Blog Archives

What does Rep. Magendanz think of teachers?

3/28/2014

Whatever your feelings about the Common Core State Standards, our state representative's Facebook comment on the topic definitely reveals his feelings about teachers and SVEA. Take a look...

Rep. Magendanz also asked 5th District constituents to email him about what to fund in our schools.

Our schools need all three.

However, materials, class size, and teacher salaries are all basic needs. Pitting one necessity against another is no way for our Legislature to function. Our Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature must follow through with its constitutional duty to fully fund education - including teacher salaries.

Please email Rep. Magendanz and tell him not to pick and choose which elements of our public schools to fund. Our kids deserve sufficient materials, small class sizes, and fairly compensated teachers.

It's not just SVSD... WA schools are underfunded

3/24/2014

Our class size, planning time, and compensation issues go beyond SVSD. WA schools are underfunded. For real changes to the issues that impact teachers and students, we need to work with our state representatives to improve school funding.

Find out more. Read a guest column by Bill Keim, executive director of the Washington Association of School Administrators, in The Seattle Times here.

Secretaries still without contract

3/23/2014

Secretaries are still working to get a fair contract that provides students with a trained adult in the health room when the school nurse is away. Meanwhile, the District is putting out updates that are less than the whole truth. Sound familiar?

Check out the whole story at Living Snoqualmie.

Help Mount Si Jazz get to New York

3/21/2014

Let's get out the word and support our Mount Si Jazz Band!

"Little Town Blues"
Community Dinner and Jazz Fundraiser
April 2, 2014

sponsored by
Boxley's Music Fund
Rotary Club of Snoqualmie Valley
Kiwanis Club of Snoqualmie Valley

We love our community! The leaders of the local Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club, and Boxley's Music Fund have generously offered to team up with us for a great evening of dinner and music to raise funds for the MSHS Jazz Band trip to New York.

· When: April 2, 2014, 6:00 PM

· Where: Boxley's in North Bend

· Dinner provided with food donated by Boxley's Music Fund

· Music from the MSHS Jazz Band and Friends

· $50 per ticket

· Limited to 120 people, order deadline is Mar. 31.

· Rotary and Kiwanis will MATCH the sales up to $6000!!

· 100% of the proceeds, plus matching funds, go to support our trip to Essentially Ellington.Thank you!

Purchase Tickets for "Little Town Blues" dinner here. You may enter the quantity on the order page. Please print your receipt, and we will also have a will-call list at the door.

If you prefer, you may send a check for tickets to MSHS Band Boosters, P.O.Box 92, North Bend, WA 98045. YOU MUST SPECIFY if it is for tickets to the Apr. 2 dinner, and provide your contact info (email address) for us to send a confirmation

‘Reform Before Revenue’: Catchy but inaccurate slogan

3/20/2014

From OSPI...

The Washington Policy Center recently released a policy note regarding State Supt. Randy Dorn’s proposal on how to fund basic education shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the issues surrounding McCleary v. State of Washington. The writer, Liv Finne, appears to believe that the Supreme Court has ordered the Washington state Legislature to reform our state’s program of basic education.

The Supreme Court has done no such thing.

At its core, McCleary is about basic education funding. The Court’s main points are:

Using levies to pay for basic education is unconstitutional, and
The state must fund the educational program already in law via HB 2261.

Ms. Finne misreads what’s at stake in McCleary in two ways. First, she observes that total education funding is currently the highest in state history. Even if that were true, it’s beside the point: McCleary reaffirmed that it’s the state’s responsibility—not local school districts’, and not other sources—to fund K-12 education from regular and dependable tax sources. Put simply, the state must define a statewide program of basic education, and it must pay for it from state revenue.

Second, Ms. Finne has cherry-picked language from the Supreme Court’s primary opinion in McCleary to support her political argument that the Legislature must reform the State’s program of basic education before increasing state funding. She writes:

Superintendent Dorn says his tax increase is necessary for the state to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in McCleary, yet this view shows a selective understanding of what the decision says. In the decision the judges clearly said that simply adding more money to the current unreformed system is not enough to comply with the court’s ruling.

“Fundamental reforms are needed for Washington to meet its constitutional obligation to its students. Pouring more money into an outmoded system will not succeed.”

Ms. Finne has taken this quote from the original McCleary decision out of context. The quote, found on Page 69, occurs at the end of the court’s analysis of the case. The preceding paragraph, though, clearly states that its analysis is focused on funding (emphasis added):

After extensive review over many years, state task forces and committees have concluded that the K-12 funding system is broken. The legislature itself abandoned its longtime funding model effective September 1, 2011. Following an eight-week bench trial, the trial court concluded that the State has failed to meet its constitutional obligations. Substantial evidence confirms that the State’s funding system neither achieved nor was reasonably likely to achieve the constitutionally prescribed ends under article IX, section 1. We affirm the trial court’s declaratory ruling and hold that the State has not complied with its article IX, section 1 duty to make ample provision for the education of all children in Washington.

