OLYMPIA — Sequim School District teachers would strike in the wrong place — even if at the right time for the right reason — with their planned one-day walkout, one of their Democratic legislators says.
They ought to be protesting to Republican state senators, not in the 24th Legislative District whose delegation supports state funding for education, including higher teacher salaries, Rep. Kevin Van De Wege of Sequim said Friday.
“I would urge some caution [to teachers] about whom their audience is,” Van De Wege said.
“If teachers are going to strike, we need to see it in areas of getting attention where the action is. I would encourage them to get the attention of those types of legislators.”
Members of the Sequim Education Association have voted to join a series of one-day “rolling walkouts” across the state to protest legislative inaction to satisfy the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision.
They’ll vote Wednesday to choose a date for the job action, according to Linsay Porter Rapelje, acting president of the Sequim Education Association.
Meanwhile, legislators last week entered up to 30 days of a special session as the GOP-controlled Senate and the Democratic-majority House remained at an impasse over how to fund K-12 schooling as well as the state’s capital, operating and transportation budgets.
Van De Wege told Peninsula Daily News that he, Rep. Steve Tharinger of Sequim and Sen. Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam — all Democrats — support meeting the court’s order to finance K-12 schooling.
The three represent the 24th District that includes all of Clallam and Jefferson counties and most of Grays Harbor County.
Rather than striking close to home, Van De Wege said, teachers should protest in the districts of Senate Republicans. The nearest to Sequim is Oak Harbor’s 10th District Sen. Barbara Bailey.
For their part, members of the Oak Harbor Education Association stayed off the job Friday, rallying along the waterfront in the central Whidbey Island district.
School administrators said they’d treat the job action like a snow day, according to the Whidbey News-Times, with a makeup day May 26.
Teachers in Port Angeles have yet to decide if they’ll join the walkouts, according to Barry Burnett, president of the Port Angeles Education Association.
Union educators in Chimacum and Port Townsend have not signaled an intention to participate in the strikes, the superintendents of their respective districts said.
At least two-dozen of Washington’s 295 school districts had joined the rolling walkouts or planned to do so as of late last week.
As for the local legislators, “all three of us are very supportive of McCleary (the court’s 2012 ruling that local levies no longer can be the mainstay of public school financing) and education funding in general,” Van De Wege said.
“All of us see value in seeing good teachers in the classroom, and the best way to have good teachers is to pay them a decent wage.”
Teachers’ bone of contention with the Legislature, he says, centers on a cost-of-living adjustment to their salaries, popularly called COLA.
The COLA issue is stalled in the Senate, Van De Wege said.
Legislators began their special session Wednesday, having failed to meet the Supreme Court’s order that justices backed up with a contempt citation in September. The court has stayed sanctions at least until the special session ends.
The justices said the state must provide the primary support for schools and that local levies no longer could be the financial underpinnings of K-12 education. In September, they found legislators in contempt for failing to do so and gave them until the end of the current session to avoid sanctions.
“There’s little doubt that the final budget will have a lot of McCleary funding in it,” Van De Wege said, referring to the lawsuit filed by Stephanie McCleary, an administrative secretary at the Chimacum School District and a native of Sequim.
“It’s just what level of funding we’re going to be at and, more importantly, where that money is going to come from.”
Van De Wege said the state House had proposed new sources of revenue to fund schools, cut class sizes, and raise teachers’ salaries, but that the Senate has resorted to “budget gimmicks” to provide the money that’s necessary to make the changes.
“They stole money from public works assistance,” Van De Wege said of Republican senators.
“They doubled the amount of marijuana tax [projected revenue] — just magically doubled it — and they counted money twice in their transportation budget and their operating budget.”
The special session would run through May, but Van De Wege said Republicans hoped to wait until the state’s quarterly revenue forecast is released in mid-June. House Democrats want the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council to make its prediction early.
Van De Wege said that forecast probably wouldn’t meet Republicans’ hopes anyhow and the Senate would be forced to consider the House’s revenue-raising proposals.
In the meantime, legislative watchdog WashingtonVotes.org released its scorecard on the regular, 105-day session that ended April 24, including what representatives and senators answered how many roll-call votes.
Both Van De Wege and Tharinger voted on all the 549 items that came up for roll call in the House. They were among 95 legislators with perfect voting records.
Hargrove answered 545 of the 594 roll calls in the Senate.
“There are many reasons why legislators miss votes, such as civic or public service obligations, legislative negotiations and medical and family emergencies,” WashingtonVotes Director Franz W. Gregory said.
Hargrove was unavailable for comment.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.