Collective Bargaining Rights Are Civil Rights:

5 Reasons to Vote NO on the Creative Approach MOU

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We need unity in the UNION: If schools can opt out of any and all parts of the union contract, there can be no unity, which is the basis of a union. This MOU does not specify one single part of the contract that is protected from waiving. We Need time to review/ discuss the details: Why is it that we are always being asked to vote on agreements with little to no time to review the language and consider the implications of the terms? We should be able to consider what we are presented with and take the contract language back to our buildings to discuss it with the membership. The urgency to pass this should be a big red flag. The SEA contract is NOT the obstacle to Creative Approach: The SEA contract provides basic protections to teachers that help provide stability and support to educatorsprerequisites to any school that is truly innovative. The obstacles to curriculum and schedule changes are the district and state rules and not the basic employee protections of the union contract. Moreover, the SEA already has a waiver committee that considers individual exceptions to the contract for schools that want to create an innovative approach. The SEA waiver committee is made up of all union members, whereas only half of the CrAS committee is made up of teachers. We already have Alternative schools: Alternative schools are a truly bottom up, grass-roots education initiative that allow community involvement in setting the priorities of the school without circumventing teachers rights to collective bargaining. Yet while these Alternative schools have provided many communities with an innovative approach to education, they have continually been undermined by the Seattle School District. Over the past several years we have seen many Alternative programs threatened with closure, actually closed, or moved from their building. If the District wants to support innovative approaches to education they should support existing Alternative schools and advocate for the creation of new Alternative programs that operate with union rights intact.

Educators Vision
Published By the Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Volume 2, Issue 4, December 2011

Defend Public Education! Defend Our Union!

Educators Vision
Social Equality Educators SEE

Vote NO on the MOU for Creative Approach schools!

December 2011

Prelude to Charters: Contrary to claims that this is a bulwark against charter schools, this MOU to allow Creative Approach schools concedes all ground to them. Charter schools have been pushed by billionaires precisely because corporate America does not like unions, and charters are largely nonunion. By accepting the argument that rights and protections covered in a union contract are the roadblock to Creative Approach and creative approaches to education, we give ground to those who argue that we dont actually need a union at all. We would be conceding, in essence, that teachers and their rights are themselves the problem, not the massive education budget cuts, grinding poverty and growing inequality in our society that we and our students face everyday. If we allow a subset of schools to be exempt from the collective bargaining agreement it will be much easier for the advocates of school privatization to argue that we already have schools that are outside the unions domain so we may as well accept charter schools.

SEE Stages Citizens Arrest of Legislature, Sparks Mass Student Walkout

hen Gov. Gregoire proposed a special Legislative session to begin on November 28th for the purpose of cutting $2 billion healthcare and education, hundreds of educators, healthcare workers, and occupy activists descended on the capital to make our voice heard. A Washington State court ruling last February found the State guilty of not fulfilling its Constitutional obligation to fund basic education. As King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick ruled in his February school-funding decision, State funding is not ample, it is not stable, and it is not dependable. Washingtons constitution declares that education is the States paramount dutymaking the proposed special legislative budget cuts illegal. These proposed cuts would shorten the K-12 school year by four days and cut $152 million in levy-equalization payments to property-poor school districts in clear violation of the law. Given the language of the state constitution and Judge Erlicks ruling, the Social Equality Educators felt that the special legislative session to cut funds from our schools was a criminal act, and if no one else was going to enforce the law, than we would have to. SEE went and protested the Ways and Means committee and unfurled a banner that read, Citizens Arrest: Lawbreakers Need to Fully Fund Education. We then declared the meeting to be an unlawful assembly, saying:
We are educators in Washington State and will not remain silent while State legislature cuts funding to our schools. It is immoral and it is illegal.

500 Garfield High School students walked out of school to protest budget cuts to education.

All City-Student Walk-Out Against Budget Cuts

When: Wednesday, December 14th, 2:30 rally Where: All high school and college students are walking out of school to join a city-wide rally at the University of Washingtons Red Square. Why: To stop the proposed deep cuts to the Washington State education budget! RSVP: www.facebook.com/events/148855268555980/
December 2011

At that point Garfiled teacher Jesse Hagopian waved a pair of gray plastic handcuffs while SEE members chanted, fund our schools. It was then that Hagopian was arrested.
SEE Stages Citizens Arrest continued on page 3

Educators Vision

Social Equality Educators SEE

Garfield High seniors to state: Dont pawn off our future

SEE Stages Citizens Arrest continuedfrom page 1

Laurie Brown-

s the great Will Rogers said, When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

