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Minutes after Angela Stanley created a petition Friday supporting local teachers vying for a 3.26 percent cost of living increase, the union that represents them moved closer to striking.

Stanley, whose children attend Smith River School and Del Norte High School, has been following the conflict between the Del Norte Teachers Association and Del Norte Unified School District over salary increases. She said seeing district administrators “give themselves such a large pay increase’ and being unwilling to budge on a raise for teachers prompted her to act.

“I’m really frustrated,” Stanley told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday. “I’m not going to have my children be in a school that is not being taught by teachers. I’m not going to let the district get money from my students when they’re refusing to pay their teachers.”

Stanley created a change.org petition Friday with a goal of accumulating 1,000 signatures. Seven-hundred and four people have signed it as of Monday afternoon. In a message on the petition, Stanley said she emailed the list of people who have signed to the district administration “to let them see how many people support the teachers and will be keeping their students at home.”

About 20 minutes after the petition went live, Stanley told the Outpost, DNTA announced Friday that their members supported a strike if a settlement isn’t reached with the school district.

Stanley is not alone. Several parents have stated they will keep their students at home if teachers strike, according to petition comments.

“Our children are the future and their teachers deserve the world,” Klamath resident Jessica Clayburn wrote on Saturday. “The administration staff are not the ones on the ground working with students and it’s unfair they get a raise while our staff (doesn’t)…. I stand with them and will not be sending my child in the event of a strike!”

On Thursday, DNTA members voted 90.1 percent in favor of authorizing their leadership to call a strike, according to a Friday news release from the California Teachers Association. The news release quoted DNTA President Marshall Jones, who said in the last three years DNUSD has experienced a 47 percent teacher turnover and 25 percent are eligible retire.

Most are considering retirement due to “poor treatment by district management,” Jones said in the release.

Despite the news release, DNTA hasn’t notified district negotiators of its intention to strike, DNUSD Human Resources Director Coleen Parker told the Outpost on Monday. When the union does inform the district that teachers will strike, then the district will know how many substitute teachers it needs, Parker said.

The district reached out to the Humboldt County Office of Education about the possibility of recruiting substitutes, Parker told the Outpost last week. District administrators propose paying substitutes $366 per day if a strike occurs, according to Parker.

On Monday, however, Parker said the Humboldt County Office of Education declined DNUSD’s request for substitutes.

“They’re worried about depleting their sub pool for an unset amount of time,” Parker told the Outpost. “They don’t know how long (a strike would) be — if it was a day or two, that’d be one thing…”

DNUSD has a list of 87 substitute teachers, Parker said, 15 of whom are retired teachers. The district currently has 190 teachers and 215 certificated staff, she told the Outpost.

However, the Humboldt County Office of Education doesn’t have control over where substitute teachers in that county work, Coordinator of Personnel Services Stephanie Jackson told the Outpost. As long as they have a 30-day emergency sub permit through the State of California or a valid teaching credential, they can substitute anywhere in the state, Jackson said.

“The whole idea of one county sending subs to another county is not really a real thing that could happen because they’re not our pool of people,” Jackson told the Outpost. “They’re not our employees.”

Jackson said she did speak with Parker about Humboldt County subs potentially working in Del Norte if a strike occurs. However, Jackson said, Humboldt, like many communities in California, is short on substitutes as well as teachers.

Anyone who wants to sub also has to meet certain requirements through the State of California, even to obtain an emergency sub permit, Jackson told the Outpost. This includes being fingerprinted where ever they were going to work. That process could take about five to 10 days currently, Jackson said.

“If they were going to sub for us at HCOE, they would have to be fingerprinted with us — anyone who subs has to be cleared by the Department of Justice in that county or in that specific school district,” Jackson said, adding that HCOE has a fingerprint consortium of those who are able to sub anywhere in Humboldt County. “The second way, is to go to each district and get fingerprinted. We have no way of knowing how many subs are fingerprinted through the districts.”

Del Norte Unified School District is currently reaching out to its classified staff — anyone with a Bachelor’s degree who can qualify as a sub — Parker told the Outpost. The district can create multi-grade lesson plans for students at the kindergarten-fifth-grade level, she said. Parker added that it will be up to the district’s Curriculum and Instruction staff to determine how to coordinate substitute teachers and lesson plans at the middle and high school levels.

When asked about pay increases at the administrative level, Parker told the Outpost that none have received a raise this year.

“Administrators don’t receive raises until after their respective bargaining units and they receive parity to their bargaining unit,” she said, adding that principals will receive raises similar to that of certificated staff and classified management will get salary increases that are on par with what classified employees receive. “The contracts for Tom (Kissinger) and Jeff Napier and Jeff Harris were settled last year.”

Kissinger is the district's assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. Napier is the district's assistant superintendent of business. Harris is the district superintendent.

On Monday, Jones told the Outpost that most substitute teachers he’s spoken with support teachers.

“We’re hoping the subs would honor our picket line,” he said. “I’m sure there are some that are looking at it as extra pay, but a vast majority, they’re supportive of us.”

Substitutes teachers in Del Norte County aren’t contracted with the school district either, Jones said. He said it likely won’t be detrimental to them if some choose not to accept a job in the event of a strike.

According to Jones, the district hasn’t budged on its offer of a 2 percent wage increase for teachers. Of that offer, 1 percent is retroactive and the other 1 percent is contingent on enrollment staying static.

DNTA negotiators are lobbying for a 3.26 percent raise that reflects the cost of living adjustment in state funding the district expects to receive, according to Jones.

Earlier this month both parties met with a neutral third party to negotiate a resolution. That neutral third party is expected to draft a report that will be made public on Jan. 14, according to Parker.
After about 10 months of negotiations, DNTA members will be able to strike if a resolution hasn’t been agreed upon once the fact finder’s report is released, Jones said.

Meanwhile, though Stanley’s kids won’t go to school if teachers strike, she said she’ll let her 8th-grader and 10th-grader choose if they want to join the picket line. She told the Outpost she’s not yet sure if she’ll allow her 5th-grader to choose to picket in support of teachers unless he understands the implications of the strike.

“I will be out there with the teachers,” Stanley said. “I don’t work for the school district. No one in my household works for the school district. I’m just really frustrated for these people that spend so my time with my children.”

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