We do not believe this conclusion comes as a surprise. Rather, the evidence in this case confirms what many educational experts and observers have long recognized: fundamental reforms are needed for Washington to meets its constitutional obligation to its students. Pouring more money into an outmoded system will not succeed.

The “system” the court is referring to is the funding system. The constitutional obligation at issue in McCleary is to provide ample and uniform funding. The reforms the court describes are funding reforms – namely, ending the reliance on local levies.

We simply cannot continue to rely on local school levies to finance our state’s K-12 education system. That’s why Supt. Dorn supports funding reform, and why he proposed a revenue bill.

The Supreme Court did not mandate that the Legislature reform how we evaluate teachers, or that we create charter schools, or grade schools A to F, or give principals the ability to overrule personnel decisions made by superintendents, or change any other substantive area of the state’s program of basic education. It did mandate that the Legislature finally live up to its constitutional obligation to fully fund the system of education the Legislature itself has enacted.

Supt. Dorn suggested raising the sales tax because it is the one obvious revenue source available to the State of Washington. He would certainly welcome a better, more creative funding source than the sales tax. But to this point, he hasn’t seen a credible plan that will satisfy the Supreme Court.

“Reform before revenue” is a catchy slogan. But it is not an accurate statement of the situation currently facing the Legislature, and it should not be used as an excuse to avoid the hard questions surrounding education funding.

Legislative session wrap-up

3/19/2014

Seattle TV presents a post legislative session discussion with education leaders including WEA President Kim Mead.

During the state`s legislative session, lawmakers faced pressure to preserve 'No Child Left Behind' funds as well as link teacher and principal evaluations to student test scores. We get a post-session recap on education-related bills. Randy Dorn, state superintendent of public instruction, joins us in the studio. Did our lawmakers in Olympia make the grade? We also hear from House Education Chair Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-Seattle); Washington Education Association President Kim Mead; Garfield High School math teacher Karen Gunn and Liv Finne, director of the Center for Education at the Washington Policy Center.

Check out the video here.

SVEA Election Results

3/14/2014

Listed below are the final results of the 2014 SVEA Election of Officers:

Office of President:

Lisa Radmer: 202 votes

Write ins: 19 votes

Office of Vice-President:

Molly Lutz: 215 votes

Write ins: 6 votes

Office of Treasurer:

Lynn Bradwell: 215 votes

Write ins: 6 votes

Office of Secretary:

Nate Ziemkowski: 219 votes

Write ins: 4 votes

Please note: The names of write in candidates are recorded in the official tallies but not reported here as none received more than 4% of the vote.

Thank you to the election committee: Jim Ullman, Heather Danso, Jack Webber, Judy Clark

A letter from WEA President Kim Mead...

3/14/2014

When the Legislature adjourned this morning at around midnight, educators won a major victory: We maintained a top-in-the-nation evaluation system, protecting it from including unreliable and inaccurate data points. We can now continue our focus on implementing TPEP as a tool to improve teaching and learning.

Many thought the deck was stacked against us, but due to the work of thousands of WEA members, the Legislature did the right thing and adjourned without mandating the use of state tests in teacher evaluations.

Your emails, phone calls, letters, petitions and personal visits in Olympia educated legislators about why mandating state tests as part of teacher evaluations was not a good idea.

Congratulations.

Our success in protecting our evaluation system means local teachers and their administrators will continue to decide what assessments are appropriate to use in teacher evaluations. We'll be able to continue implementing our new evaluation system so it is fair and provides the feedback and support teachers need to be successful. That's good for both teachers and our students.

While legislators listened to us on teacher evaluations, the Legislature as a whole fell short on school funding and complying with the Supreme Court's McCleary decision. The budget they passed has NO funding for smaller class sizes or to restore educator COLAs, even though our class sizes are ranked 47th out of 50 and educators will go six years without a state COLA.

So while we won a significant policy victory, we still have a school funding challenge ahead of us. Our victory in Olympia on teacher evaluations shows that WEA members are a powerful advocate for public schools and students in Washington, and I'm confident that in coming weeks and months, we'll have the opportunity to make progress on important needs like class size and compensation.

Thank you for your hard work.

Sincerely,
Kim Mead, WEA president

P.S.: For a complete take on the legislative session, visit www.OurVoiceWashingtonEA.org

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