Blog Posts

FREE Educator Events

5/6/2017

Woodland Park Zoo Educator Appreciation Day
Explore the zoo for a day! On Saturday, June 3rd Woodland Park Zoo invites P-20 educators to visit the zoo for free and receive half-priced admission for one adult guest!

Please check in at the South Entrance between 9:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. for your ticket into the zoo. You are welcome to stay until closing time but check-in will end at 3:00 p.m. Please bring something to verify your employment as an educator.

You may use this day to both enjoy the zoo and explore opportunities to include the zoo in your curriculum. There will be a variety of events including Bear Affair: Living Northwest Conservation Day, along with all summer programming. Please contact the zoo registrar with any questions (schools@zoo.org or 206.548.2424).

Seattle Teachers Autism Symposium
The FREE Seattle Teachers Autism Symposium will be held at UW's Kane Hall on July 26 & 27. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex disorder that is characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social communication as well as the presence of restricted interests, repetitive behaviors, difficulty with change, and/or sensory hyper-/hypo-sensitivities. Educators will learn the diagnostic criteria and how symptoms may manifest and effect school behavior. The presentation will include how the diagnosis is made, common co-occurring conditions and a brief overview of recommended interventions for ASD.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will learn about different diagnostic criteria and labels used for Autism
Participants will learn about methods used to identify Autism
Participants will learn about common co-occurring conditions in Autism

Clock hours are available for an additional fee. We hope to see you there! For more info and to register, click here.

General Membership Meeting - May 15

5/5/2017

Mark your calendar for our May 15 General Membership Meeting (4:15-5:30 @ MSHS Auditorium). In addition to action on local and state issues, NEA Director Pam Kruse will be in attendance. Now is the time to stay united and strong for our students! RSVP today.

Congratulations, Nurse McGavran!

5/4/2017

‪Congratulations to SVEA member Anne McGavran! She's been awarded the 2017 Washington School Nurse of the Year by the School Nurse Organization of Washington.

Anne goes above and beyond caring for the 1,200+ kids at Snoqualmie Elementary and Cascade View Elementary. SVEA members appreciate her ongoing commitment to keeping all students healthy, safe, and learning!

Welcome VP Jones and Treasurer Bradwell

4/28/2017

Our membership overwhelming chose to elect Amy Jones (Elementary Instructional Coach) as our next Vice President and re-elect Lynn Bradwell as our Treasurer. Their terms will begin July 2017 and continue through June 2019. Thank you to our candidates and all those who voted.

Elections for President and Secretary will be held in March 2018. Please consider stepping up.

SVEA Members Take Action

4/26/2017

SVEA members are taking action to tell our representatives to finally fully fund our public schools. Take a look our colleagues from Cascade View joining together in red with their McCleary stickers. CVES members posted and shared this picture on social media along with the legislative hotline number (800-562-6000). You can find a sample phone call script here. North Bend Elementary members got together before school today to write postcards to their legislators. Olympia needs to hear from us!

Snoqualmie Elementary educators will be calling Olympia today during off-duty times. Educators at Mount Si will be wearing "red for ed" and making phone calls on Thursday. See you at our May 15 General Membership meeting when we join together as SVEA members consider our path forward and next steps. Until then, what action is your school taking?

Our Superintendent's McCleary Goals

4/25/2017

Our ability to negotiate salary and benefits for you is at stake! We knew this was going to be a fight in Olympia, but never thought we would have to fight this with our District. We thought we had a shared value in continuing to improve educator compensation based on our 2016-19 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

On April 14, 2017 our superintendent, along with 33 other superintendents, sent a letter supporting the end to collectively bargaining TRI and compensation as we know it. The letter, titled Education Funding Position Paper, was sent to the governor, OSPI, all surrounding legislators, relevant legislative committees, and a variety of boards. The letter says nothing about what is best for students, what works best locally for one district over another, and NOTHING about administrators' salaries and levels. The level of our compensation and benefits, TRI contracts, and your financial future is at stake by the action taken by our superintendent. All this letter does is provide cover for legislators to make terrible decisions that will drastically impact our ability to negotiate the best compensation and benefits for you.

