SEATTLE — The school yard filled with students at the Seattle Public School’s newest school, Alki Elementary, Wednesday. It was a scene repeated at more than 100 Seattle Public Schools after a tentative contract agreement was reached with the Seattle Education Association, averting a strike by 6,000 teachers and other staff on the first day of the school year.
Seattle School Superintendent Ben Shuldiner was on hand for the opening of Alki Elementary, where he said he couldn’t give details on the tentative contract until after it had been ratified by the Seattle School Board and members of the union.
But he said the contract includes a plan to reexamine how SPS provides special education. 16% of the district’s students receive support.
“Special education needs to be a service and not a place. We’re allowing for, I hope, a pilot program that will allow us to try some ideas.”
He said the pilot program would come in the third year of the contract.
Shuldiner also confirmed that the contract provides teachers with more than the 8.8% pay raise, over three years, that the district had proposed. SPS is facing an $87 million dollar budget deficit, but he told KIRO 7, earlier that the tentative deal would “really not put us into more jeopardy than we’re already in.”
In his speech at Alki Elementary, Shuldiner focused his financial frustrations on the Washington State legislature. He criticized the state for capping local school levy funding, and he claimed the legislature’s support for schools, in general, has been slipping:
“Olympia needs to recognize that its paramount duty is education. It (the Washington State constitution) says so. And when I look at the way it’s being funded from Olympia, it use to be more than 50% of the budget was education. We’re now in the low 40’s. So what does that say to me? It says that maybe Olympia isn’t valuing education in the way it should be.”
Both the school board and members of the Seattle Education Association still need to ratify the contract. No date was set as of Wednesday afternoon.