The latest chapter has unfolded in our Kent teachers’ strike, and like all parties involved or watching from the sidelines, I am hoping this will be the final one.
As a newspaper editor who has been hearing impassioned debate from both sides, and as a parent whose daughter attends school in Kent, I’ve watched with bated breath as negotiators have walked away from the table, multiple times, unable to resolve their differences.
I feel the strain every morning as I drive past my daughter’s former elementary school, not sure whether to honk for the umpteenth time, or to just keep driving. They look tired of picketing. I am tired of watching them picket.
Monday will be the telling day.
That’s when Kent teachers will have to decide for themselves whether to follow a judge’s orders and return to their classrooms, or face the penalty of fines by resolving to disobey those orders.
Frankly, it’s a horrible choice to have to make.
I hope our teachers do the right thing and come back to their classrooms Monday. Their kids – regardless of how many of them they have – desperately need them.
I hope our negotiators can come back to the table next week, ready to talk again.
And next year, I hope our legislators can take note of the awful thing that has been transpiring here on Kent’s streets.
In all of the dialogue that has occurred, it is what I am hearing from our legislators that bothers me the most.
The comments range from, “let’s not point any fingers,” to encouraging the district to carve into its much-ballyhooed surplus, which isn’t much of a surplus at all. Much of that fund we keep hearing about has been designated for specific purchases. And to raid it to pay our teachers more this year would be just a one-time fix, hardly a fiscally responsible thing to do.
Some of our legislators have been content to drop the ball back into the district’s lap, or to just say they hope everybody gets along.
What happened in Olympia this last legislative session was a travesty. Education funding took a huge hit. Even worse, the Kent School District, which is the fourth-largest in the state, was already underfunded, compared to other districts in the state. The estimate I am now hearing is Kent gets $800 less per student than the Seattle and Bellevue school districts.
In all the dialogue I have seen, none of our local legislators actually has promised to do anything specific about bringing Kent’s issues to the foreground in Olympia.
Perhaps the fact that this especially painful labor dispute generated phone calls from the governor herself to the negotiators will generate something.
In the meantime, support your teachers who are going back to the classroom. They’ve struck without pay, and without knowing when this will be over. Our district administrators haven’t exactly had it easy either, having been forced to make wrenching decisions in divvying up dwindling resources, carving out programs and cutting positions.
And no matter what your feelings toward administrators, teachers or the union, put those things to rest when we start the school year.
We need our teachers in the classrooms, and our negotiators at the bargaining table.
We can’t function to educate our kids with
Contact Editor Laura Pierce at lpierce@kentreporter.com, or call 253-872-6600, ext. 5050.
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