‘These families keep getting jerked around’: No other WA teachers’ union threatens to strike as often as Seattle’s

Seattle parents are once again scrambling for childcare on the eve of the first day of school as teachers threaten to strike. If no deal is reached between Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association (SEA) by tonight, nearly 50,000 students could be locked out of classrooms tomorrow.

No other teachers’ union in Washington threatens to derail the first week of school as frequently as SEA. Seattle teachers have gone on strike twice in just the past 11 years — in 2015 and 2022 — and even in years without a walkout, contract negotiations have repeatedly gone down to the final days before school starts, leaving parents in limbo every three years on average.

Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin, co-hosts of “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, didn’t hold back.

“I would be furious if I had a kid in the Seattle school district,” Ursula said. “These families keep getting jerked around.”

Seattle Public Schools’ enrollment has dropped, and Ursula said the recurring chaos is only accelerating the exodus.

“If you keep making the beginning of school unreliable, and people are scrambling constantly, you are giving families another reason to leave,” she added. “And once they leave, good luck trying to get them back.”

The special ed fight at the center of the strike

The dispute is increasingly focused on how the district serves more than 7,000 students with disabilities. Seattle Public Schools said its overhaul plan would allow more kids to stay in their neighborhood schools and improve staffing ratios for most students with IEPs.

The union sees it differently. SEA said the plan would eliminate or reshuffle hundreds of existing teacher and paraeducator positions, leaving the highest-need students with less support.

Superintendent Brent Jones said the district’s financial reality makes negotiations especially painful.

“It’s difficult because we’re broke,” Jones said. “If we had money, I would love to give it to everybody, but the problem is we don’t.”

Jones has also accused the union of bad-faith bargaining, saying SEA came back with a proposal that would have cost millions more than its earlier offer. A mediator is now involved.

‘What was the holdup?’

Gee zeroed in on the timeline, noting that the district sought to begin negotiations on March 6 and didn’t get a response from the union for nearly four months.

“Why did it take almost four months to have that meeting?” he said. “Did you do that on purpose, or was it an accident? Was it a missed email that went to spam? That right there is inexcusable.”

Gee stressed that he and Ursula are pro-union, but said the delay doesn’t reflect good faith.

“There are families right now in the Seattle school district that don’t know about childcare tomorrow, paycheck to paycheck,” Gee said. “It makes me really upset when these fights happen with people who don’t have anything to worry about.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.