Snohomish Education Association A Letter to PArents

Lack of willingness to compromise
One of our greatest frustrations is the district has failed to compromise even on issues that would not cost additional money. For example, last year teachers decided how they spent their time on 4 student early release days. Because teaching requires so much extra time to prepare for classes and evaluate student work, teachers want to spend early release time on curriculum development, lesson planning and grading. Although the district has offered one additional early release day in the first year of the contract, and one more in the second year, it insists on controlling teachers' activities on those days. This means teachers will not have additional time to work on their own classroom needs. Since August 21, the district has not made any additional effort to compromise on this issue.

Another issue not involving significant additional funding is how the district publishes information about standardized test scores (like the WASL). Because students' performance on such tests is influenced by complex factors, teachers would like the district to publish these factors with the test scores. For the same reason, teachers do not want test scores used to evaluate teacher performance. In addition, teachers would like to have a chance to digest and understand the results and highly confidential information before it is provided to the media. The district has rejected all SEA proposals since bargaining began.

Class size is another issue that the district has refused to compromise on, even though doing so would add very little additional money. The contract sets a cap on the amount the district has to pay in any one year for class overload assistance; in the past, the district has not spent all the money in this fund. It could agree to spend more from this fund to reduce the teacher-student ratio without spending more money out of pocket. Since August 21, the district has not made any additional effort to compromise on this issue.

Pay is not the only issue - click here to continue

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