To be clear, it is the DISTRICT that is negotiating with the SEA, not the School Board. No one on the Board sits at the negotiating team; that is handled via the Superintendent and his staff. The Board will, in the end, approve any contract.

The familiar signs of fall - leaves change, cooler, teachers strikes.

Teachers are underpaid and underappereciated in this country. Period.

Buck up, Seattle.

All this could have been avoided if the Legislature had fully funded Education instead of coming up with excuses not to do so. And got rid of Common Core, which doesn't work, instead of recess, which does work.

@2: Seattle teachers haven't gone on strike in 30 years.

@5 Now now Raindrop is a Republican party apologist don't confuse him with facts.

Personally I call his type of Republican Reagan babies i.e. they hit their teen years during the Reagan Presidency and bathed in the Koolaid.

It's really interesting that Mr. Nyland keeps sending out messages implying that teachers ready make enough money, seeing as he makes $276,000.00 a year. He fails to mention that teachers are being asked to work 6.7% longer days for a 2% pay increase. In the end, the district will try and make it seem that teachers are greedy, and that the district just wants to give kids more instructional time. What teachers are fighting for is MUCH bigger than that. We are fighting for the right to be treated as well educated professionals; to have the right and the resources to facilitate learning and growth for children.

Interesting that Slog doesn't report – and @4 clearly doesn't understand – that the State Court didn't rule that the schools are underfunded. (In fact, we spend more money as a percentage of GDP than any place in the developed world.) Instead, the argument is over the share of money that comes from STATE resources, versus local taxes and levies.

Please note: It costs more to educate a 3rd grader in Seattle than the tuition at UW. And teachers in Seattle make more than teachers in Bellevue, and with much lousier results.

As nearly 40% of students in North Seattle attend private schools to escape a fatal system, its hardly and endorsement of the swill served up by Seattle's union teachers.

This isn't about fairness. This is only a union shakedown.

@8: The tuition at UW is not the cost to educate someone for a year at UW.
Could I get a citation for your claim anyways?

A bunch of cry babies who work 9 months a year.

@10: You wouldn't last 10 minutes in a classroom.

Usually I ignore the trolls, but it's crucial for our country that the greedy shits don't get away with demonizing teachers, so they can spend less on the people who actually teach the kids and more on useless administrators.
I know of NO teachers who can live on working 9 months per year, not when I was in school, when we often ran into our teachers working at the mall during the summer, not now, when my kids' fabulous teachers are having to give private lessons, teach summer schools, work at day camps, afterschool classes, parents nights out, community centers, tutor online and at tutoring centers, and God knows what else, YEAR ROUND! This on top of untold hours working FOR FREE grading papers, holding science fairs, volunteering at auctions, dances, walkathons, field trips, science camps, competitions, school events, parents' night-outs, PTSA meetings, etc. etc. etc. One of the best teachers we had quit because she was working late into the night EVERY DAY and had no time for her own family!
So just shut the fuck up with your disrespect nasty trolls.
We will NEVER be able to compete globally if we treat our teachers like servants. Ever wonder why some of the poorest countries like Vietnam have much higher literacy rate than the US? That
would be because teachers are revered in their cultures. It's very simple, our children won't be able to learn anything if we tell them their teachers aren't worth being paid a living wage or treated with respect! Why should they listen and learn from people whom we disrespect, demonize and blame for all our societal failures?
There's a national shortage of teachers right now, so if you don't want your kids taught by untrained people, better start supporting your teachers and stop allowing yourselves to be manipulated by the types of people who outsourced jobs and cut your pay while giving themselves raises and bonuses and guaranteed salaries even when they're fired for gross incompetence!

@12: my sister lives on teaching 9 months a year. well, 10, because her district starts school back up in mid-august (bleah). leaves her time for cottage industry (otherwise known as a hobby) and yes, a decent vacation that most 'murkins deserve but never take because they're too busy trying to be hard asses. i took 2 long weekends this year. that's it. whoop de fucking doo.

@8: take most of the tough kids to teach and put them in one place. take out most of the easy kids to teach. now, produce results equal to the place where the easy kids went.

@12: I know a lot of teachers too. My sister is one, actually. The thing is, teaching is a salaried position. You get X dollars for a year of work. They are getting paid for 12 months of work. There is no "for free" work. That work grading papers and staying after school is covered by their salaried pay, as they are not hourly employees.

Maybe that pay is too low, I suppose that is for the union to hammer out. But it is nonsense to states that they work "for free" or only get paid for nine months of work.

@6: I didn't mean for that comment to be taken disparagingly against teachers; just an observation of annual occurrences (in Seattle's suburbs mostly - thx Greenwood). They should be paid more; in fact the state has had the funds to do so for decades but has yet to make it a priority - after all, that's why he state Lottery was born.

@8 congrats on your first non-racist post. Too bad it's all bullshit.

@12, there are a lot of people that live off of minimum wage year round. It's just a true fact. If they can, so can teachers.

@17 Attitudes like yours are the reason we still, thankfully, have unions.

@14 Teachers are, in effect, seasonal workers. Though our monthly checks are spread throughout the year because part of salary is withheld (basically a no-interest loan to ourselves), we are paid for the 180-something days of the school year. Period. Holidays, breaks and summers are all mandatory unpaid leave. This isn't a problem, just a misconception that needs clearing up.

Pay is an issue in this contract negotiation, but it is far from the only issue. The district didn't even bother to show up to the bargaining table much of the time, then dropped their rejections of union proposals, with no feedback or counter-proposals, and the additional, uncompensated 1/2 hour to the work day one week before the deadline. The fact they have have no desire to fix the fact that majority white, north-end elementary schools get 45 minutes of recess, while minority south-end schools get 15 in unbelievable to me. They've demonstrated an utter disregard for their employees and students alike.

@17: "It's just a true fact."
Ah, the rallying cry of dumb right-wingers everywhere who don't have evidence to back up their claims. Hey buddy, it may interest you to know that while there are people who live on a minimum-wage job (earning $13,080 a year before taxes), such people generally don't earn a Master's in order to do so. Forgive me for thinking that maybe professionals with advanced degrees should earn a better living than burger flippers and register jockeys.

So, which is it @20? Are you a courtier, busily defending your plutocratic masters from the scourge of unions? Or just another misguided little guy scraping by who somehow arrived at the notion that undermining what little is left of the middle class will benefit you somehow. On the other hand, maybe you're just a misogynist, content to let police and firefighter unions do their thing, but you can't stomach a largely female profession that organizes. All of the above perhaps?

Raise taxes on homeowners (I am one). Make it hurt.

I grew up in a community in Massachusetts where we paid 2.5% property taxes for school. Do the math.

WA state is pathetically undertaxed.