Irvine Teachers to Vote on Contract Offer : Education: Irvine teachers are expected to approve terms tentatively agreed to by union and school district negotiators.

IRVINE —  Teachers are expected to approve a new three-year contract Monday that includes a 6% annual salary increase and various benefits.

“I haven’t gotten any negative phone calls, so I think it’s likely to be approved without much opposition,” said Barbara Dresel, president of the Irvine Teachers Assn., the union representing teachers in the district’s 30 schools.

The tentative agreement comes after months of bargaining between Irvine Unified School District officials and union representatives. Negotiations began last school year but were suspended over the summer, and they led to occasional outbursts of anger and threats of a strike.

“There were definitely some teachers who were gearing up to increase pressure on the district,” said Sue Long, assistant superintendent for personnel at the district. Nevertheless, Long said, she and other district officials are satisfied with the contract.

“We feel very positive about the contract on several fronts,” Long said. In addition to the benefits package agreed to by negotiators for both sides, she said, the talks resulted in a strengthened commitment to cooperation on future decisions affecting education in the district.

Under the new wage scale, starting teachers in the Irvine district would receive about $21,000 a year. Salaries escalate with experience and degrees, topping out at about $53,000.

That scale, as well as the proposed raise, makes Irvine about average for Orange County teachers, officials said. Most districts negotiating new contracts are settling on raises of between 6% and 6.5%.

The district’s 1,000 teachers also won agreements to limit their supervision responsibilities for after-school activities and to establish an “insurance trust”--an insurance fund of about $5 million that will be supervised jointly by teachers and the district. Teachers will also be allowed to hold an election in the spring to determine which of the district’s schools will continue with a modified-day schedule, which was begun this fall.

Some teachers objected to that schedule--which cuts the school day short on Wednesdays and reserves that time for conferences--because, they said, the district arrived at it without consulting them.

“We’ve moved beyond that now,” Long said, and Dresel agreed.

“I think teachers were more upset by the way the district came up with the schedule than by the schedule itself,” Dresel said. The proposed spring vote will allow each school to decide whether or not to keep the schedule.

Teachers will vote on the proposed contract Monday and forward their results to the district by early Tuesday. The Irvine school board meets Tuesday night and could ratify the new contract at that session.