As Always, I Say, Hmmm - Who Are These People?

One big thing that did happen when Seattle Schools' teachers went on strike in 2015 was the organic creation of the group, Soup for Teachers. From Seattle Magazine:

During the strike, groups of parents used social media to coordinate food, coffee and support for the teachers’ six days on the picket line. Some even joined the picket lines, citing common interests, such as a guarantee that students would get recess. 

In terms of galvanizing parents, the strike did its job. Part of its success came from the slew of attention it drew; after all, Seattle teachers had not gone on strike since the 1980s. What’s more, picketing teachers hit on hot-button issues in education. The Huffington Post, National Public Radio, The New York Times and other media covered the strike, drawing the attention of more disengaged parents. But parents specifically mentioned the teachers’ push for recess as one of the reasons they were drawn to support the strike. 

“[The teachers] weren’t out here just for themselves,” says Michael Muto, a parent of two Seattle Public Schools students, who became involved with education advocacy work as a result of the strike. “They really were out here for the kids.” 

Parents launched a Facebook group, Soup for Teachers—membership numbers more than 3,000—in an effort to supply food to the union bargaining team in the days leading up to the strike, and then to the teachers during the strike. Over the course of the five-day strike, one of the Facebook group’s leaders, Liza Rankin, built a Google map of Seattle’s 97 schools, including information about parent leaders at each school and the kind of help teachers needed. She and Soup for Teachers’ fellow administrators coordinated the delivery of food, drinks and picketing support to every school.

Here's my post on the group from September 2015.

Now there is a new group, SPS for Kids, that I saw in a Facebook thread about the negotiations. When I first went to the webpage, I could not find an "About" section nor did the link for emailing them work. I see that issue is now fixed. But this is all they say:

About how this site was made. We are educators, parents and volunteers — not web developers. We used AI tools to build the page and to help draft and organize the text. Every fact, figure and example on it has been reviewed, corrected and approved by humans who work in these classrooms, and we correct anything that turns out to be wrong. If you spot an error, tell us at spsforkids@gmail.com and we will fix it.

That's fine but who are you? I am a firm believer in the courage of your convictions and that's why I sign my name to everything I write. It's what Liza Rankin did with Soup for Teachers along with many other parents in that group. 

SPS for Kids is claiming something pretty big that they want parents to act on via sending emails to the Board/Superintendent and legislative electeds. They say (bold mine):

SPS added a special education redesign into contract negotiations that would affect 170 jobs: eliminate 100 instructional assistant positions and 70 more converted to “roaming” assignments. Removing these roles changes what happens in classrooms every day — how much gets taught, and whether children and staff are safe.

This redesign proposal should not be happening in contract negotiations. The current contract already provides a joint district–union taskforce. Ask the superintendent and the Board to use the taskforce to do a proper redesign and ask them to remove this redesign from the strike deadline.

Staffing is written as three numbers: students, teacher, instructional assistants. 10:1:3 means every ten students generate one teacher and three instructional assistants. The proposed ratio applies K–12. Today’s ratios differ by level — Extended Resource is 10:1:3 in elementary and 13:1:3 in secondary — but the proposal sets one number for everyone.

I will have to ask the district about this because yes, it does seem odd that towards the end of the negotiations the district would throw in an all-new ratio for Special Education.

They do make many good points:

- There is real disagreement about the size of the district’s budget shortfall, and about how special education spending should be counted within it. People who follow the budget closely have reached different figures, and we are not going to referee that here.

It does not change the point. Whatever the number is, it was created by a state funding formula that does not cover the cost of services districts are legally required to provide — and by a Legislature that capped the local levies districts had been using to make up the difference.

- What is new is that a specific redesign — with specific ratios attached — entered bargaining on August 11, tied to a strike deadline. Whether the district worked on it for two weeks or two months is beside the point: neither is enough time to settle a redesign of this scale inside a contract fight. The contract also provides for a joint taskforce designed for exactly this kind of change.

- They have a very good glossary of Special Education terminology.

Their ask of the district/Board:

- Withdraw the restructure from contract negotiations. Refer it to the joint SEA–SPS Special Education taskforce with published analysis and a public board vote.Settle the economic package separately

- Publish the delivery plan for IEP minutes at the proposed ratios
- Publish a per-school impact count
- Stop passing the state’s fractional student count through to school staffing

Their ask of electeds in the Legislature:

The structural failure is in Olympia. Two asks, both with numbers attached.

-Close the Safety Net “donut hole”— $30,371 per student, $12.76M a year in Seattle alone. Report whether SB 5263* actually closed the gap for districts
- Stop counting students with IEPs as fractional students

A couple of asides. First, this quote from the Seattle Magazine story:

“The Soup for Teachers page has busted down the walls between schools,” Rankin says. “People are realizing, ‘Oh, you had the same experience I did,’ or ‘This person is having this drastically different experience than me.’”

My turn to advocacy was similar. I had gone to a Board meeting to advocate for something in my region. I was astonished to hear the stories from speaker after speaker. It was then that I realized that parents need to hear what is happening across the district instead of being siloed in their school/region. I like to say that an action in one area will ripple out others. 

“It started about feeding teachers,” Rankin says. “Now, it’s about social justice.”

And that's where Rankin took a wrong turn to aligning with Chandra Hampson and SOFG and consultant AJ Crabill. There is nothing wrong with talking about and advocating for social justice but the route they all took was wrong and unhelpful and costly. 

There is a Soup for Teachers 2.0 group but I couldn't find a website and their Facebook page appears gone.