The Seattle School Board could not be any clearer: Current negotiations with the teachers union must finish with a contract that ensures the financial stability of Seattle Public Schools.
That has not been the case in the past. So, this time, the school board put it in writing. SPS is mired in “a significant structural deficit,” its seven members said in a resolution approved unanimously last month. It directs Superintendent Ben Shuldiner to “address and eliminate” this problem.
That language may sound anodyne, but it is not business as usual. It’s seven trustees signaling they will spurn any agreement with teachers resembling the one signed in 2022, which pushed SPS into a position where there was more money going out than coming in. That dynamic remains in effect today.
“The reality is that we are structurally insolvent,” Superintendent Shuldiner wrote to parents in June. “We go into a deeper deficit for almost every student who attends our schools. We simply cannot grow our way out of this problem.”
Officially, the superintendent’s note was heralding the end of the school year, with all the usual platitudes and congratulations. Unofficially, it signaled the start of bargaining with 5,000 teachers represented by Seattle Education Association after four straight years of $100 million spending deficits.
Unbalanced budgets are not merely abstract problems confined to a spreadsheet. They show up in real life as classrooms crammed to the walls with 40 kids, or more. And the clock is ticking. The current contract expires on Aug. 31. School starts Sept. 2.
That these discussions always happen with the new school year looming is no accident. For the union, it’s powerful leverage. And the SEA is rightly demanding smaller class sizes and better provisions for special education students.
SEA vice president Davina Diaz seems confident that Olympia will send more money to Seattle next year. But it’s hard to see how negotiators can be so certain, since the state will likely face another multibillion-dollar budget hole, and Gov. Bob Ferguson has asked most agencies to propose cuts. True, he’s signaled an intention to hold education sacrosanct, but schools will be lucky to escape unscathed.
Another major difference between today and 2022, when the last contract was signed, is Shuldiner himself. Unlike his recent predecessors, this superintendent is participating personally in hammering out a deal and seems to relish that mathematical puzzle.
A good thing, because keeping teachers from threatening to strike is no mean feat in Seattle. Since 2012, at least half of negotiations with the SEA have resulted in members voting to hit the picket line. They actually did so in 2015 and 2022, delaying the start of school by five days in each case.
And now, with opening day less than a month away, pretty words and vows of collaboration are giving way to what Diaz described as “mild frustration” at failure to agree on almost everything, even “easy” issues involving neither salaries nor raises.
To be clear: Seattle teachers must be paid fairly. They should be able to afford to live in the same city as their students. But in this dire budget year, a result of unsustainable spending practices, all parties will have to give a little. Except, one hopes, our students. Everyone should be able to agree on that.
