From our news partners at The Seattle Times: As the start of school approaches in Seattle, teachers rejected the school district’s latest proposal for a new teacher contract.
Seattle teachers voted Monday against accepting a contract proposal that their leaders had encouraged them to reject.
According to the school district, the negotiating teams from both sides are scheduled to meet again Tuesday to try to reach a mutually acceptable agreement before school starts a week from Wednesday.
Seattle Education Association President Jonathan Knapp said the vote was nearly unanimous among the 1,810 union members at a general membership meeting. They included teachers and other school employees.
In all, the union has about 5,000 members.
A few weeks ago, a district proposal to increase class size in grades four through 12 was the biggest sticking point in the negotiations, but the district has since withdrawn it.
Now the disagreements involve the use of test scores in evaluating teachers, whether to add 30 minutes to the workday of elementary-school teachers, and whether to change the size of case- loads of school employees such as therapists, psychologists and nurses.
Superintendent José Banda said Monday that he was disappointed about what union negotiators did after the district withdrew the class-size proposal.
