Teachers from 24 public school districts have conducted or will conduct one day work stoppages across the State of Washington. Yesterday, 6 more districts (including the 800 pound gorilla Seattle Public Schools)voted to join the walkouts (sorry, paywall):
Seattle’s teachers voted Monday to hold a one-day strike, joining colleagues in about two dozen other school districts that have staged or are planning similar walkouts to pressure state lawmakers to budget more money for lower class sizes and higher teachers’ wages.
Seattle teachers scheduled their walkout for May 19, a school day.
Other districts where teachers plan upcoming walkouts include Lake Washington and Shoreline. And Snohomish, Lake Stevens and Franklin Pierce voted Monday to stage a walkout on Friday, according to the Washington Education Association.
The political environment in Washington is electrified right now. In 2012, The Washington State Supreme Court ordered the Washington State Legislature to meet its constitutional obligation to fully fund public schools.
In 2014, dissatisfied with the progress made by the Legislature, the Supreme Court took and unprecedented move and declared the Legislature in contempt of court!
For the first time in history, the Washington Supreme Court has held the Legislature in contempt for failing to obey a court order.
The action comes as the court struggles to enforce its 2012 McCleary decision, in which the justices ruled that lawmakers were underfunding the state’s public schools.
In a unanimous order handed down Thursday, Washington’s top court said the state “is engaged in an ongoing violation of its constitutional duty to K-12 children” and it “has known for decades that its funding of public education is constitutionally inadequate.”
The Legislature, now divided into a Democratic majority House and Republican majority Senate, reached the end of its biennial session without coming to an agreement on how to move forward with meeting its constitutional obligations. They began a special session on May 1 but have not yet met as a body to reconcile differences between their versions of the state budget. There's a $1.5 billion difference between the competing plans, with the Republican plan leaving taxes as they are and using a series of fund transfers to resource the budget (trickery!). The House plan contemplates a tax increase to resource their budget proposal. This is the same legislature that approved $8 billion in tax breaks for Boeing in a special session 2 Decembers ago. Who's being fiscally responsible now?
The Washington Education Association is mobilizing its members to pressure the Legislature to meet the orders of the court. The number of locals declaring its willingness to strike or actually striking is beginning to cascade on the west side of the mountains and talk of east of the mountains districts joining in are increasing in volume. This is the most visible work action I've seen in Washington by the WEA I've ever seen.