Marysville teachers voted at about 10:30 Monday night to return to work Wednesday, as directed by a judge earlier in the day.
The vote was 420 for and 181 against.
If the teachers would have defied the judge’s injunction, they could have faced fines of $250 a day.
The 50-day-old strike was the only one still going on in the country. Marysville’s 11,000 students have not been in school since June.
"Schools will be open on Wednesday, and our staff is doing everything they can to assure there are as many certified teachers available as possible," school board president Helen Mount said.
The school calendar is still being worked on, though earlier estimates by the district put the end of the 2003-2004 school year somewhere in the end of July.
The district does not plan to hold school six days a week because it would run into costly overtime issues, district spokeswoman Judy Parker said.It also has not been decided when the first school board meeting since the strike will be held. All public board meetings were suspended and Superintendent Linda Whitehead was given emergency powers to make all district decisions after the teachers walked in September.
No negotiations were planned for today. On Sunday, a two-man panel appointed by Gov. Gary Locke criticized both sides for their intrangence.
"The governor’s people only said that both sides are at fault. Maybe they should even get a new mediator because this guy’s not doing anything," Dustin Dekle, Marysville-Pilchuck High School senior class president, said Monday while bowling at Strawberry Lanes.
"I’d give it probably a 10 percent chance of (teachers) coming back Wednesday," he said.
Strike hurting children, judge says
During an hour-long hearing Monday Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Linda Krese ordered the 650 striking Marysville School District teachers back to work Wednesday.
"It’s time for all the adults to grow up and start looking at their obligations to these children," she said.
But minutes after the ruling, the head of the local teachers’ union said she expected teachers to defy the order, despite facing fines of $250 each per day.
"I feel very firmly that we won’t go back without a contract. We need a contract,’ " said Elaine Hanson, president of the Marysville Education Association.
A frustrated group of parents, "Tired of the Strike," brought the injunction request to court, and the district joined the lawsuit last week.
Krese emphasized that her decision should not be viewed as her taking sides in the labor dispute, but that she has no choice under the law because the students and community have been harmed.
"It has been suggested this is no more than inconvenience," Krese said. "I can not agree with this assessment."
The long strike "unquestionably has resulted in actual and substantial harm" to students, parents, school district employees other than teachers and the district itself, she said.
She also ordered both sides to negotiate in good faith – the second time she has issued that order.
"I think, unfortunately, things have become so polarized that anytime anyone offers a suggestion … the respective parties only look at what’s said about the other side instead of what’s said about them."
She even suggested switching to a new mediator.
"There must be some way to get past this impasse, and the participants need to start thinking what that will be," Krese said.
Hanson said she didn’t think the membership will work without a contract." I’m outraged the district would even take us to court," Hanson said, adding that the contract dispute must be settled at the bargaining table.
"We’ve worked on a compromise. The district needs to step up and compromise," Hanson said. "Over and over again they’ve said no to the things we’ve proposed. It needs to be a compromise."
Teachers react
Standing beneath the eaves and lobby of the Historic Everett Theatre, many teachers said they were undecided about how they would vote going into Monday night’s general membership meeting.
Most said they wanted to hear what their union attorneys had to say first. Others wanted to hear from their peers. Several said they would follow the vote of their fellow teachers regardless of which way it went.
"I think we all have to struggle with these kinds of demons," said Rick Scriven, a seventh-grade science teacher at Cedarcrest School. "We go back and forth, back and forth."
Scriven said he believes the teachers were morally justified to go on strike but he worries what effect defying the judge’s order would have on the chances of three challengers seeking spots on the Marysville School Board.
"Our only chance with this bargaining is to get a new school board," Scriven said. "If that fails, I strongly suspect there will be a mass exodus of teachers from this district. It is a school board you can’t deal with. They are completely unable to compromise."
Randy Davis, a Marysville-Pilchuck High School teacher, said he didn’t know how he was going to vote beforehand. He said he resented the district waiting so long with unacceptable contract offers before seeking an injunction "to bully teachers back into the classroom."
Paige Elwell, a fourth-grade teacher at Pinewood Elementary School, said she respects the judge’s decision to issue the injunction but criticized the school board, arguing that the district did not follow Krese’s order last week to bargain in good faith eight hours a day from Thursday through Sunday.
"They didn’t," she said. "They put it right back on the judge."
Marysville’s teachers are among the highest paid in the state, averaging about $56,000 per year. That number reflects the large number of veteran teachers and those who hold higher degrees, who are paid more.
Teachers are asking for a 7.5 percent increase over three years. And there is disagreement over the number of teacher training days the district should control.
The unmovable line, though, has been over the district’s insistence that teachers shift from a locally negotiated salary schedule to a state schedule for the portion of teachers’ salaries that comes from state tax money. That would reduce some teachers’ salaries and affect their retirement earnings, teachers say.
The district, though, says it cannot afford to keep paying teachers according to the local schedule.
Is binding arbitration in the cards?
On Sunday a two-man team appointed by Gov. Gary Locke to look for solutions to the strike criticized the way both sides are handling negotiations and suggested they consider binding arbitration.
So how would it work?
It is an option both the district and teachers’ union would have to agree to, said Mitch Cogdill, an Everett lawyer representing the Marysville Education Association.
Cogdill has handled similar cases, including recently with Anacortes firefighters, and he represented Fife teachers in 1995, the last, and perhaps, only time binding interest arbitration has been used to resolve a teachers’ strike in Washington.
The two sides would present their cases in a trial-like atmosphere before an arbiter, who could accept or reject their proposals or come up with a compromise, Cogdill said.
"They get to choose what the final product is," Cogdill said, referring to the arbiter’s decision.
In Fife, which had the previous record for longest strike in state history at 37 days, teachers returned to classes in November. The case was not heard until the summer, and a decision didn’t come out until the fall.
The governor’s panel – former state lawmaker Denny Heck and retired Washington Supreme Court Justice Robert Utter – recommended both sides submit to binding arbitration if no compromise can be reached quickly. The state’s Public Employment Relations Commission would be able to handle the arbitration for Marysville, their report says.
Both sides in the Marysville dispute are reluctant to pursue the option.
Hanson said the settlement should come at the bargaining table. The district said its negotiators would need to study the option.
Forecasting the future
The strike is the latest twist in a long-stewing dispute between teachers, Superintendent Linda Whitehead and the five-member school board.
Meanwhile, the district’s financial controls have been faulted by the state auditor, test scores are underwhelming, and voters earlier this year rejected more taxes to build the warring district a new high school.
Parent Bryan Minnig, whose son, Shawn, will be a senior at Marysville-Pilchuck High, said he believes teachers ultimately will settle for a one-year contract and see what the Nov. 4 election brings.
"I think the teachers realize there’s probably a lot of sentiment to get a new school board together, and they’ll see how that follows through," he said. "I think we’ll get three new school board members, followed by a new superintendent."
The future may not be so rosy, though, for the new board, Minnig said.
"Probably a few years down the road, those (new) school board members will fall by the wayside, too. They’re running on one issue right now."
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