The Washington State Legislature seems to be unfamiliar with this aphorism. Even after the King County Superior Court ruled that the state has failed to keep up its duty to amply fund public education, lawmakers met in Olympia Monday to consider further budget cuts that would significantly jeopardize funding for K-12 schools. Public-school students from around the state have been irrevocably harmed by past education cuts and cannot bear any further damage. The state constitution says it is the paramount duty of the State to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, yet the state has massively failed to live up to its constitutional obligations in past years. Last years court ruling said, The State does not provide its public schools stable and dependable ample resources to equip all children with the basic knowledge and skills mandated by this States minimum education standards. As many superintendents testified, school districts are left to pick up the gap between promised and actual funding. Sometimes the community can raise funds, but more often school districts are forced to make difficult decisions to scale back their resources. Teachers, technology, and textbooks are all reduced to keep districts solvent. The real-world effects of these cuts are apparent to us as public-school students. For years, our schools have gone through major funding slashes. We walk from class to class in buildings that suffer from incomplete renovations. We are forced into lower-level classes and schedule gaps because our schools are not fully equipped to handle student demand. We each slip into our seats, one of 32 students in a classroom built for 28. We develop bonds with talented instructors, only to see them leave the classroom, either because it is cheaper for a district to lay off experienced teachers and hire new ones, or because they are overwhelmed with too many students and too little time. Grant Bronsdon, left, and Sam Heft-Luthy are seniors at Garfield High School. Bronsdon is the student body president and Heft-Luthy is executive editor of the Garfield Messenger. Higher education is not spared from these cuts. The University of Washington Board of Regents recently voted to raise annual tuition by 20 percent, or $1,874 its largest tuition hike ever. The UW, as well as colleges across the state, have been forced to accept more students from out of state in order to cover this funding gap, since out-of-state students pay a higher tuition rate. As students, we are told that we are the future, but if we truly are the future, we must have a say in the choices that are made today. Education, the paramount duty of the state, must remain intact to ensure that we can live up to the dreams promised to us by the state of Washington. It is immoral to shirk this fundamental mandate. We call for our legislators to provide a responsible and reasonable solution to the states budget problem that doesnt put the weight on the shoulders of students. Whether that solution is new taxes, cuts to other programs, or a comprehensive re-evaluation of the current public-education system, we need a plan that will actually improve the quality of education our students receive. Across-the-board cuts to vital education funding may seem like the easy solution at first, but they are nothing more than a poison-soaked Band-Aid. By cutting the education of the present, we are pawning off our future, rather than funding it. This article was originally published by the Seattle Times.

Educators Vision Published By the Social Equality Educators (SEE)

Volume 2, Issue 4, December 2011

teach CTE (Career and Technical Education formerly known as Vocational Education) Commercial Printmaking and Introduction to Design In Printmaking at Stadium High School in Tacoma. I have been teaching at Stadium for 14 years and before that I taught elementary school age kids through Seattle Arts Commission, The Seattle Art Museum, Summer Art Camps and other venues. I teach in Tacoma but I live in Seattle. Through my medium of Printmaking, my hope is to give students a tool to express their ideas and communicate them. Education is being dumbed down and students arent learning enough about what their part can be in a democracy. Critical thinking skills have diminished with the overwhelming testing that has become a major focus of the public school system. My hope is that through SEE we can change that focus and help this new generation to gain back critical thinking skills, to become strong participators in our democracy, and to work more toward a cooperative society that works for the greater good.

However, you cant arrest a movement whose time has come. When Mr. Hagopians students found out he was arrested they created a facebook page titled, Free Mr. Hagopian. When he was released from jail they changed the page to a walkout against the budget cuts. On Wednesday, a walkout of some 500 students at Garfield High School in Seattle marched downtown and rallied outside City Hall chanting, We are the future of this nation, no more cuts to education and Fund our future! Two days later, Grant Bronsdon and Sam Heft-Luthy, two of the lead student organizers, wrote a guest column in the Seattle Times:
The real-world effects of these cuts are apparent to us as public school students. For years, our schools have gone through major funding slashesAs students, we are told that we are the future, but if we truly are the future, we must have a say in the choices that are made today. Education, the paramount duty of the state, must remain intact to ensure that we can live up to the dreams promised to us by the state of Washington. It is immoral to shirk this fundamental mandate.

SEE steering committee: Eric Muhs, India Carlson, Dan Trocolli, Marian Wagner, Matt Carter, Jesse Hagopian. Educators Vision is a monthly newsletter of the Social Equality Educators www.seattlesee.org info@seattlesee.org
Mission

Tracey Drum

ocial Equality Educators (SEE) is a new rank-andfile organization of educators inside the Seattle Education Association that seeks to transform education in terms that empower students, teachers, and the communities that our public schools serve. As members of the SEA we understand that the educators union has a vital role to play in creating an equitable education system. As educators we understand the importance of using culturally relevant and holistic curriculum to empower our students. We have come together to fight against the corporate reform of our schools and to organize for a socially just education system.

teach 5th grade at Bow Lake Elementary in SeaTac. This is my 15th year of teaching. I joined SEE because of the inequality I see in education today. Students of poverty are not getting quality education, and it has nothing to do with their teacher. Im a National Board Certified Teacher, and I won teacher of the year in my district in 2005. The testing environment has put severe limits on what content is taught to my students. Theyre not allowed to go on more than three field trips a year, regardless of costs, because many are free. They dont get to experience real learning in the arts, sciences, and humanities. But, they do get an extra hour of reading and math instruction, often taught by para educators or a computer program. The emphasis on reading and math instruction has squeezed out all other content area. Art or social studies becomes a truncated version for 40 minutes on Fridays. Students no longer develop passions for learning about other topics because they dont get to experience anything but the content found on MSP tests. This strict narrowing of curriculum would never be allowed in a school with upper middle class students. Yet, this is happening all across the country in schools with high populations of working class parents, under-educated parents, immigrants, and families living poverty. Educated parents with children still trapped in this environment are seeking vouchers to send their kids to private schools or believe charter schools are the answer. I love teaching, and I believe in public education. But, I feel disheartened as a teacher and a failure to my students as Im being asked to deliver this version of education reform.

Educators Vision

Social Equality Educators SEE

December 2011

Educators Vision

Social Equality Educators SEE

December 2011