Governor Christine Gregoire last week called both sides in the Kent School District-Kent Education Association contract dispute to urge both sides to work together.<\/p>\n
According to Karina Shagren, a spokesperson for the governor, Gregoire called both Superintendent Edward Lee Vargas and KEA president Lisa Brackin Johnson Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
“She’s encouraging both sides to continue negotiations in good faith and she wants a quick resolution,” Shagren said.<\/p>\n
Brackin Johnson said Gregoire asked about the bargaining process and said she wanted to see if there was anything she could do to move the process forward.<\/p>\n
Brackin Johnson said she told Gregoire that negotiations were at a “stalemate” and suggested another set of eyes may help the process.<\/p>\n
A second mediator from the Public Employment Relations Committee was assigned to Kent over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Brackin Johnson said the governor was very personable and easy to talk to and seemed genuinely concerned about the situation.<\/p>\n
“She wanted to see the situation settled as soon as possible,” Brackin Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Vargas did not return a request for comment on the phone call by press time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Governor Christine Gregoire last week called both sides in the Kent School District-Kent Education Association contract dispute to urge both sides to work together. According to Karina Shagren, a spokesperson for the governor, Gregoire called both Superintendent Edward Lee Vargas and KEA president Lisa Brackin Johnson Thursday afternoon. “She’s encouraging both sides to continue negotiations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14121"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}