Pasco schools close for second day, district seeks court order against teachers

One Pasco father didn’t realize his children’s first day of school wasn’t happening until he showed up at James McGee Elementary School on Tuesday morning.

He spoke briefly with teachers on the picket line on the sidewalk of Horizon Drive in west Pasco before driving off, demonstrators said. They added he didn’t express any feelings about how the failure of the teachers union and the district to agree on a new contract led teachers to strike.

“The sad thing about is he had his three kids in the back,” said Mary Keech, an occupational therapist with the district. “Can you imagine how those kids felt?”

Those students and the thousands of others in Pasco will have to wait longer to start their school year. District officials announced Tuesday afternoon that all 21 schools would remain closed Wednesday as the teachers continue their strike. That includes Delta High School, the science and technology-focused high school jointly operated with the Richland and Kennewick school districts which is due to open its new west Pasco campus this year.

The district is pursuing a court order to force teachers back to work but that isn’t scheduled for a hearing until Sept. 4, signaling that classes likely won’t resume until next week at the earliest unless an agreement is reached.

The district’s court complaint says the strike violates state law as well as the individual contracts the district has with its teachers for the 2015-16 school year. The documents also claim the strike denies students their constitutional right to an education and threatens the district with extra expenses because of the delay to the start of the school year.

“The health, safety and welfare of the students and non-striking employees are seriously harmed and further threatened by the strike,” the documents said.

Union President Greg Olson said he hadn’t seen the district’s injunction but that even if a judge did grant it, he wouldn’t tell teachers to obey it.

“To go back to work without a contract means the district doesn’t have to do anything,” he said, adding later, “I just think they’re wasting more time.”

Contract talks will resume Sept. 2. There were no negotiations Tuesday. District negotiators were willing to meet but the mediators working with the bargaining teams had already left town, said district spokeswoman Leslee Caul during a news conference.

“If the mediators were available, we’d be at the table today,” she said.

Olson said that wasn’t the full story.

“The mediators left because the district said they weren’t willing to meet,” he said.

At Pasco High School on Tuesday, maintenance workers mowed grass or cleaned empty school parking lots. A shipment of library books arrived at Captain Gray STEM Elementary School. At the same time cars honked in support and drivers waved at the teachers as they marched around the schools.

Teachers said they would rather be in the classroom but that they couldn’t continue without proper support from the district, particularly when it came to standardized curriculum. A few parents who joined them agreed.

“I fully trust our teachers. I know they have the kids’ best interests in mind,” said Nicole King, who has a first- and a third-grader enrolled at McGee. “I want them in an environment and with a curriculum that will help them succeed.”

The district’s last contract offer to the union Aug. 31 provided an additional $8.4 million to teachers for items such as a 9 percent pay increase over three years, hundreds of thousands of dollars for supplies and materials, increased planning time for elementary teachers, increased contributions to insurance pools and class size reductions in kindergarten and first grade.

Teacher representatives rejected it, noting that a third of the pay increase is tied to whether voters renew the district’s maintenance and operations levy in February. They also want to see personalized evaluations for teachers and fewer standardized tests. The district also has refused to make substantive changes to when and how new curriculum would be adopted, which teachers say they currently must develop largely on their own.

“The administration wants to put committees together,” said Jay Covington, a Pasco High School health and physical education teacher. “Committees don’t guarantee you’re going to get curriculum.”

“A lot of people think we’re holding out for pay,” said Carol Bushbaker, a Pasco High consumer sciences teacher picketing with her English lab mix Holly. “If that were it, we’d already be in the classroom.”

Nicole Austin, a parent standing with teachers outside McGee on Tuesday, said she was frustrated by the situation and her expectation “is that everyone resolve this so our kids can go to school.”

But she understood why the teachers were striking and appreciates the work they put in to ensure they can teach their students.

“It’s crazy to me that a kid at this school doesn’t have the same resources as a kid on the east side,” Austin said.

Caul addressed the concerns over curriculum during the news conference, saying the district’s curriculum development and review process was under way before bargaining with the teachers began this summer.

“We obviously can’t go spend millions on textbooks overnight,” she said.

Caul said the district filed the injunction because its administrators believe they need to be with their students and were doing everything it could to open up the schools. The district offered to bargain the contract over 30 days during the summer, she added, but the union only was willing to meet for eight days. The district has made frequent and increasingly valuable offers while the union has not proposed a contract since Aug. 21, she said.

“Our support of and respect for our teachers is unwavering,” Caul said.

Olson said Caul’s comments only set up a he-said, she-said repartee. The union wants a contract, he said, and is willing to develop one once the district decides to put forth serious effort.

“You bargain with each other, not in the court of public opinion,” he said.

While the district’s athletic teams are still practicing and playing games throughout the week, thanks to an agreement with the district’s coaches association. But many parents have been left with the question of what to do with their kids during the strike, especially with no end in sight.

Attendance at storytime events at the west Pasco branch of the Mid-Columbia Libraries did have particularly high attendance Tuesday, said library spokesman Davin Diaz, though he couldn’t say if it was the result of schools being closed.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton & Franklin Counties operated Tuesday as though it were a non-school day, said executive director Brian Ace. That means the Bobbie Littrell Club at 333 Court St. will offer activities from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. to members who’ve paid a $20 annual membership fee. The worker child care program at Club Discovery Preschool will be open to students enrolled with the club from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“We will definitely be operating into the near future to best serve our families,” Ace said.

This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 10:41 AM with the headline "Pasco schools close for second day, district seeks court order against teachers."