Ballot boxes used by Shoreline Educational Professional Professionals Association during their strike authorization vote on Thursday, Nov. 10. (Davijj
by David Mendez
Shoreline schools are facing a potential strike starting next week, called by the union representing school staff across the district — and Shoreline’s teachers have promised to not cross the picket lines.
On Thursday, members of the Shoreline Educational Support Professional Association voted to authorize a strike amid extended contract negotiations with Shoreline School District administrators. SESPA represents front office staff, nurses, crossing guards, security monitors and aides working with students receiving special education, among others.
If the school district and the union don’t reach a tentative agreement by 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 13, SESPA will call for a strike to begin on Monday morning.
Shoreline School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This story will be updated with the district’s response.
Disclosure: The Osprey’s business manager, Holly Mendez, is an employee of the Washington Education Association, the statewide union with which both the Shoreline Educational Support Professional Association and the Shoreline Education Association are affiliated. She does not oversee or control editorial coverage decisions for The Osprey.
More than 98% of SESPA members at the union’s general membership meeting Thursday voted in favor of authorizing a strike, according to SESPA co-president Mario Orallo, a college and career counselor at Shorecrest High School.
While the threat of a strike looms, Orallo told The Osprey that the union’s biggest priority is to get a deal done at the bargaining table. According to a union statement, SESPA’s bargaining team will be available all weekend.
If a tentative agreement is not reached, SESPA members will strike — and Shoreline teachers will support them. On Wednesday, Shoreline Education Association members pledged in a vote, with 99% of members in favor, to support SESPA’s potential strike.
“We’re going to build signs, organize around it, and we’ll be there for them,” said SEA president Matt Reiman. “SEA members realize that they can’t do this job without those folks and that SESPA has waited patiently in the wings while others have made gains.”
Shoreline’s teachers want their colleagues to get what they’re asking for, Reiman added.
“Much of what they’re in search of contractually is what we want for them, so that we can better work together to serve students.”
What’s on the table?
At its core, SESPA is asking the district for wage increases that would put its members — and especially its paraeducators — in line with neighboring school districts. Paraeducators are teaching aides, helping with in-class instruction and directly supporting students, in some cases working one-to-one with special needs students.
Days before the vote, Orallo told The Osprey that SESPA has been disappointed by the district’s counter-offers in recent weeks.
“It comes down to money, and the narrative that they don’t have the money, which we don’t agree with,” Orallo said. The union firmly believes that the district is far too conservative with its revenue projections each year, especially following this year’s passage of two levies. Combined, the levies are expected to grow revenues each year through 2030.
“Everyone’s really talented. It’s just sometimes not enough hands to go around. We’re holding hands with three or four different kids at one time while we’re opening a door, and pulling a wagon, and rolling a wheelchair,” said Elle Fredrickson, a one-on-one paraeducator at Parkwood Elementary. “We’ve talked about specific changes would be helpful, like compensation, so that people, that good employees, will stay.”
“We have been struggling, watching our colleagues in other districts — losing our colleagues to other districts! — because our pay is so much lower,” said Alicia Spanswick, a paraeducator at Ridgecrest Elementary. “We want qualified professionals to be working with our students, and that means paying people appropriately, so that we can show up every day and be the professionals that we need to be.”
Increasing pay for Shoreline’s paraeducators and professional staff, union members say, is foundational to any agreement.
“It is common for our paras to have their morning job for health care and to support their students, and then they might work at CVS, they might work a Mariners game or stadium gigs, or they may work another thing, and that’s just unsustainable,” Orello said. “Shoreline, being a place of excellence, should value those people. We’re asking the district — we’re demanding from the district — to see us and invest in that.”