PORT ANGELES — More than 300 teachers, parents, school administrators and supporters rallied today at noon at Veterans Park to urge increased state education funding by the state Legislature.
Unionized teachers from Sequim and Port Angeles, wearing red shirts, staged the one-day strike and rally as part of a rolling walkout with 55 other school district teacher unions in the state, and spent the morning marching through their communities before the noon rally.
Chimacum teachers held a similar walkout and rally in that town Friday.
The Port Angeles rally included speeches from local and state teacher union representatives and from school district officials, and teachers heard both recorded and live music during the afternoon event.
Classes in both districts are expected to resume with a normal schedule Tuesday.
Earlier report:
By Peninsula Daily News
Port Angeles and Sequim teachers are off the job today for a noon rally at Veterans Park on Lincoln Street in Port Angeles — just north of the Clallam County Courthouse.
Unions represent 217 teachers in Port Angeles and 175 in Sequim. The locals plan to march in their respective towns this morning.
They plan a group rally at noon at Veterans Park on Lincoln Street in Port Angeles after conducting marches in their respective towns earlier in the day.
Either school district has scheduled a makeup day in June so students and teachers can complete the state-mandated 180-day school year.
Port Angeles students’ last day will be June 15, and Sequim students will have a last day of class June 18.
Graduating seniors at Port Angeles and Sequim high schools will not be required to attend the makeup day.
Teachers are paid by contract, according to Tina Smith O’Hara, Port Angeles School District spokeswoman, so because the day off will be made up, there will be no extra pay nor a pay cut.
Teachers in the three districts are among those in 57 out of the state’s 295 public districts participating in the one-day walkouts, according to the Washington Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
The rallies are meant to stir the state Legislature, now in special session in Olympia, to fully fund K-12 education, as required by the state Supreme Court in its McCleary ruling.
In the McCleary decision — which carries the name of Sequim native Stephanie McCleary, a Chimacum school classified employee and parent — justices ruled that lawmakers are not meeting their constitutional responsibility to fully pay for basic kindergarten-through-12th-grade education and are relying too much on local tax-levy dollars to balance the education budget.
McCleary attended a rally organized by the Chimacum teachers’ union local on Friday. Schools were closed there that day.
In September, the court held the Legislature in contempt, saying it would impose sanctions if no progress were made in this legislative session toward fully funding education by 2018.
