Edmonds office professionals reach three months with no contract

LYNNWOOD — Edmonds School District office staff rallied outside the district office Tuesday, urging the district to help them reach a contract agreement.

The 138 members of the Edmonds School District Association of Office Personnel have been working without a contract since Sept. 1. They’ve been negotiating since April.

Members and supporters held signs that read “PSE cares about your kids” and “Competitive wages now!” After the rally, they marched into the district office for a school board meeting, where members stressed the importance of a fair contract during public comment.

“I just want to encourage our leaders to encourage the team that we are negotiating with to please help us end this so we can get on with our work and not have the stress of doing this. Negotiations, mediation, all of it is very stressful to us and to our job,” said Cindy Bartlette, an office manager in the district, at the meeting.

The district has not agreed to the union’s top nine demands, including one additional vacation day and personal day, a minimum of seven hours of office support secretary time per day, and a wage increase consistent with inflation, said Phoenix Horn northwest field representative for the state public school employees union.

The wage increase would total $845,848 over four years, according to the union. This year, the district took in $380 million in revenue, 13% more than last year, Horn said.

The union is also asking for bilingual pay, more longevity pay, an additional four hours to complete training, updates to the professional standards program and a $25 monthly increase to employees’ health reimbursement accounts.

“The Edmonds School District continues to bargain in good faith with our Office Professionals union,” district spokesperson Curtis Campbell said in a statement to The Daily Herald. “As is our standard practice, we do not discuss bargaining details outside of our bargaining sessions. We remain committed to a respectful and collaborative process that supports our employees and our school community.”

After the union’s contract expired in August, the union filed for mediation with the state. The first bargaining session with mediation was last month, and the next bargaining session is Tuesday.

“It’s abnormal to be three months past the expiration date, still in mediation, still with very little progress,” Horn said.

If mediation doesn’t move the contract forward, a strike could be possible, but that’s not a step union members necessarily want to take.

“The reality is, we want to finish the school year,” said Lauri Velasquez, an office manager, in an interview Friday. “We don’t want to extend the school year. We don’t want to put families in that position. But we also need to have a decent agreement. We just want to get the agreement through mediation so we have something that we can bring to our members to ratify.”

The union’s top demand, seven hours of secretary time per day, is essential for worker safety, Velasquez said. Right now, some schools only have a secretary in the office for five hours per day. Outside of that time, office managers are in the office by themselves.

“You can’t handle all the things, and it’s just not safe, because you just don’t know in this day and age who might come in,” Velasquez said.

Office personnel are in charge of helping students with medical needs when nurses aren’t there, working with budgets and payroll, answering questions from families, and other tasks that come up throughout the day, Bartlette said in an interview Friday.

“When people come into the office, we’re the first people there to help them,” she said. “I think that sometimes we’re just thought of as secretaries, and really we’re so much more.”

Velasquez and Bartlette said the lack of a contract has been taking a toll on office staff.

“You build your family at work, and you want to be there, you want to help them, you want to be on, and sometimes you just feel so deflated because of this,” Bartlette said.

The district considers office personnel essential employees. When a weather event delays or cancels school, office staff are still expected to make it to the office, Bartlette said. Some office professionals work 220 days per year and receive two personal days, compared to teachers who work 180 days per year and receive four personal days, Velasquez said.

“In reality, our positions are so much more than the job descriptions on paper,” Velasquez said at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “Our members continue to give and give and give to their schools. We do that because we believe in our students and we believe in the education process. What we don’t believe in is being treated as second-class citizens who aren’t valuable enough to be taken seriously. I always find it interesting that we’re considered ‘essential employees’ … but we aren’t compensated as such.”

Sam Mabeza, a student representative on the school board from Mountlake Terrace High School, thanked the office personnel who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I moved here just this year from a completely different country with a completely different school system, and the ones who helped me navigate all of this were the school staff,” Mabeza said. “So I’m really grateful for them and I’m really hoping that they get the recognition that they deserve.”

Jenna Peterson: 425-339-3486; jenna.peterson@heraldnet.com; X: @jennarpetersonn.