Dive Brief:
- On Tuesday, the Seattle Education Association and the Seattle School Board reached a tentative agreement to bring a five-day teacher strike to an end.
- While that doesn’t mean the strike's over yet, the union has promised to stay out of classrooms until the agreement is finalized.
- The details of the agreement are still murky, but district officials say they expect classes to be back in session by Thursday.
Dive Insight:
The union and district have spent the past few weeks in talks over a potential pay increase for local teachers, as well as longer recess for students and changes to evaluations. But the strike also had undercurrents of frustration with Washington’s troubled school finance system. The state is currently under a court order to reform how it funds schools and is facing $100,000 daily fines for its lackluster progress. Teachers and observers said many of the frustrations stemmed form a perpetual lack of funding, over which Seattle has limited control.
Washington’s not alone in having to address funding issues at many levels. In Chicago, acrimonious relations between the union and the district stem at least in part from the district’s troubled financial state and the state’s involvement with it.