What Teachers Saying about the Agreement - Uh Oh
A reader - Unhappy - posted this comment in another post:
The teacher's contract will impact every child within Seattle Public Schools. Yet, the contract is considered confidential. Only teachers and the district have seen contract.
SEA signed off on the Special Education Taskforce proposal. Now, they will force teachers to accept agreement by not having complete agreement available, only requiring 51 percent of teachers to vote etc.
He/She/They may have hit on something because over at the SEA Facebook page, there is a lot of this:
Vote NO to suspend the strike without seeing the full contract language! This is not what members have said loudly and clearly that they need. We need 48 hours, at least, to review the language before deciding to end the strike.
Apparently, teachers are being asked to vote yes to end the strike BEFORE they have read the entire agreement, not just a summary. Hmmm.
Teacher 1
So that’s the thing 95% of the SEA general membership voted to only suspend the strike once a TA was reached, reviewed and passed by the general membership which is our democratic right, to renig on that now would not only inequitable but a violation of the democratic process and just down right wrong.
Teacher 2
No I do not have 100% trust because they have burned us before we gave them the benefit of the doubt and they are trying to make us vote to end the strike before even seeing the TA.
Teacher 3
I am so sorry but I was doing this for student supports and I need this strike to be worth it before I leave the picket line.
Teacher 4
I cannot in good faith vote to suspend the strike without reading the tentative agreement myself. This is extremely upsetting. A teacher wouldn't expect students to read a book and take an exam on that same day.
Teacher 5
We need the proper time to review this . We are not agreeing to a summary or highlights .
Teacher 6
We’re not suspending the strike until we approve the TA. The membership spoke and voted a few weeks ago.
On the other hand:
I trust our bargaining team. They have been at the table for months, forgoing seeing their families, and they know what we are fighting for. This is not about trust in the district, this is about trust in those who have spent every moment in their waking hours fighting for us and what we have asked them to fight for.
Comments
Hustle
What I'm hearing from teacher friends is that they would like to read the whole thing but 1) don't they trust the bargaining team? and 2) the blowback from parents. So I think you are right.
Reader
I'm surprised I didn't hear about the proposal for the SPED/ELL inclusion in the MTSS model in GenEd until now. Was that a secret until now?
Cloudy
Seattlelifer
If it preserves ratios parents will be happy. If it doesn’t, how will students even know which school to attend if there’s no actual program where they thought they were assigned to, which they were assigned to because of the program? What a bunch of thoughtless dimwits. “Let’s change everything for no good reason, to prove we did something.”
Reader
Mitt