What Should Seattle Parents Feeling about the Teachers Strike?
Over at the West Seattle Blog, it's interesting to read the comments which seem to fall in two camps - teachers are greedy and should get back to work AND "you don't truly know what teaching is about and the hard work that is involved."
Here's some of them:You can’t effectively play both sides of the argument —“oh you knew it was a low paying job” and “you’re only in it for the money. Seriously? Do you even hear yourself? And these confusions/misunderstandings/ willful ignorance about how unions work.
There also is a lot of finger-pointing about who is to blame for getting to this point. SEA says the district didn't come to the table, time after time and SPS says the teachers didn't want to start until August. I have no idea who is right. Maybe both?
Also there was this:
I’m so ashamed of SEA teachers right now. Went to Maddison School with my special Ed student- the exact student allegedly being rallied around- to gain access to the student resources set up at the front of the school. WE LITERALLY HAD TO CROSS A PICKET LINE OF TEACHERS. Shameful- taking pictures of themselves and not once helped or looked at how upset my child was getting. No one cared. One teacher went so far as to bump into my child because they wouldn’t stop walking to let us through TO THE CHILD RESOURCES.
To which I replied, "This is how SPS itself set up the process. They didn't have to but they want parents to have to walk through teachers." I hope NO teachers are being unpleasant to any parent or child at ANY school but SPS could be setting up at community centers around the city and yet they didn't.
One SPS teacher who voted AGAINST the strike:
I am a SPS SPED teacher and voted against striking. Here are some of the simplified why's:
1. I believe we had enough agreement to reach a TA, return to school and continue to negotiate with a mediator the few sticky points.
2. Much of the SPED concerns are the school board to make policy. The union is to represent teachers not students. It is a teachers union
.3. It is illegal for WA ST teachers to strike
.4. Work to Rule is a legal alternative: school starting on time, teachers working to the letter of their contract, continuing negotiations, reduced stress for all
.5. Most instances I have observed when inclusion has not worked well is, the student is not ready for inclusion, the SPED teacher and gen ed teacher have not planned well together, the lack of principal support, lack of the SPED site supervisor’s support..
6. The I in IEP is for individualized. No one contract can address all the “I’s”. There is no magic number of service minutes, ratios, support staff. I could continue but will end with asking leadership on both sides to check their egos at the door and return us to school.
PS teachers salaries are very confusing based upon degrees, years of service, 180 days of work. You can find the salaries of all school staff in WA ST, including all the above info. Just google Kitsap Sun teacher salaries. They are now showing the 2019-2020 school year data.Cheers
That "it's illegal to strike" is gonna come to a head at the next Board meeting because will the Board be asked by the Superintendent to vote on issuing an injunction against the teachers? To note, the Board doesn't HAVE to approve a contract but I have never seen that happen.
And that "work to rule" item? I know of no teacher who works their contracted hours. So a teacher doesn't finish grading papers at 4 pm and just walks out?
It is disturbing to see comments like this (bold mine):
From what I understand the sticking point is the number of support staff needed to give special ed and esl kids the extra support they need in an inclusive classroom. Does anyone know how many extra staff the union is asking for? I ask because hiring anyone is extremely difficult right now, let alone dozens or hundreds of qualified staff. It seems to me this inclusionary push is a good idea, but something to be phased in over time as resources allow.
There just aren’t a lot of qualified people sitting around available to hire right now. And before someone says “higher pay will attract candidates”, firstly that won’t happen overnight, and secondly, that would just rob neighboring districts and harm the kids in those districts.
I had to tell this person that Sped kids have FAPE rights (Free Appropriate Public Education) and have been waiting - for years and years - for their FAPE.
Also, if one district pays better than another, that's not robbing a district of staff. That's called competition.
I found this a telling comment:
This is not about pay raises. This is about special education supports so students get the help they need to be successful. This is about school counselors so students get the mental health support they so desperately need. This is about school nurses in every building every day. This is about Ell students getting more than a sliver of what they need to be successful while they struggle to learn a new language in addition to the rest of the curriculum. This is not about pay raises. The offered raise is not the sticking point.
