WA State Teacher Walk-Outs Continue

Eleven school districts have had their teachers vote to walk out in protest over the lack of funding for public education in Washington State as well as lack of progress on a budget that meets that obligation via the McCleary ruling.

The latest teacher group is from Lake Washington School District who will walk on May 6th.  Lakewood and Stanwood-Camano, both in Snohomish County, walked out Wednesday. 

Today Anacortes, Bellingham, Blain, Mount Vernon, Conway and Ferndale will walk.  Next week sees teachers in Sedro-Woolley and Oak Harbor walk.  

As far as I know, discussions are continuing at SEA but no vote has been taken. 

As I previously reported, the Governor has announced the Special Session of the Legislature will begin this Wednesday. 

I note that this does not appear to be happening in other parts of the state.  I could find no mention of it in the Spokane Review with two stories in the Yakima Herald plus a scathing editorial against the action.

I wish the WEA had organized a one-day strike that actually took place on one single day - either at the capital or in teachers' home districts.  I think the impact would have been much greater. 

Comments

basket said…
Agreed. I wish WEA had organized a state-wide event. I keep hearing different opinions on the legality of this though.
4/24/15, 9:19 AM
dan dempsey said…
But back in the beginning the WEA leadership ignored concerns of many members and gave full support to the Common Core State Standards and the formation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Good luck with wishing about the WEA....
Top Down powerful decision making based on politics rather than data or logic characterizes the WEA.

--- To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data -- W. Edwards Deming

So perhaps "Teacher Strikes" are not legal .... but continually violating the constitutional rights of the k-12 students of WA State is apparently OK. --- go figure
4/24/15, 2:26 PM
basket said…
Agree with everything you say.

SEA has gotten even more top-down. Plans to have a walkout in Seattle have come from the membership, not leadership. Leadership (Knapp and Campano) appears to be doing everything they can not to rock the boat.
4/24/15, 3:22 PM
Anonymous said…
At one of the SEA meetings I attended, our Prez said that Seattle had the lowest turnout of any WA State teacher's union - I can't remember exactly his comment - but that we were the lowest of all in terms of solidarity and turn out.

I've always wondered if that was because we are the largest union with the greatest fear of retaliation? A smaller workforce tends to unite because they know each other and they are closer to administrators. Sort of like businesses where the owners have relationships with the workforce.

I believe Seattle teachers are fearful for their jobs. And I'm not going to jeopardize my position for a weak one-day walkout that will only ruffle the feathers of overpaid administrators who could give a rat's ass about teachers and parents.

Does that really make sense?
4/24/15, 10:06 PM
n said…
The comment above is mine. I had my name there but in revising it, captcha dropped it.
4/24/15, 10:07 PM
Anonymous said…
to what n said

I believe that for a lot of teachers in Seattle, lousy participation is rooted in the fact that almost everything SEA/WEA action wants us to do is some combination of lame, ineffective, pathetic, AND, the "organization" is some combination of last minute, disorganized, half assed, AND you could not intentionally design processes which are a bigger pain in the ass to participate in. When you start here, and then people do try to participate and they're chastised for not sufficiently participating in disasters they didn't make, the logical thing to do, given our crazy teacher jobs, is walk away.

Why didn't WEA "organize" this better? Because the insular, entrenched senior bureaucrats cla$$ running the show of WEA are most concerned with their access in Oly, hence not rocking the boat. From Thurs. until today the annual WEA Representative Assembly is going on, and most ?? of the 1000 delegates really haven't a clue about the selfishness & venality of that entrenched class - and how much that class has contributed to the rot of unions.

We're really in the looking glass - people won't participate for a lot of reasons (legitimate fear of retribution, inexcusable apathy, fighting an entrenched serf serving cla$$) ... and with people not participating, the

EntrenchedThrive
4/25/15, 11:19 AM
Anonymous said…
I just attended the WEA conference in Bellevue this past weekend and the mood in there was way different from last year, where people were scared or were not willing to rock the boat. Educators are finally tired of not receiving a raise, of being demoralized and demonized as being "bad" , of top down mandated reforms such as high stakes testing. There were horrific stories of students being denied access to middle and high school until they passed the SBA, of students being denied access to gifted programs because they opted out, of students in special needs classrooms who are in vegetative states being tested on grade level standards through the new alternate test. The tide is changing and I, for one, am grateful to the teachers in those districts for showing their anger and displeasure by walking off for a day. There will be many more. I will be voting to walk off in my school And if we don't do it in my school, I will still support my colleagues in other districts. One other item to come out of this conference was Business Item #18 that was voted on by the body and passed:

We, the membership, direct WEA to support local strikes throughout the state starting at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year. This action will occur if the Legislature fails to fund education.
Tired teacher
4/26/15, 10:40 AM
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