[Note this is lifted directly from the email parents and guardians received from Superintendent Shuldiner. It’s long.]
Dear Seattle Public Schools Community,
I hope this newsletter finds you well. Not surprisingly, this edition will be much longer than usual because it is an important update about bargaining.
As you know the district is currently in negotiations with the Seattle Education Association (SEA), the collective bargaining group who represents many of our educators.
As you also probably know, SEA shares information consistently about the negotiations as well as their proposals. Both sides of bargaining are allowed to share information, this includes things like formal proposals from each side as well as any other information, like salaries or Time, Responsibility, and Incentive (TRI) pay.
Every now and then the union has shared their opinions (once with a poop emoji) about the district’s proposals, which you are probably not supposed to do, but in general, most of the correspondence the union has sent out, up until last week seems to have been fine.
Many people have asked me why we, as a district, don’t also share information about how things are going. Typically, school district lawyers are pretty conservative and generally advise against any communication to make sure that it doesn’t cross the line of “bargaining in public,” or “direct dealing,” or any other problematic or “bad faith” action.
However, as many folks know, by not addressing things in public, only one side is being heard from. I have negotiated many contracts in my time, and I have never responded publicly about any of them. But that is also because I have never had a union or association share so publicly as SEA does. That is certainly their prerogative. I would never tell a union how to negotiate.
With this current bargain being so important and the community being so attuned with the machinations of the negotiations, I think it is important to follow suit with the union and explain a bit about what is going on. Yesterday, the district shared multiple parts of our latest offer as well as our rationale.
https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/hr/labor-and-employee-relations/sps-sea-bargaining/
In this update, I want to share some more information and try to address some outstanding concerns I have heard personally from families.
I want to start by saying, I care deeply about our educators and want what is best for them, as well as what is best for our students and our financial health. We, as a district, would never want to finalize an agreement that didn’t make sense for our community. In my 100+ school visits, I went into over 1000 classrooms and saw amazing work being done by our staff. It has been an honor to be among such wonderful educators. Sometimes we lose sight of our mutual care and love of our entire community when things get difficult as they normally do in negotiations. But please know, these negotiations have only strengthened my resolve to try to help make SPS the best urban school district in the country.
The Beginning of Bargaining
On March 6th, the district asked to start bargaining. We were willing and ready to meet anytime, anywhere. However, SEA responded to our multiple entreaties with requests for data and did not commit to an actual meeting until June 25th, almost four full months since we initially reached out.
Since then, we have been meeting on a constant and consistent basis, sometimes going into the night, sometimes on the weekend. And of course, as a district team we have been meeting for hundreds of hours as well. I am currently writing this letter from the John Stanford Center, stepping out of yet another bargaining meeting.
During these sessions we talked about a lot of topics and were able to come to agreement around many of them, including hot button topics like Artificial Intelligence, Personnel Files, Safe School Zones and Protections for Students and Staff.
However, as you might’ve read or heard, there are many sticking points and the parties are still not at full agreement.
Salary Offer and Explanation of IPD
To put some things in perspective around our latest salary offer, on Wednesday night, August 26th, the Board voted to approve non-represented (non-unionized staff like coordinators and managers) a pay raise of “effective IPD” with two furlough days. This means that our non-repped staff is getting a 1.73% raise and must give back two days of pay totaling to less than a 1% raise for the 2026-2027 school year. In addition, many of these employees don’t get overtime or extra compensation like TRI Day pay or stipends.
Note: Throughout bargaining, I am sure you have heard the term COLA (Cost-of-Living Adjustment) or IPD (Implicit price deflator). Seattle seems to use these terms interchangeably, so I won’t really make a distinction. Each year, the state legislature gives school districts an IPD increase, which is great. However, this increase is based on the State’s “prototypical model.” The State funds us according to the way they think we should be staffed, how much we should pay our staff, and how much we should pay in transportation, among many other things.
For instance, we have Multilingual Learner Instructional Assistants in Seattle. The state doesn’t fund those at all. So, when the state “gives us IPD” what they really are giving us is a dollar figure calculated by their model not our reality. What we get is “effective IPD.” Thus, if you look at our entire district, we get about two-thirds the IPD rate. This is why the Board voted to give non-represented staff 1.73%. State IPD is 2.6% this year, multiply that by two-thirds and you get . . . 1.73%.
So, this means anytime a staff member asks for and receives the full IPD percentage, they are really getting much more than the State gives us. This is not a pass through; it is an added burden on an already burdened budget. And you might think, that 0.87% isn’t a big deal, but it represents millions of dollars for the district writ large.
Nonetheless, we have offered SEA a minimum of an 8.8% raise over three years, with no furlough days. This 8.8% is based on the expected IPD rate for the 2027-2028 and the 2028-2029 school years. We have also promised that if IPD comes in higher, we will adjust, and if IPD comes in lower, we will let SEA members keep the extra, hence 8.8% being the minimum.
