Over the last couple of weeks several Washington state school districts have conducted one day rolling strikes to protest the state inadequate funding of public education. Today, May 19, 2015, the biggest district in the state, Seattle, walked off the job and were joined by Mercer Island and Issaquah districts in solidarity.
Washington ranks 47th out of 50 for education funding and Washington’s supreme court recently ruled that Washington was indeed not fully funding public education, but turned the matter over to the state legislature to figure out how to fund it. Our state legislature is now in special session while they bicker about how to fund education. Republican representatives want to take money from other existing social programs while democrats want to fix the regressive tax system and make billionaire businesses and individuals pay their fair share of taxes. Meanwhile they also accepted an eleven percent pay increase for themselves.
The day began with various rallies at area high schools. I joined the gathering at Ballard HS where about five-hundred educators and family members congregated on the busy corner of 15th NW and NW 65th. We lined one entire block and filled four corners of the busy four-lane street. Hundreds of passing motorists honked and waved in support. We did this for two hours before boarding nine full-sized school buses for the Seattle Center where we gathered on the south lawn in the shadow of the Space Needle before marching one plus miles through the downtown streets to Westlake Center for another rally.
Said streets became a river of red as well over a thousand educators wearing red t-shirts marched holding signs, some of which read, Black Student Lives Matter, Pack ‘em Deep, Teach ‘em Cheap: Enough Already and shouting chants of, Support our students, support our schools. Or Hey! Hey! What d’ya say. Schools need funding right away.
When we shuffled into Westlake Center, a 0.1-acre (400 m2) public plaza in downtown Seattle, it was quickly wall to wall bodies. Seattle Education Assn. president Jonathan Knapp led the crowd in chants of, We are SEA! followed by chants of, we are MIA for Mercer Island and we are IEA for Issaquah.
A young man got up and spoke of the fact that foreign language students in Washington only have a fifty-three percent graduation rate compared to the overall seventy-seven percent rate because there isn’t enough funding to hire enough ELL teachers. I personally worked in a school with a high number of ELL students that only employed two ELL teachers who had to divide their time amongst all those students. They spend half hour in each classroom and I saw students sit at their desks not doing their work because they were struggling with the language and the one teacher has twenty-six students to tend to. This would certainly explain the low graduation rate.
When my oldest son started kindergarten in 1995/1996 voters were being asked to fund a new baseball stadium with all the bells and whistles. At the same time teachers were asking for a fifteen percent raise. The legislature told teachers to scale back their demands to twelve percent and they’d consider. None told the Mariners to scale back their demands, say do away with the costly retractable roof and we’ll talk. So in the year 2000 petitions were distributed and voters that fall voted that they wanted teachers to get a pay raise and for class size reduction. Neither of those things happened, but Seattle residents were taxed for a new stadium despite voting no. And here we are twenty years later still asking for the same things.
Senator Bruce Dammeier, WA state education committee chair, was slammed thoroughly on his statements that he disagrees with teacher demands. He never specified if it’s smaller class sizes he disagrees with, larger teacher paychecks he disagrees with, or does he simply disagree with the state constitution to fully fund schools? The fact that graduation requirements have just gotten more stringent, but school funding for counselors and family support staff has been reduced, makes schools fail. And if class size isn’t so important, as many legislators claim, why do private schools advertise a low teacher/student ratio to attract students?
A special education teacher spoke about how she was told she’d get another very difficult student in the fall. She said when she asked how she would be able to do that without extra staff and why another program couldn’t take the student she was told all the other programs were full and some had four more students than they were supposed to. This is what happens when there aren’t enough funds for extra teachers. She stressed that legislators need to listen to us without our having to take a day off to make our voices heard.
Another teacher spoke about how his school must decide whether to fund art, or extra nurse hours or an ELL teacher. There isn’t enough money for all. An educational assistant spoke up and stated how his rent went up $300 a month, but his salary didn’t. A middle school teacher explained how she had so many students that in order to get graded papers returned in a timely manner she either had to limit the number of responses on each paper, or she had to reduce the time spent creating quality lesson plans. It was also mentioned that Seattle has 150,000 sub positions annually, many of which never get filled. (One day in March a school in West Seattle had four teachers out and no sub for any of them. This was the same day they had me, a certificated teacher with a masters degree doing data entry).
Pramila Jayapal, the state rep who represents the area of South Seattle, spoke eloquently about how she was heartened to hear so many motorists honking support as she stood with south end teachers this morning. She brought forth raucous cheers when she said that tying teacher evaluations to test scores when schools are so underfunded should garner a big NO! She went on to say that we can fully fund education by making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but republicans won’t let that happen. All we need now is two more republican legislators or a republican governor to turn into a right to work state as has been seen in Wisconsin.
At about 2 p.m. the rally was over and we all headed the mile back to the Seattle Center to our respective waiting buses.
Conspicuously absent from the rally was new Seattle superintendent Larry Nyland. He already threatened teachers who threatened to refuse to give standardized tests to students. He certainly is alienating teachers and he’s only been superintendent for a few months.
And in a recent development, republican lawmakers introduced a bill to dock pay for the teachers participating in these rolling strikes. Several democratic lawmakers walked out of the session in protest saying we should be supporting teachers, not punishing them. Governor Jay Inslee agreed and added that many of the legislators putting forth this bill have not been coming to work during this special session and they’ve been getting paid regardless. People need to pay closer attention to where their elected representatives stand on issues. Also absent were any parents other than a rep from the electricians union who spoke w/ her young son at her side who was a Seattle student. We need to hear from legislators. We need to hear from Larry Nyland and we need to hear from parents.
– All photos property of Holly Homan, all rights reserved.
