The Seattle Education Association bargaining team and the school district have reached a tentative agreement. The SEA board will be reviewing it. They will vote either to suspend the strike or to reject it — which would mean back to bargaining. If the board suspends the strike, the tentative agreement will then go to the representative assembly. Representatives from each school are spending the day asking union members how to vote. Then, they’ll vote either to accept the agreement and go back to work, or to keep striking.
The bottom line really is whether the district has offered terms the teachers will accept on things like:
- pay and healthcare
- special education staffing ratios
- teacher evaluations
- limits to standardized testing
Educators are the only ones voting, but not the only ones who hope the district offer is good enough. The Seattle Special Education PTSA sent the following letter to the negotiating teams:
Dear Directors, Dr. Nyland, Mr. Knapp and Ms Campano,
The Seattle Special Education PTSA Board and its membership have followed closely the progress of District and SEA contract negotiations. We’re encouraged that the District is finally implementing the best practice service delivery model emphasizing inclusion, as conceived by the Joint Special Education Task Force. This is a plan that has been years in the making. The PTSA stands firm that the ACCESS (inclusion) model be implemented with fidelity to the fundamentals and the spirit of its design.
For that reason, the PTSA Board is dismayed by the District’s bargaining proposal to set untenably high ratios for our secondary students in ACCESS programs. We take issue with the proposed changes for the following reasons (to be elaborated below):
• Special Education at the secondary level needs vast improvement, not backsliding;
• Increased ACCESS ratios impact students with Autism Spectrum disorders the most;
• Less inclusion support at the high school level runs counter to students needs at those grade levels;
• Increased ACCESS ratios will exacerbate the opportunity gap and graduation rate for many classes of our youth;
• Access or inclusion support is not intended to be cheaper than intensive special education; it is a necessary investment to: comply with IDEA mandates; provide a true continuum of placements; and, guarantee the success of our students’ outcomes.
As it stands, the District’s secondary level special education services are frequently silo-ed, rely heavily on “Life Skills” and “Study Skills” cookie-cutter courses or modified academic classes, and offer few opportunities for students in self-contained classrooms to access the breadth of academics, enrichment activities, electives and social settings in high school. Special education at the secondary level needs improvements to achieve a true continuum. The current, widely varying programs violate the IDEA mandate that special education students be offered a continuum of placements and opportunities to be educated in the least-restrictive environment with their typical peers.
The PTSA Board notes that many students in ACCESS are on the Autism Spectrum, have significant disabilities, and would typically be assigned to SM4 classes with opportunities for inclusion. The staffing ratio for SM4 was 8:1:2; SM4 is now called “Distinct” and is proposed at 7:1:2 staffing. This has heretofore provided support for students with ASD in the general education setting. We are pleased to see the district’s continued emphasis on staffing for these students.
The District now proposes to double the ACCESS ratio for high school to 15:1:3 – well beyond the 10:1:3 staffing developed by the Special Education Task Force. Simply because students rise to secondary school does not mean that their needs are any less. Students with disabilities,, particularly at the secondary level, are very often required to take special education classes such as “Study Skills” or “Life Skills” to receive the necessary specially designed instruction specified on their IEPs (a defect in the district’s design of special education service delivery in high school). The side-effect of these special education classes is that students have a reduced opportunity to take academic, elective, enhancement and exploratory classes. Failure to consider students with disabilities over the entirety of a school’s offerings weakens their social and academic standing in communities and results in marginalizing students to second class citizen status.
As students age, the significance of inclusion increases, NOT decreases. Students take academics and electives that develop interests and talents which could lead to a wish to stay in school, earn scholarships and train for careers. As the importance of these classes increases, the availability seems to decrease for students with disabilities, even as students with disabilities need these offerings even more. Academic, extracurricular and elective classes provide much needed social connectedness, community engagement, and career preparation. The law requires the District to appropriate support these students and provide equitable access. The ACCESS ratios of 10:1:3 for students with significant disabilities would accomplish this; ratios of 15:1:3 would not.
Denial of our students’ equitable access to all that high school has to offer will further exacerbate the opportunity gap for: students with disabilities, the poor, and students of color too often misidentified as requiring special education. Too often these students are enrolled in modified academics classes which are remedial in nature, because this is a convenient way for school buildings to handle these students, track them into specific pathways, and ill-prepare them for post-secondary education or training. Students with disabilities who struggle with minimal support will, at minimum, fall in the gap, and at the worst be forced into more expensive placements – self-contained and out of district placements. This not only costs more money – it ensures a worse educational experience and worse outcome. ACCESS/Inclusion is not intended to be a less costly alternative to self-contained; it is a different placement, and a different level and location of service; one required to maintain a “Continuum of Placements”; one that must be resourced enough to succeed lest it become another ICS debacle.
The PTA mission is “To make every child’s potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children”. Special Education PTSA advocates on behalf of students with disabilities and their families. The PTSA Board asks that the District and the SEA work together to negotiate an agreement that place the welfare and educational outcomes of our students FIRST. Do NOT increase ACCESS ratios and thereby decrease support for our young people trying to make their way into the world.
Respectfully,
Cecilia McCormick
President
Lori HIltz
Co-Vice President
Anne Sheeran
Co-Vice President
Ayn McNutt
Treasurer
Lauren Feaux
Staff Representative
No matter what the outcome is, the big funding problem — a state legislature in contempt of court for failure to fund schools — still needs to be addressed.
There’s another big problem too: top-down management of schools. The Seattle school district has imposed many top-down measures that are expensive and unhelpful, like top-down professional development and excessive standardized tests. There’s some discussion of these issues in the comment section of the Save Seattle Schools blog post “The District Has No Money: What Should Go to Support Classrooms?”
Parents have built up momentum in support of teachers and our kids. No matter what happens today, we need to keep on organizing!
Parent To Parent Grassroots 