Kent School District and their teachers have negotiated their contract and school has started. One Kent teacher had this to say and I REALLY hope this is not what happens with Seattle Schools teachers:
I’m disappointed tonight because I feel that I‘ve been used by my union to hoodwink the community. I sincerely believed I was out on the picket line to help improve my students’ mental health. That it wasn’t all about the money. After reviewing the contract tonight, it feels as if money really was the point. I’m sorry for those we let down. I hope I can find my own ways to better support students in the coming days.
Another Kent teacher said:
It was all about money/wages, the number one listed grievance for Kent teachers was loosing (sic) staff to surrounding cities due to pay.
Still another Kent teacher:
They are still bargaining the mental health supports. The case loads for our sped teachers were lowered. The civility, non discrimination, and grievance language was left alone, and we got a raise that is comparable to surrounding districts. Mental health is a huge issue that can’t be “solved” in 9 days, but I feel optimistic that there will be an MoU that addresses those concerns. KEA isn’t just gonna let that go and neither will we.
Comments
Zzzz
First, let me say that no one I talked to regarded pay as an important reason for striking. To a person, the issues concerned SpEd and, especially, ELL inclusion. The district has decided to move SpEd and ELL students into regular classrooms without regard for supports. In the case of ELL, the district forced a trial run of this approach last year when it moved ELL students, fresh in country, to my former school without any language training. Spanish-speaking students ended up in a health class, which is a graduation requirement, without any translation support. The teacher, who is not a Spanish speaker, was forced to use Google to translate her materials and relied on a bilingual student to support the new students. Not ideal. Teachers see this as a foretaste of what's to come.
The district, instead of coming up with a rational, gradual approach to fostering more inclusion has done things like simply eliminate course numbers for ELL classes. That makes it impossible to have ELL support classes for students who are inexperienced English-language speakers. The district's approach has been to strong-arm the school into conforming to its idea of inclusion.
The teachers likewise worry about the forced inclusion of students with significant cognitive challenges. The district seems to have no intention or even capability of providing an adequate number of IAs or co-teachers.
One thing I heard repeatedly was that without support teachers would have increased workload pressures and would also have difficulty in differentiating instruction in the classroom. This affects everyone's learning in the classroom, even fairly independent learners.
How should parents feel about this? It's not for me to say. I would, however, point out that chaos in the classroom and schools is not something anyone should welcome. I get why parents want to pull their students from public schools and enroll them in private schools. I've been retired for several years now, and I sometimes get the feeling that SPS has gone downhill since I've left. Covid did not help. One sentiment I heard repeatedly today is that now that they're getting on their feet post-Covid the district should not be imposing radical changes in the classroom.
Another sentiment I heard was that there has been huge turnover at central administration. Educators don't have confidence that the new administrators know what they're doing.
For my part, I also would level blame on the school board. This board seems far, far worse than the Peter Maier/Steve Sundquist crew. Right now Michael DeBell, with whom I didn't always agree, seems by comparison a pillar of wisdom. I hope that parents can be persuaded to vote out many members of the current board and vote in more qualified candidates. One can always hope.
DE
"The budget book is 223 pages long and I do not expect anyone (except my fellow board directors and I) to be versed in it. Sometimes your suggested cuts will not be enough money to have impact, or there are legal restrictions to how the money can be spent. ESSER money is a good example of that. It's time bound, as in it must be spent by a certain date and has rules for what it can be spent on. It's also already reflected in the 22-23 budget, SPS is not just sitting on "cash." Details here: https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/finance/budget/ (see ESSER link)
I'm also poring over our budget to see where else SPS can "squeeze water from rocks" as my colleague Director Rivera Smith described in her statement. I've been talking to our State legislators about how much financial pressure SPS is under and what are creative ways we can address it for SPS and other districts in our state."
Even after following SPS politics and this blog pretty closely for a year and a half, I confess I'm confused. Is it that SPS is sitting on cash, as SEA suggests, and just wants to hoard it? Is it that SPS is broke and doesn't have the money to do any of the things SEA (and many parents) want? Why are the basic narratives so divergent?
