SPS and Teachers Union Are Bargaining
Just a quick FYI about where both parties stand on negotiations.
From Seattle Schools:
District and SEA teams are collaborating over the summer to come to a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The bargaining process began on June 6, and we will negotiate a renewal of the SPS educators’ contract for the 2022-23 school year.- Ensuring schools and workspaces remain safe;
- Working together for racial equity across the district to ensure students of color furthest from educational justice have the support and resources they need to succeed;
- Increasing inclusive education for students with cognitive and physical challenges, as well as students learning English for the first time;
- Basing staff placement on student needs;
- Maintaining staff levels throughout the year and minimizing disruptions around school and holiday breaks; Providing high-quality educational standards, competitive pay, and improved professional development opportunities.
- Attracting and retaining quality educators from diverse backgrounds.
From the Seattle Education Association:
SEA's values for bargaining
- Meeting student needs takes adequate and student-centered staffing. This is particularly true for our students receiving Special Education and Multilingual Education services and for students with mental and behavioral health needs. SPS must increase staffing for Special Education, Multilingual Education, mental and behavioral health, nurses, and librarians.
- Caseloads and workloads must be reasonable and allow educators space to support our students. 93% of us are working more than our assigned or contract hours, and 25% of us are working 10+ additional hours a week. We must incentivize SPS to reduce workloads and hire additional staff to reduce caseloads. When our jobs require work outside of contract hours, such as mandatory committee meetings, SPS must acknowledge it by removing other tasks or recognizing it with additional pay.
- Great support, services, and teaching require great jobs. The cost of living in Seattle is skyrocketing, shortages of educators are getting worse, and our pay is not keeping pace. To recruit and retain great educators, SPS must pay all staff respectful wages and must address the unacceptably low wages for Education Support Professionals.
- Eliminating pervasive toxicity and racism improves our schools. More than half of SEA members have or have considered switching buildings, districts, or careers because of racism, discrimination, harassment, intimidation, bullying, or lack of respect. SPS and SEA must together develop a process to improve accountability for administrators and incentivize healthy and positive working environments. SEA members need increased power to address hostility in our buildings and programs. Our unity and strength are making a difference as we move forward toward the contract we need, and our students need. With two months to go before our contract expires, we’re exchanging proposals with SPS about improving supports for Multi-Language Learners, and member subcommittees on other priority issues are finalizing bargaining proposals.
Comments
Own it
Where did you get the "70% of teachers are white women with masters degrees?" As a teacher myself, I have no doubt that white women is the most common demographic for teachers, but I would like to be able to dig deeper on this.
Thank you
Michael A. Rice
Ingraham High School
And what Superintendent Nyland (I believe) basically explained was that while young people in Seattle are really diverse (especially kids in families that attend public school), older people lean way less diverse racially. So there's a shortage of adults of color who could be teachers to achieve parity with the demographics of public school students. So, we would need to import teachers of color or grow them. Which is hard to do since we RIF teachers with the lowest seniority (who tend to be more racially diverse) almost every year.
Hamster Wheel
SPS has an outdated affirmative action plan from 2017 with EEO stats. Teachers are over-represented by white women, and (lower paying) support staff is over-represented by racial minorities.
https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SPS-AA-Plan-2017-2021.pdf
Also Crosscut reported in 2019 that ~80% of teachers were white. Thanks for digging into the demographics.
https://crosscut.com/2019/08/disproportionate-number-seattle-teachers-are-white-diversity-increasing
Own it
Let’s return to actually educating all kids in things they will need, which includes historically accurate reflections of all people. Our schools are becoming more and more segregated and that benefits nobody.
Boo Hoo
I mention gender, class and race because SEA came out swinging against reopening last year for being “racist.” That coming from a block of educated white women is pretty rich. And yes Seattle is very white but weaponizing equity to “speak for” families that are over represented by BIPOC (about 50%) is not the point of anti-racism. It was self serving and it is time folks are honest about who they represent and why. There are surely blind spots for any group of folk by reason of their demographic background and acknowledging that would go a long way. Virtual schooling was a disaster that keeps on giving in our school system, and “class warfare” played by SEA is what dragged it on so long until the Governor mercifully put a stop to it.
Own It
Boo
Boo asks a very good question.
I'm fully expecting a lawsuit -at some point because Seattle Public Schools is making race based decisions. For example, certain groups of students are allowed private HC testing while others are not. The district and board decided that skin color determines who will and will not be permitted private testing for HC services. Seattle Public Schools had a lawsuit that was elevated to the United States Supreme Court due to race base decision making.