Time, Responsibility, and Incentive Pay
Additionally, as part of their contract many SEA members get the equivalent of about an extra 15% of their salary for “TRI” days (Time, Responsibility, and Incentive), as well as payment for 4 tech days and 5 PD days.
I was a teacher many years ago. I got paid for my time in the school. I got a salary for showing up to work and teaching the kids. Lesson planning, grading papers, and planning with my co-teachers after school was never part of what I got. Here in Seattle, our teachers get the equivalent of around 27 days of pay for all of these “responsibilities.”
So, when you think a teacher isn’t being paid to prepare “for school opening, including preparation for the classroom or workspace before, after, and during the school year” it’s in there. When you think a teacher isn’t being paid for “conferencing/communicating with students or parents/guardians at a reasonable time,” it’s in there. When you think that teachers are not being paid for “preparing, revising, or replacing materials,” it’s in there. Attending SPS and/or school-connected meetings and governance such as PTSA, participating in the development of the school plan or other building activities or committees, participating in a reasonable number of IEP and Section 504 meetings and communicating with parents/guardians and students, work connected with conclusion of the school year or grading period with grades and related paperwork, it is all in there.
I have never seen anything like this outside of Washington. I am not saying the teachers don’t deserve this. I am only saying I wish I got this when I was a teacher. I also want to make sure that the community knows that this is already in their contract.
To put this in perspective, the salary line that the greatest number of teachers are in (1060 teachers), has a base wage of $118,716 for 180 days of work. Then they get $3,298 for 5 extra contractual days, another $2,638 for 4 “tech days” and then $17,932 for TRI days.
Thus, taking the total wage to $142,584. And this does not include any other benefits, retirement, stipends, extra hours, or other payments that some teachers receive.
And, just for clarification, in the current CBA, these “TRI” days are assumed to be done. There is no verification or paperwork for them. The TRI is in the check.
So, if the salary goes up by 2.6% than all of the parts of the salary: base pay, contractual days, tech days, and TRI days go up as well.
Special Education
Now the part of our proposal that has gotten the most interest is our Special Education proposal. I have received well over 500 emails expressing a very similar view (I assume these are form emails.) I get it. When you hear one side of the story, that is edited in a way to present a narrative it is going to rile folks up. I appreciate everyone’s engagement. As many of you know, I usually try to respond to all emails, but since so many of them are similar I will try to explain as best as I can and not respond individually.
In the six months I have been superintendent I have heard many concerns around Special Education. Generally, the issues revolve around services being provided, i.e. my child didn’t get this service, my child’s IEP wasn’t followed, etc. Much of this occurs because this district has thought of Special
Education as a place and not a service. A child is “in Distinct” or “in Focus” rather than say “this wonderful student receives specific services as laid out in their IEP.” So much of what we do here is focused on ratios and class separation that we don’t do as strong a job in actually helping our students as we should.
And please don’t think this is a knock against our teachers or paras. I know how hard they work. It is a knock about how we are structured and organized. What makes this even worse is that we have a system that separates kids so much that many students with IEPs can’t go to their neighborhood school. The other major issue I see is that in many of our classrooms there are unmet behavior needs, because again, SPS has historically thought about Special Education as a place and not a service.
So, knowing all of that, our amazing and devoted Special Education team came up with a framework around what a new system could look like.
We are trying to address the need to have students stay in their neighborhood school and have teachers get additional behavioral support. By doing this, the district has also put on the table a Special Education proposal that would lead toward lower staff-to-student ratios for a majority of our Special Education students. And even the classes where the ratios might go up, we are creating extra supports. And again, the district is not tied to this or any other proposal. But we do want to try to do something.
We have proposed many different models with changes along the way based on feedback from SEA. However, even after meeting with SEA for many hours, over the last week, SEA has told us that they can’t respond in a formal way, because it is too hard or too difficult. In fact, their latest proposal to us just reads: “Special Education.”
When we asked them to explain, they said they worked really really hard, (which I know is true) but just couldn’t come up with anything to address the issues we discussed. And once they said that, I was flooded by hundreds of emails to “take Special Education” off the table. Sadly, that just means we can’t try to address the very real needs of our students. We are not wedded to our initial proposal nor any of the subsequent ones. But we are committed to try to find something that actually works better for kids, that keeps them at their neighborhood school, that gets the teachers the behavioral support they need, all while not bankrupting the district.
