what to do! In talking to friends and parents, I have found that no one knows what is going on.”

The writer, whose name is being withheld, added: “Yes, it is a disaster for teachers; but what about the kids? I am so worried.”

Under the proposal, the school year would be shortened from 184 days to 175—the legal minimum.

Reductions in health insurance benefits also are being sought, with the district no longer paying 100 percent of such benefits.

Graeff said a contract has yet to be signed with its health insurers, but that  annual out-of-pocket costs for the district’s 300 teachers would likely range from about $900-1,000 for a single employee to about $5,800 for an employee with two or more dependents.

In addition, the district has proposed eliminating the cap on class sizes. But Graeff said this “is our invitation [to the RTA] to propose something different. I have no doubt they will counterpropose with a [class-size] number.”

With even larger state budget cuts looming, the Ramona Unified School District is reeling from a series of financial blows that led to 17½ teachers getting layoff notices this spring. Graeff said classroom budgets and school programs have been cut “dramatically” and bus routes reduced as well. 

In late May, the state said the 10-school Ramona Unified was among 11 districts in San Diego County reporting “perilous financial situations.”

No districts in San Diego County issued negative certifications in the second interim report to the state, but 11 gave a qualified certification, including Ramona.