And if SPS isn't sitting on cash, why the hell aren't they communicating more clearly their financial constraints? The SEA is doing a pretty decent job on their messaging (the strike is to protect staffing for SpEd and ELL students and to rectify salaries of underpaid paraprofessionals). And SPS is saying nothing (even more emphatically so now that their communications have become more neutral and less passive-aggressive toward teachers over the last day or so).
Why are this district's finances so opaque and hard to understand? Is it really so complex that it can't be explained to reasonably intelligent, reasonably engaged ordinary people?
Oh, and also, where has the Superintendent been in all this?
Check out Liza Rankins FB page. Her most recent post is *such* a bureaucratic response: see the policy on educational philosophy for inclusion, and a link to meeting minutes. THATS IT. Which tells me 1) she is fully in support of the new ELL/SpEd proposal everyone hates and 2) she doesn’t care enough to explain how that’s worth forcing a strike. And 3) we could be here a very long time.
The districts finances are terrible - Danny Westneat detailed the woes in a column this morning. The budget is cratering under enrollment declines and the district is doubling down by pushing more standardization of education for students who need extra services (see also HCC, RIP).
Rankin also says current SpEd services are racist, but fails to see how on balance, crashing the district serves students FFEJ.
Forrest for Trees
The total absence of the Superintendent is damning. He's clearly a terrible leader, who is only there because Chandra wanted him.
But then the silence of the rest of the school board is damning too. I know some people think Vivian Song Maritz and Lisa Rivera Smith are doing a good job. But right now they are, whether intentionally or not, going along with everything Liza Rankin and Chandra Hampson want. There is no public difference between any of the board members, at least not right now.
The board can't stay quiet forever though. Next week's board meeting should be pivotal. Parents should pack the room and demand the board and superintendent provide answers, changes, and if it hasn't happened already, a settlement with SEA.
Fix SPS
Eckstein Parent, I'm gonna start with your last comment. Yes, despite the "leadership" of Brent Jones, where is he in this? I'm glad he delegates but this is a strike and the entire school system is shut down. Nothing for parents?
Is SPS sitting on a pile of money? Yes and no. They DO have a rainy day fund which I believe is required by the state. However, my believe is and has always been that they have stashes of money here and there and by doing so, they are able to say they don't have money. I think this is probably what SEA is talking about.
However, whenever they have some new initiative or have a hiring spree at JSCEE, they always seem to find the money. Always. That's why I don't believe their cries of poverty.
I do understand that Special Education is not fully covered by state/fed funding and IS a huge cost to districts. But those students are entitled to FAPE.
I also know -for a stone-cold fact -that the district STILL has dollars in capital levies that are decades old. I do not understand why every levy isn't spent down. Maybe that's their growth/slush fund for capital. I just think it weird to see the district still with dollars from, say, BEX V.
I sat in on yet another "Ad Hoc" Committee meeting today (that was supposed to be half-hour and naturally Hampson had to blather on and on - I left about 50 minutes in). That little endeavor is taking money AND huge amounts of time from the three committee members. So if you believe they are spending much time worrying about the strike, I'd say you are wrong. (Yes, I know that Rankin and Song Maritz have made statements but what about Hersey? You know, the Board president? He and Jones appear AWOL.)
You need a new Board.
Seems about time for a major intervention at the least on the District Admin and BoD sides.
The plan to do more inclusion than we already do is a terrible plan unless it comes with a massive increase in staffing.
I was in a gen ed high school class last year that had 10 SpEd students. These kids included two from the Distinct program who could not read or write, several from Access who were working anywhere from kindergarten to 6th grade level (in a 12th grade class). We had a couple more who could sort of do that level of work but had significant behavioral issues that made it hard for them to manage the class setting.
The gen ed teacher had no idea how to create adapted work for these students, nor did she have the time to do so. Our SpEd teacher did her best to create class-appropriate assignments that met these incredibly disparate needs, but she was swamped due to our lack of staffing which had really increased her case load.
So it was up to the three IAs who were in the class. None of us are trained to create adapted content on the fly, but we did our best to provide each student with a version of the gen ed work that they could manage. The reality is though that things often just kind of fell apart, despite our best efforts.
Increased inclusion without increased staffing (which clearly we won't be able to provide) is educational malpractice.
DE