A union bargaining team brought overnight kits to contract talks with Tacoma Public Schools on Saturday as they sought to resolve a teacher strike before it consumes a second week of class.
District administrators and the team from the Tacoma Education Association exchanged proposals late Friday and Saturday. They bargained late into the night.
“We’re ready to get to work and get things done so we can get back to class,” union President Andy Coons said.
The union and the district plan to resume talks Sunday, but it’s too late to call off the strike and open school by Monday, district spokesman Dan Voelpel said.
Monday will be the fifth day of shuttered classes for the 28,000 students in the Tacoma school district since the TEA voted to strike when it couldn’t reach a new contract agreement with the administration.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff ordered teachers back to work Wednesday, but the union on Thursday voted to keep striking. It’s due back in court Sept. 27 for more arguments.
Coons said Saturday that the union proposed getting teachers back in class immediately by creating a committee to study how the two sides can resolve the issue that most divides them: changes in contract language that governs how educators are involuntarily transferred to different campuses.
The district and the union also are at odds on standards for class sizes and on how Tacoma Public Schools should respond to the Legislature’s 1.9 percent reduction in funding for teacher salary schedules.
Currently, seniority is the main factor in deciding when and how teachers can be reassigned to different schools without their consent. The district wants to include other performance-related criteria, such as creating safe learning environments and “promoting positive interactions with families.”
Teachers fear that criteria would be too subjective; the district says it wants that flexibility to assign educators to schools where they’re most needed.
Voelpel said the district’s bargaining team rejected the union’s suggestion to create a committee because the proposal wasn’t binding, meaning the study group’s recommendations might not be adopted even if its members endorse them.
Coons said the union wants the committee’s recommendations to be ratified by its entire membership because they affect all of the district’s teachers.
The union proposed “a committee that had no end and no guarantee of implementation,” Voelpel said. “We wouldn’t immediately dismiss the idea of a committee, but there would need to be a clear deadline and a clear plan for implementing it as part of the collective bargaining agreement.”
Coons said there’s still time to open class Monday.
“We’re there ready to work,” he said. “We have contingency plans” to end the strike and get teachers in class Monday.
Voelpel said the district has no plans to call teachers to work Monday. It wants to give the union time to vote on a contract agreement if one comes together this weekend. On Thursday, picketing teachers said they wanted to vote on ending their strike despite Chushcoff’s order that they report to class.
Adam Ashton: 253-597-8646
adam.ashton@thenewstribune.com
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