Seattle Schools' Teacher Strike - Day One
The Seattle Education Association is on strike against Seattle Schools, forcing the district to stay closed on what was supposed to be the first day of school.
Just to note, it appears that the Kent School District and its teachers union - after 8 days of their strike - have reached a tentative agreement. However:
The American Federation of Teachers Union of Washington, representing Kent’s custodians, maintenance workers and other employees, also voted over the weekend to strike against the district if the terms of their contract cannot be met, according to the Kent Reporter.
From SPS:
Seattle Public Schools will not start school as planned on Wednesday, Sept. 7, because of a planned work stoppage by Seattle Education Association (SEA).
Student meals will be provided at several school sites. Free sack lunches are available for all students and will be available for pick up from approximately 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. We are also reaching out to community childcare providers to help support our families. We expect after-school athletics will continue, even if there is a delay in the start of school. We will publish details about student meals, childcare, and additional resources. Please visit our Family Resource webpage for locations and details.
Seattle Public Schools respects our educators and staff. We are optimistic the bargaining teams will come to a positive solution for students, staff, and families. Negotiations with SEA are ongoing. We are looking forward to beginning school and welcoming students and staff for the 2022-23 school year.
Via the SEA's Facebook page, they say their bargaining team is back to work this morning (no word if that includes SPS).
My take is that, at this point, it's too early to be disrespecting each other but if it drags on, I predict the knives will come out.
Both sides are gingerly doling out information. Since we don't know how far apart or how close together the two entities are, it's hard to say how the action will proceed.
Would it be nice for parents to have some inkling of where they are? It would. Now would be a good time for the SCPTSA to step up for PARENTS and tell both sides to get this done.
Comments
Parents.
Yes, both sides could be more open about what is being asked for and costs. They know exactly what it will cost.
SPS could be more open about the money available but then you might just find out about their various pots of money. (FYI, they STILL have dollars from many older BTA and BEX levies. Yeah).
https://seattleschools.sharepoint.com/sites/SPSBoardOffice-O365/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2FSPSBoardOffice%2DO365%2FShared%20Documents%2FSchool%20Board%2FBoard%20Meetings%2F2022%2D23%2FFull%20Board%2F2022%2D08%2D31%20RBM%2FC02%5F20220831%5FPersonnel%20Report%2Epdf&parent=%2Fsites%2FSPSBoardOffice%2DO365%2FShared%20Documents%2FSchool%20Board%2FBoard%20Meetings%2F2022%2D23%2FFull%20Board%2F2022%2D08%2D31%20RBM&p=true&ga=1
I also note that Lowell Elementary is losing their principal, Sarah Talbot.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rP1spWoK9WyrEmHfCTCpmKxxY2oPLmHBEEA8295d2uY/edit
It is quite possible that teachers are asking for pay increase above state allocation which will create further financial difficulties for the district. We have a board - especially Rankin- that has been pushing to put all students of varying abilities into every classroom. Teachers are wary from the pandemic and they are telling us that the system isn't ready for such a change.
I predict that Jones will announce his resignation in about 6 months...as the district crumbles.
SOS
https://www.seattleschools.org/board-meetings/august-31-2022-regular-board-meeting/
The personnel report itself cannot be linked. Because NOTHING fights white supremacy like stopping taxpayers from seeing school district personnel changes. Bastards.
For those who can't be bothered, it says:
Name: JoLynn D Berge
Org Unit: Chief Financial
Job: Assistant Superintendent of Finance
FTE: 1.00
Effective Date: 9/10/2022
17 page personnel report. Lot of employees coming and going!
Dizzy
The districts impact funding algorithm explicitly includes metrics for the percentage of African-American students at a given school. The district's overall budget explicitly includes disproportionate funding based on race.
The district website calls this targeted universalism. By focusing resources on one racial group, the district claims this is helping all racial groups. In fact the definition of targeted universalism is that you target different types of resources to different racial groups depending on their specific needs, not that you target a single racial group above all others as Seattle Public Schools is doing.
By signing off on budgets that allocated funding based on race, JoLynn D Berge appears to have been violating Federal law. By signing off on staffing and placement based on race, Noel Treat appears to have been violating Federal law. Noel Treat is a lawyer and I'm assuming he knows what the law is. Perhaps the resigning administrators resigned because of their own potential legal jeopardy.
The district's long time head of complaints also resigned. For anybody filing a complaint against the district, I suggest tracking very carefully the response time and asking for an outside investigator as soon the district misses its deadlines.
The districts proposed contract related to special education as posted on the SEA website with edit tracking was a non-starter. The district was clearly asking teachers to trust the administration regarding staffing levels for special education in the general education classrooms. This was bad for the teachers, bad for all students, and bad for special education students. The idea that the administration would even propose such a contract would appear to be either an act of bad faith, total incompetence, or total arrogance.
I never said that. I said that it appeared that the district was replacing several departing white principals with non-white ones. I didn't say they were hiring on the basis of race.
That's a very big charge to make about the district. I think a person could pull together the stats over hiring over the last 2 years and see some trends about race and hiring in SPS especially in school and district leadership. But is it directed? I couldn't say.
On March 6 of this year, you wrote,
"Recently, I noticed an uptick in the hiring of Black principals in SPS. I sat down and went through looking for every school's principal (tedious because SPS does not require principals to be on the homepage for their school's webpage nor have their own listing in the staff listings).
The results mirror what the district and the Board have been pushing as part of the initiative for Black boys in SPS.
…
The numbers for high school are striking - 8 Black principals for 15 high schools and 6 Black principals for 14 middle schools."
I apologize if it seems I misrepresented what you wrote; that was not my intention. I wrote my post according to the numbers in your earlier reporting and did not mean to suggest you had reached any conclusions regarding intent. Hopefully, your numbers were off by an order of magnitude, or last year was a temporary fluke, and the numbers will look different this year. Unfortunately, I believe if you were to run a report of the very highest-paid administrators in Seattle Public Schools last year, the overrepresentation based on race would be similar to the numbers you reported for black middle school and high school principals.
According to EEOC.GOV, "Under the laws enforced by EEOC, it is illegal to discriminate against someone (applicant or employee) because of that person's race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information… The law forbids discrimination in every aspect of employment… It is illegal for an employer to make decisions about job assignments and promotions based on an employee's race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information."
The way I read the law as a layperson, it's ILLEGAL TO EITHER HIRE OR ASSIGN jobs "because of a person's race."
Perhaps staff could argue that because the district's strategic plan prioritizes students based on race, instead of hiring and/or assigning principals based on race, they are just doing it based on the strategic plan making race a valid job requirement. Or perhaps the district is applying targeted universalism to middle school and high school principal assignments whereby it believes that assigning principals based on race is helping all aspiring principals of all other races equally. Perhaps there is another valid reason. Or perhaps it's simply blatant discrimination in violation of federal law. Maybe the new head of HR, Dr. Sarah Pritchett, will read this and look into it.
Regardless, I would not trust Seattle Public Schools if I were a teacher. The district proposed placing special education students in general education classrooms without specifying staffing ratios. I believe this was absurd and provided an excellent justification for the teachers going on strike, even if it is only cover for the teachers wanting more money, as some allege. The net effect of the failure of negotiations is that I’m working with my kids at home, which I don't appreciate and is certainly not equitable.