Members of the Seattle Education Association, the city’s public school teachers union, authorized a strike Tuesday — the day before classes were scheduled to begin in Seattle Public Schools.
The strike will begin Wednesday morning, the scheduled first day of school, unless the school district and the union reach a collective bargaining agreement prior to then. If an agreement is not reached, classes for the district’s nearly 54,000 students will not begin as planned.
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The strike was approved by 95% of the union’s membership, which declined a request by the district last week to seek mediation in the contract dispute.
The labor dispute comes after a tumultuous two years for public education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and government-ordered school closures. Recent data reports have indicated students have seen a steep learning loss over the past two years due to school closures.
The strike in Seattle is not the only teachers union work stoppage in recent days. In the neighboring Kent School District, the teachers union successfully forced a delay in the beginning of the school year after authorizing a strike.
In Columbus, Ohio, the teachers union approved a new contract with the school district last month after a four-day strike that included demands for improved air conditioning in schools.
Marla Rasmussen, the SEA’s paraprofessional president and a member of the union’s bargaining team, said the union would continue to negotiate.
“We have been here every day, putting in the hours from early in the morning to late at night,” Rasmussen said, according to KING 5 Seattle. “We will continue to do so, we’re prepared to stay all night as long as it takes, we’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again.”
The primary demands from the union center on class sizes and “support systems” for student programs, including multilingual programs. The union is also demanding higher pay.
School districts across the country are currently facing widespread teacher shortages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates around 300,000 teachers and staff left the profession between February 2020 and March 2022.
We’re fired up and ready to go! SEA members made 6,000 picket signs and trained picket captains to prepare for a possible strike. We don’t want to strike but SPS needs to come to an agreement that meets our student needs NOW. Email the school board: https://t.co/YLJw0oGkPf pic.twitter.com/ZC8eAT48tZ
— SeattleEdAssoc (@SeattleEdAssoc) September 6, 2022
On Sunday, the school district had sought a memorandum of understanding with the teachers union to allow school to begin as scheduled while negotiations continued. The union has sent out several tweets and statements over the past few days insisting they did not want to strike.
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“We don’t want to strike but SPS needs to come to an agreement that meets our student needs now,” one tweet read.
