Kent teachers defy court order, still on strike

KENT — Today was supposed to be the first day of classes in the Seattle suburb of Kent. Instead, striking teachers were walking the picket line in defiance of a court order.

Denisha Saucedo, a sixth-grade teacher at Kent Elementary, said Tuesday it was a difficult decision between fighting for smaller class sizes and defying the judge who ruled the strike that began Aug. 31 was illegal.

“I became a teacher to try to make a difference,” Saucedo said. After growing up in the same school district and learning in a classroom with as many as 40 students, she said she didn’t want to see her students have the same experience.

“We want to be back in class as well,” Saucedo said. “Giving up and giving in is not helping them.”

Kent Education Association spokesman Dale Folkerts said 74 percent of union members voted Monday night not to return to work until they have a ratified contract.

Talks with the Kent School District ended Tuesday morning with no agreement in sight, said Folkerts, who added that further talks had not been scheduled. The district said the King County Superior Court judge will decide on any sanctions the union might face for defying an injunction.

Saucedo’s mom, Juliet Pugh, who joined her on the picket line, expressed pride in her daughter’s efforts.

“They want to say it’s all about money, but it’s not. It’s all about the kids,” said Pugh, who has another daughter at Kentridge High School and a third in college in California.

Pugh said if the other parents knew more about the conditions at the district’s schools, they would be more supportive of the strike. She was among about 10 parents and teachers and nearly 20 students on Tuesday morning in front of Mill Creek Middle School.

She accused the district of trying to bully the teachers back to the classroom, instead of working with them to make things better for kids.

“They’ve put us in such a hard situation,” said Patty Burn, an eighth-grade science teacher at Mattson Middle School who has 33 children in one of her classes but only 32 desks. “Sometimes doing what’s right isn’t easy to do.”

She said the district added school counselors, nurses and librarians into the number of teachers to make it look like student-teacher ratios were lower.

Brennan Kunzelman, 13, an eighth-grader at Mill Creek Middle School, said the school district could have avoided the strike by listening to the teachers.

Reidar Riveland, a ninth-grader at Kent Meridian High School, said he was picketing in front of Mill Creek to show support for the teachers, “but also to show the district we’re not hormone-crazed teenagers. We also think about and care about issues such as these.”

The district is the fourth-largest in Washington with more that 26,000 students and 1,700 teachers at 40 schools in Kent.