However, you cannot find this position paper on the Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD) website along with the other positions papers authored by PSESD. Not all superintendents signed the letter; Lake Washington and Bellevue schools superintendents did not sign. The Bellevue School Board adopted a resolution on Feb. 8, 2017 that demonstrates the board's resolve to support local collective bargaining.

The PSESD letter does include aspects we support, such as:

Continuing salary increments for advanced degrees and years of experience;
Supporting regular cost of living adjustments;
Support of increased professional development;
Starting teacher pay at $45,000; and
Not supporting a "levy swap."

But, here is where the superintendents go dangerously wrong:

They are advocating to limit collective bargaining. "At a minimum, statutory limitations must be in place for future collective bargaining agreements that prohibit bargaining of local levy resources for basic duties and responsibilities." This means an end to TRI as we know it. How would you be adequately compensated for all the additional work you do outside of the student day? What would no TRI pay look like for you and your family? Local collective bargaining ensures that our students' needs and our members' needs are addressed here in the district.
"We strongly support limiting the use of local levy resources to time worked outside of the 180-day school year." You are paid for your TRI because we thought the district recognized how hard you work. Our ability to negotiate the compensation and increases through TRI pay are at stake with this statement by the superintendents. This could also mean we could work to contract. If it is outside of the workday and you are not paid, we don't do it.
"We support a structure that allocates resources primarily utilizing the per pupil prototypical school model." This is the first step for the Senate Republicans and Betsy DeVos to establish charter schools and vouchers. It also blows up the prototypical class size models established in I-1351.
"We believe a lower local levy lid of 10-15 percent." So, if we could bargain with "guardrails," where would we fund the compensation you deserve?

Here is a link to the complete letter. It will be on our SVEA website as well.

WEA is a member of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC). In response to the superintendents' letter, WSLC has written to our legislators to stand in support of school employees and in support of collective bargaining, something that has worked well in our schools for more than 40 years in Washington. None of the superintendents notified their local unions regarding their recommendations on the behalf of all of us. Please read the WSLC letter.

The WSLC and the WEA support the Democratic House Budget, which does not compromise collective bargaining and supports educators and students. The anti-union Republican Senate Budget does not support educators and students -- it ends collective bargaining for compensation as we know it, and increases class size. It also states that ANYONE can teach if they pass a criminal background check. Is this what you want for your children and for your students? Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two budget proposals so you can compare the differences.

WEA members across the state are sending messages in support of the House Budget. We encourage you to contact your legislators on non-school time, using your personal email address, and urge them to VOTE NO on the Republican Senate Budget and Support the Democratic HOUSE BUDGET.

Your SVEA Executive board is meeting soon to plan next steps and actions for May and beyond. Please remain alert on how you can make a difference in supporting McCleary Action!

School Board Interview Team

4/25/2017

Two SVSD School Board positions are up for grabs this November. These seats are currently held by Tavish MacLean and Marci Busby. While we won't know all the candidate names until May 19, we definitely want SVEA to be involved in these local races.

Our school board, working with administrators, makes decisions and sets policies such as levy and bond elections, curriculum adoption, fiscal planning, and employee relations. The school board votes to support or reject negotiated contracts with SVEA and other SVSD unions.

If you're willing to spend an evening in late May/early June interviewing school board candidates, please let us know (using your personal email account) by May 5. We'd love to have our interview team consist of members with a range of backgrounds and viewpoints.

WEA Rep. Assembly 2017 Recap

4/23/2017

Roughly 1,000 WEA members joined together as delegates at our Representative Assembly in Spokane April 13-15. Our delegates, Joyce Bashford (CKMS), Ann Heideman (MSHS), Marcella Murphy (MSHS), and Nate Ziemkowski (SES), represented SVEA. It was a busy couple of days. Here's what RA delegates from SVEA and 150+ other locals around WA accomplished.

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