If the only response from SEA is “Special Education.” then by definition there is no discussion anymore. And to all of the folks that have suggested some kind of taskforce or working group, we have had those for years and as far as I have been told very little if anything moved. Others have asked why would we even talk about this during bargaining; that is because we have to if we want to make structural changes. As many of you know, I am a huge supporter of Special Education and have a deep background, especially as a Superintendent in leading large scale systemic change to better service students and their families. But if we can’t even negotiate things and we are being asked to “take it off the table,” that will only continue the situation we are in.
If folks want to have a deeper understanding of what we are trying to do around strengthening the services for our children, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our amazing Special Education department.
Other Parts of the Proposal
The district has also put on the table, as part of this total package, adding 6 Psychologists, having at least one full social worker or counselor at all schools with over 350 students. The district has also agreed to bringing in house many of the contracted BCBAs and BSPs. This would add to SEA’s rolls. All of this is meant to support student needs. And all of this is a total package designed to better run SPS for students.
We have also agreed to set up VEBA accounts where the district would pay 10 dollars a month in year two of the agreement and $15 a month in year three of the agreement, if we can set the accounts up.
We have agreed to adding a training day for over a 1500 Paras and SAEOPs, which would be the equivalent to almost a 0.5% raise each year for those employees. We have even agreed to lowering the number of staff meetings from every week, to three times a month.
All of this has been done while also trying to balance a budget that is terrible and currently leading us to insolvency.
The District has tried its best to do right by students and staff in this bargaining.
Breakdown in Bargaining, Calling in a Mediator
And as you might’ve read that last night, union negotiations did break down. On Monday, August, 24th, the union gave us a “comprehensive” proposal. Within 24 hours, we turned around our response to that. In our response we agreed to some things, and not to others. And then we waited. We did not receive a response on the comprehensive proposal on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday or Friday. Finally, after waiting almost a week, we just countered our own proposal, giving more to the union, specifically adding money to the salary scale. And what did the union do? They gave us a comprehensive proposal that was millions more than their original proposal. They added numerous FTE, millions of dollars of extra pay, days, and time.
When we received this, we asked for clarification around all of these new to their Monday comprehensive proposal. They admitted that it was new to the comprehensive proposal and that in fact they knew it cost millions of dollars more. At that time, we said thank you very much, we understand and respect the union’s position, but we believe that this is the definition of “regressive bargaining” and we informed the union we would call PERC, the Public Employment Relations Commission, to bring in a mediator. I left the room immediately to call PERC to try to get a mediator as soon as possible.
Because we believed the union’s offer was regressive, we couldn’t continue to negotiate around their new document. Because if we did, that would be accepting this new document as the starting point of negotiations. Please know we didn’t storm off or act upset in any way. We informed the union that we were going to call PERC to bring them in to help negotiations.
And to the credit of PERC, we had a mediator sent this morning. We now have a mediator assigned to us and we are deeply wanting to reengage with the union alongside a mediator so that we can get a deal done before the start of school.
We are very hopeful that with mediation now, we will be able to get to a deal before the start of school.
Additionally, I want to be very clear about what happens next.
Next Steps
I have a long history of fighting very hard for labor. In college, I co-founded the Progressive Student Labor Movement, I was part of the inaugural Union Summer program where I went door-to-door trying to unionize daycare workers in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. I was an active member of both the teacher’s union and principal’s union in New York. I was even part of a professor’s union. I went to a summer camp where one year I slept in the Eugene V. Debs bunk and another year slept in the Joe Hill bunk. My grandfather started an apprentice union in the Brooklyn Navy Yard with Howard Zinn. Needless to say, I care very very deeply about worker’s rights and collective bargaining.
And, I made a promise to this community that I would always put students first. From my first newsletter to now, I have repeatedly said, I love our staff, but I am here for the kids. So let me be absolutely clear, SEA does not have to strike. Period, full stop. If they do, that is completely up to them. They have a contract that they signed and it will continue. The current contract they are working under remains in place. We are not the NFL owners who lock out our players trying to exact concessions or give-backs. We are good faith bargainers who are trying desperately to negotiate a contract that is good for staff and students. And the district has been clear that we would always be willing to provide retroactive pay, if they don’t strike, when a new contract is signed. There is absolutely no reason to strike other than to flex power. No one is “forcing” the union to strike. There is no Special Education agreement unless the union votes for one. There is only a desire to work together for the betterment of the district.
We are willing to meet with the mediator, morning, noon, and night. We are willing to pay retro once a deal is done, we are willing to adjust and compromise, but what I am not willing to do is play a game with our children’s education.
Our schoolroom doors will remain open as long as we can possibly do so. But if they close, that is because someone else is shutting them.
It is certainly my hope to have a contract before the beginning of the school year. But more importantly, it is my hope that we have school on Wednesday. And at this point, that is solely up to SEA.
Thank you all for believing in SPS. With your help and hard work, SPS truly will be the best urban public school district in the country.
Ben
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