Wednesday’s first day of school was cancelled by Seattle Public Schools after teachers voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike over salary, mental health assistance, and staffing ratios for special education and multilingual students.
The president of the Seattle Education Association, Jennifer Matter, said on Tuesday that 95% of returned votes backed a strike in the absence of an agreement with Seattle Public Schools. Contract discussions continued.
“No one wants to strike,” Matter said. “But SPS has given us no choice. We can’t go back to the way things have been.”
The district said in an email to parents that it was “optimistic the bargaining teams will come to a positive solution for students, staff, and families.”
As a result of the pandemic’s extreme strain on teachers and students, districts throughout the nation have encountered labour issues. After many tough years, school district finances have been stabilised by federal stimulus funds, and teachers’ unions have tried to increase salaries, resources, and working conditions.
According to Bradley Marianno, assistant professor of education policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, high inflation, a nationwide teaching shortage, and the goodwill teachers acquired through their pandemic-schooling efforts are all strengthening union aspirations.
“By all measures, school budgets actually look pretty good right now,” Marianno said. “So as teachers union contracts are expiring, they’re looking for new deals that essentially send more funding to teachers and more funding to students.”
Kent, a suburb of Seattle, was scheduled to begin classes on August 25, however the start date has been pushed back due to a teacher strike.
Last Monday, teachers in the biggest school district in Ohio, Columbus, agreed to a deal that included 4% salaries, plans for facility renovations, smaller class sizes, and novel paid leave benefits.
Last week, lengthy negotiating sessions in Denver culminated in a preliminary deal for an 8.7% raise for educators, a higher salary for first-year instructors, and an increase in district funding for health insurance expenses.
Earlier this year, teachers in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Sacramento walked out before receiving new contracts.
In Seattle, the school district has offered pay raises of an additional 1% on top of the 5.5% cost-of-living increase mandated by state lawmakers, as well as one-time bonuses for certain teachers, including $2,000 for third-year Seattle teachers earning an English language or dual-language endorsement. This is significantly less than the union’s stated demands.
The union opposes the district’s efforts to eliminate staffing ratios for special education students, arguing that doing so will increase the workload for both general education and special education teachers. The union also asserts that the district’s plans would increase the responsibility of general education instructors to serve bilingual kids.
Julie Salazar, a speech language pathologist, said in a video distributed by the union that she voted to approve the strike because caseloads for her and other special education employees are too high.
“We can’t serve our kids well and everybody knows it,” she said.