Emerald City teachers overwhelmingly ratify new contract with Seattle Public Schools

Teach­ers in Seat­tle have vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to approve a new con­tract with Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools, which means class­es will be held as sched­uled tomor­row and in the months beyond, the Seat­tle Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion announced tonight.

The agree­ment had three com­po­nents. All were rat­i­fied with large margins.

“Today was a great day for uni­ty in Seat­tle on behalf of Seattle’s school chil­dren.  SEA’s mem­bers have rede­fined what it means to advo­cate for chil­dren. We have pow­er­ful, uni­fied, res­olute mem­bers who will take their pas­sion for doing what is right for chil­dren to Olympia,” said Jonathan Knapp, SEA president.

“From day one of this bar­gain, it’s been about putting our stu­dents first,” said Michael Tamayo, an ele­men­tary teacher and mem­ber of the SEA Bar­gain­ing Team.

“We got many new things in our con­tract that will ben­e­fit stu­dents,” said Shelly Hur­ley, a spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher and mem­ber of the SEA Bar­gain­ing Team.

Accord­ing to a press release sent out by the Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion and SEA, nego­ti­a­tions with dis­trict admin­is­tra­tors pro­duced a con­tract which includes:

• Guar­an­teed recess for students
• Case­load limits
• Pay rais­es
• Racial equi­ty com­mit­tees at 30 schools
• Test­ing reforms and improve­ments in how teach­ers are eval­u­at­ed (test scores will no longer be part of teacher eval­u­a­tions in Seattle)

The team at NPI con­grat­u­lates SEA on hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly bar­gained for and won a fair con­tract. The gains secured by SEA will ben­e­fit teach­ers, par­ents, and stu­dents alike over the next three years, as well as the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole.

In going on strike ear­li­er this month, Seat­tle teach­ers demon­strat­ed their resolve to fight for bet­ter pub­lic schools. That’s the kind of courage we’d like to see from all of our state leg­is­la­tors. Too many recent leg­isla­tive ses­sions have end­ed with the adop­tion of under­whelm­ing, mediocre bud­gets that have left our chron­ic school fund­ing cri­sis unad­dressed. Real progress has sad­ly been rare and elusive.

It’s time the Leg­is­la­ture learned how to become pro­fi­cient at ful­fill­ing our state’s para­mount duty instead of rais­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion to an art form.

Law­mak­ers in both hous­es can expect to be hear­ing soon from par­ents in and out of Seat­tle who have been fresh­ly recruit­ed into activism as a result of the strike. New­ly-formed groups like Wash­ing­ton’s Para­mount Duty plan to chan­nel their ener­gies into grass­roots lob­by­ing now that school has resumed and teach­ers have won a fair con­tract. This is exact­ly what our state needs: more peo­ple orga­niz­ing and mobi­liz­ing for pro­gres­sive change to end our school fund­ing crisis.