Open Letter from the Bellevue School Board to Parents: Sept. 5, 2008

All of us on the Board deeply regret the decision to strike. Like you we live in this district and take pride in the quality of the education provided to our children. Postponing the start of school due to a strike is much more than an inconvenience. We understand that a teacher strike affects the very fabric of our community, and are actively engaged with the school administration in seeking solutions that will end the strike, reopen the schools, and re-establish a cooperative and respectful environment for all parties.

All of us on the Board deeply regret the decision to strike.  Like you we live in this district and take pride in the quality of the education provided to our children.  Postponing the start of school due to a strike is much more than an inconvenience.  We understand that a teacher strike affects the very fabric of our community, and are actively engaged with the school administration in seeking solutions that will end the strike, reopen the schools, and re-establish a cooperative and respectful environment for all parties.

The Board is also aware that there are many rumors and conflicting messages circulating within the district.  We hope this letter can serve to clarify some of the issues and reassure you of our intent to reach an accord.

Curriculum:  Like you, we have great respect for what our teachers provide our community.  We believe that our district employs the finest group of teaching professionals in the state.  We understand the contributions and sacrifices that teachers make, and we respect what they have to say.  Last spring, recognizing their service and insight, and acknowledging that the departure of Dr. Riley offered a unique opportunity for some introspection, the Board met with both classroom teachers and principals.  From March through May we met 16 times with over 350 teachers and solicited their ideas, concerns and opinions.  We also met separately with each of our 27 elementary and secondary school principals.  We asked what worked for them in the district and what did not.  Using the issues they brought forth, we asked all the teachers in the district to complete a survey and add their personal comments.  Approximately 600 teachers responded.  The Board then collected all of the survey information and meeting minutes, and presented the information to the district cabinet and administration during several sessions.  At the conclusion of these meetings we were confident administration had an excellent understanding of the major issues that needed to be addressed in the near and far term.  The Board is proud of the work that the administration has done in taking these teacher-expressed concerns and developing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which will be signed into agreement along with the contract.

The MOU reads as follows:

Teachers will exercise professional judgment in determining when and how to modify, supplement, or replace a lesson to meet the needs of students and to achieve unit and lesson objectives.  Teachers are encouraged to share modifications, supplementations and replacement lessons with their curriculum teams as a benefit to other teachers and in an ongoing effort to improve the curriculum.  If a teacher believes a series of lessons, substantial part of a unit, or common assessment will not meet the needs of his/her students and must be revised or replaced, he/she will notify the curriculum department and initiate the Curriculum Improvement Process.  Until this process has produced an outcome in which most affected staff are confident, staff will not replace a substantial part of a unit and/or common assessments.

This Memorandum of Understanding could not have been offered without the thoughtful and expert insight of Bellevue’s own teachers.

Compensation:  This is a frustrating area for us.  We know teachers deserve better salaries, not only for the education they have attained and the hours that they are expected to work, but because we entrust them with the education of our children.  The complicating facts of this issue are:

1. Teacher salaries are set by the state, not the district, and the state does not differentiate cost of living differences.
2. The state restricts the local levy funds we can raise that would allow us to supplement those salaries.
3. The state underfunds our schools (our per-pupil expenditures, even with levies, are below the national average).  Our local funds are not only stretched to augment salaries, but the same amount of limited money supplies the extra resources for class size reductions, rising energy costs, transportation, special ed, aides, activities and athletics, not to mention those offerings that are ‘beyond the basic requirements’ like art, music, drama, tech, vocational, gifted, business and IB and AP classes.  Many of these are accessible to our students only because we still have a 7-period school day.

This year the state offered our teachers a 5.1% pay raise (Cost of Living Allowance – COLA).  The district offered an additional 1.5% (supplemental), making a total pay raise of 6.6%.  Administrators and all other employees in the Bellevue School District received the state COLA of 4.4%, and will not receive an added supplement.  There is no way to predict what the state’s COLA offerings will be in the second and third years of this contract, but the supplemental guarantees which the union is demanding cannot be met without increasing either class size or eliminating the 7th period.  We feel that the academic and long-term consequences of either solution are unacceptable.

Our teachers, quite deservedly, have had the richest supplemental contract of any of our surrounding metropolitan school districts, at $11,061 per teacher, and we expect they will retain this position as a result of the current offer (6.6%).
(comparisons found at the website:  http://www.bsd405.org )

The Board feels that the real solution to providing appropriate teacher salaries lies with the state.  Over the last decade our district has lobbied Olympia for increased salaries and cost of living differentials.  We were among the first districts to step up and lead the partnership with the WEA to sue the state over inadequate funding.  We are no less angered and frustrated than you by the fact that local school districts are asked to negotiate salaries but do not have the power to set salaries and collect the appropriate funds.

In closing, the school administration continues to work every day at the negotiating table and the Board continues to receive daily status updates and meets regularly regarding the strike.  We know that every day that the strike continues adds to the problems of managing your household, planning your holiday time, and wounding our community in ways that may be difficult to heal.  We hope this letter has given some additional perspective.  Please feel free to call or write if you have questions and we invite you to our website where we will have daily updates.