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With one-year deal for teachers, new $600M+ Seattle education levy and next round of negotiations loom

This November, Seattle voters will vote on a new education levy hoped to open the “school to opportunity pipeline” with more than $600 million in local funding. It will be a crucial vote for spending and maintenance at Seattle Public Schools —  and it is likely to shape negotiations that are all but guaranteed to be contentious after the union representing Seattle’s public school educators voted Saturday to approve a new one-year contract.

Saturday’s vote followed the tentative agreement on a new deal based around a 10.5% raise and paid five days of family leave that averted a Seattle teacher strike last week.

 

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With state money allowing the district to plan for a $45.4 million budget surplus in the 2018-2019 school year, teachers had hoped to secure a major increase in pay as housing costs in the city soar. Teachers in Seattle currently earn between $50,000 and $100,000.

While a state-fueled temporary bump in funding is coming, officials say the district must prepare for “the realities of the district’s significant revenue shortfall in 2019-20.”

“I want to thank our educators, the joint bargaining team, and SEA leadership for their hard work throughout the bargaining process. I am proud of the interest-based bargaining process we engaged in with SEA,” new schools superintendent Denise Juneau said in a statement following the vote. “We coalesced around common values, including racial equity, and crafted a contract that honors our educators and helps us advance our collective commitment to every student in the district. Seattle remains competitive with our neighboring districts while maintaining critical services for students and families.”

Attention now shifts to the summer of 2019 and the next deadline to pound out a new deal. But before then, voters must also decide on Seattle’s renewal of property taxes on an expanded education levy.

Under the plan, Seattle would replace two expiring levies with a new tax that would raise around $250 million for kindergarten through high schools to buttress state funding, around $340 million for Seattle’s growing preschool programs, and around $30 million for Mayor Jenny Durkan’s Seattle Promise program under which she hopes to make college universal for city’s students by offering two years of free tuition to eligible seniors. Durkan also said money from the levy will be specifically targeted to help homeless students and that this will be the first levy that allows breaks for low income, veteran, and disabled households under a new state law.

In June, the Seattle City Council shuffled about $33 million of the plan into elementary school spending to further insulate the schools from the coming district budget gap.

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AtmIsOutOfCash
AtmIsOutOfCash
5 years ago

We just had our property taxed raised for school funding. They are well funded now.

Vote no.

CPAman
CPAman
5 years ago
Reply to  AtmIsOutOfCash

Yeah! Good luck on your education kids of Seattle, we don’t care anymore, I guess. Never cared about teachers either, my taxes are too high!!….get a grip on this reality friend. VOTE YES

Glenn
Glenn
5 years ago

Any idea how the proposed levy rate and size compare to the current levy rate and size?

Moving On
Moving On
5 years ago

It’s really important to understand the difference between the November levy – mostly for preschool, health services, and college and it goes to the City of Seattle (so not to the school district) and the February levy (for the school district itself, going mostly to K-12).

I wish we could vote on them both together, to better understand the value prop of each.

JayH
JayH
5 years ago

For the first time in 45 years of voting, I’m a NO for a school levy. I usually wait for the voters pamphlet. Not this time. Way too much money for way to little accountability.

Privilege
Privilege
5 years ago
Reply to  JayH

Yeah, way to stick it to those teachers and kids! There’s so little accountability, what with elected officials running the schools, numerous meetings you’re surely attending to comment on funding issues, blah blah blah.

Or alternately, you want to keep more of your money and will use any excuse, no matter how petty, to avoid paying anything because you got yours and who cares about everyone else? Does that about cover it?

westcoast
westcoast
5 years ago
Reply to  Privilege

it wasn’t for teachers anyway. this one is for homeless youth in school, tuition assistance for college bound seniors in Seattle, racial equity, and preschool support. The money does not go to schools