Classes resume after weeklong work stoppage

In September 1985, 43,000 students in Seattle Public Schools (SPS) were held out of classes as approximately 3,700 educators went on strike in the city.

At that time, Pat Forest was working as a teacher at the former Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Madison Valley.
“I never, ever thought that we would have to come out begging again,” Forest said.

Thirty years and an additional 10,000 students, and 1,300 educators later, Forest — now a substitute for the district — was on the picket lines earlier this month outside Lowell Elementary School in Capitol Hill.

Forest said many of the sticking points that led to the strike in 1985 had again reared their heads in the negotiations.

“Thirty years?” Forest said. “And we’re still asking for the same thing? It doesn’t make sense.”

But this time, instead of a strike that dragged on for nearly three weeks, it appeared at press time that the two sides had come to a compromise that would have kids in class a little more than a week after their originally scheduled first day.

Agreement

On Sept. 15, SPS and Seattle Education Association (SEA) announced a tentative agreement on a three-year contract, with the SEA’s board and representative assembly voting to send the proposal on to the union’s 5,000 members for a vote the following weekend.

The representative assembly also voted to suspend the strike in the meantime, with teachers working on Wednesday in preparation of a first day of classes on that Thursday.

SEA approved the proposal by a large margin: certificated members, 83 percent; paraprofessionals, 87 percent; and office professionals, 96 percent.
The main points of the agreement included a guaranteed 30 minutes of recess for all elementary students; a base salary increase of 3, 2 and 4.5 percent, respectively, over three years (in addition to the state cost-of-living adjustment of 4.8 percent); and the creation of race and equity teams at 30 schools.

The two sides also agreed on new policies to reduce the amount of testing students face, additional staffing to reduce workloads on educators and to lengthen the school day, along with compensating teachers.

In a statement, SEA president Jonathan Knapp called the agreement a “hard-fought victory” for students.  

“This agreement signals a new era in bargaining in public education,” Knapp said. “We’ve negotiated a pro-student, pro-parent, pro-educator agreement. We really appreciate the strong support from parents and students.”

SPS has adjusted its school calendar to make up the six instructional days lost during the strike. The district opted to the three optional snow makeup days that had been built into the calendar (Oct. 9, Jan. 29 and June 24) and is now shortening mid-winter break to only Monday, Feb. 15, and Tuesday, Feb. 16. (The three remaining days that week are school days.)

Community support

Determining those school year changes is one of the main repercussions of a weeklong work stoppage. But from the moment the strike began, teachers expressed their frustration with having to leave the classroom, while making a statement about the importance of a fair contract.

“None of us really want to be here,” said Joe Bailey-Fogarty, a fourth-grade teacher at Queen Anne Elementary School. “I guess I’m here because I want to be in my classroom; I want to be with my kids. I don’t really feel celebratory about the strike. It’s not something I can hoot and holler and jump up and down about.”

Walking a picket line on the scheduled first day of school, Magnolia’s Lawton Elementary  School fourth-grade teacher Lyon Terry voiced his disappointment with having to miss the first day after days of preparation.

“It’s Sept. 9 — I should be in there teaching, and I want to be,” said Terry, the 2015 Washington State Teacher of the Year. “But I need to be out here, to support what kids need.”

Emily Schoolmeesters, a district occupational therapist who picketed outside of Lowell, said the impasse and strike wasn’t something either side had been angling for as a result of their discussions.

“Absolutely nobody wanted this to happen,” she said. “So I know that they’re doing their very best and they’re working really hard to come up with a reasonable contract. It’s time to make something happen.”

Forest said she appreciated the backing of the community, with people driving by and honking their horns in support.
It was a family affair for Gillian Jorgensen, her husband and their daughter Nora, who was slated to start the second grade at the school at Queen Anne Elementary.

“When you can see people, you know that they’re real,” Jorgensen said. “I think that’s really it. If you don’t see anybody, it doesn’t really count to some degree.”

Across the city, Soup for Teachers groups had formed to serve picketers and organize actions that parents and community members could participate in to show their support on a wider scale.

For Mary Whisenhunt, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at McClure Middle School in Queen Anne, the support from the community was crucial.
“Every parent, every community member that says something positive, it gives us strength to fight for better schools, better conditions for ourselves and our students,” she said.

Whisenhunt said she had the chance to meet with some of her incoming students earlier in the week before the strike began. Now, she’ll get the chance to start working with them.

“I got to meet some great kids,” she said, “and I can’t wait to teach them.”


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