Frustrated? You bet, but no ‘walkout’ in store by San Juan Island teachers | Letters

Published 5:58 pm Sunday, May 10, 2015

Dear Friends and Neighbors;

We’re sure most of you are aware of the pattern of one-day strikes happening in school districts all throughout Washington.

This “rolling walkout” is part of an organized protest by teachers’ unions in response to our state legislature’s failure to: (a) fully fund education, (b) to obey our supreme court’s decisions and directives regarding education funding, and (c) to do its job and pass a budget.

We’re also sure that many of you are wondering if this type of action will take place on San Juan Island. As officers of the San Juan Teachers’ Association, (SJEA, our local teachers’ union) we can assure you there are no planned walkouts on San Juan Island.

However, our decision as a union to not participate in the rolling-walkout does not mean we aren’t just as frustrated as our colleagues in other districts are with our state legislature.

We are frustrated that Washington continues to rank close to the bottom in our country in the most revealing measures used to rank schools: we rank 40th in per-pupil funding, 47th in class size, and 42nd in teacher compensation.

Our state supreme court ruled in 2012 that our legislature was violating its “paramount duty” to fully fund K-12 education. Last September, our supreme court ruled that our state legislature was “in contempt of court” for failing to take adequate measures towards fully funding our schools, and most recently our legislature has all but ignored initiative 1351 (the class size initiative) that was passed by Washington state voters last November.

SJEA teachers are not striking for the simple reason that a local strike would only hurt the very people who have supported us the most… you, the local community members.

Your support last summer and fall was invaluable during our period of contract negotiations. Without your recent support in passing the Island Rec levy, we would now be faced with having zero funding for our school sports programs.

Organizations such as the Public Schools Foundation, IMA, Valmark, and so many other generous supporters too numerous to list in this short letter, provide critical funding each and every year. And it is your ongoing support of our own local school tax levies that provides a whopping 20 percent of our school district budget.

Quite frankly, we could not safely nor effectively open our school doors without you. Thank you.

At the moment, our school district is faced with some very difficult decisions regarding our budget for next year, and until our state legislature passes a budget, we are effectively sitting in a state of limbo.

We urge all of you who are registered voters to email, phone, or write our state representatives and urge them to work together to pass a budget that fully funds our schools, and to pass it now.

Thank you again for your continued support.

John McMain & Beth Spaulding, president & vice-president SJEA