Bellingham School District teacher contracts expire today, Aug. 31, and so far negotiations between the union and the district have not resulted in a new deal.
Bellingham Education Association president Shirley Potter said she couldn’t really say anything about the negotiations until tomorrow. BEA members are meeting tonight to discuss the lack of a contract and what to do.
Potter said she is hopeful teachers will get a contract soon.
Contract negotiations are not considered public and do not fall under the public meeting act.
The last teacher strike in Whatcom County was a year ago, when the Ferndale Education Association voted to strike after contract negotiations failed to bring about a new contract. School started a week late.
I fully support the teachers. I know money is tight, but the last thing we should be doing is cheating our teachers and children.
A big part of this is the schedule, as the district wants teachers to conference on our own time with parents versus setting aside 3-4 half days. Class sizes are larger due to all the budget cuts, so having this time set aside is cruical, especially considering Bellingham only conferences once a year, unlike most districts in the area who conference in the spring as well. Currently, Wade King has one classroom with over 40 students, while many other schools have 30 or more in their classrooms. These large numbers are a huge impact on everyone, both students and teachers. Special education teachers are being streamlined as well, so now instead of having 1.5-2 teachers in the larger buildings to cover K-5, those have been cut back to one teacher max. at all buildings to manage those IEPs and teach those students. We deserve to have time set aside for conferences!
I think that the public needs to know about how many new administrators are in the central office and what their jobs are. It would also be interesting to know how much money was spent on the on-line classes offered to students. The standardization of the the new curriculum should also be looked at. It appears to be designed to the meet only the needs of the lower achieving students.
I have noticed a growing number of administrative positions over the past year. Bellingham hired a new Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, new Director of Educational Technology, new Title I/LAP Administrator, and even a Principal on Special Assignment. If the district can afford to spend hundreds of thousands more on these district office adminstrators, it should be more than able to adequately fund our schools.
How much does the school district have in its reserve fund?
The district is on the high end of reserve funds, and according to BEA if they don’t spend it down, they could get less funding from Olympia, as they will think it is not needed. Budgets have been cut in the different departments at Roeder accoding to several employees, as continued inservice for ELL and writing is on hold at the moment due to lack of funds, which isn’t true.
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