Kent teachers settle; class-size issue to live on

Though the Kent teachers strike has ended and schools were reopening today, teachers inside and beyond the Kent School District vowed to continue fighting for smaller classes.

"Thanks to you, class size is the issue we're going to be talking about" at the state and national levels, Bellevue teacher Stephen Miller told hundreds of teachers and parents at a rally in downtown Kent on Sunday evening, when a tentative agreement was announced in the nearly three-week-long strike.

Mary Lindquist, president of the Washington Education Association, applauded the Kent teachers and told parents their support "adds to our resolve that class size matters, that time with students matters."

The strike began Aug. 27, with crowded classrooms the teachers' biggest issue.

To get class sizes reduced, they accepted a slightly lower compensation package in the two-year contract they overwhelmingly approved Monday morning.

It calls for up to a 3 percent increase the first year and up to 1.5 percent the second, depending on a teacher's education and experience.

The contract was approved by 94 percent of the 1,390 teachers who voted Monday morning.

Kent School District spokeswoman Becky Hanks did not return phone calls Monday afternoon, but the school district has said all along that it respects and values its teachers and that the only obstacle to reducing class size has been the cost.

Hanks said earlier that the district welcomes the teachers back. But on Monday, Charles Allen, spokesman for the Kent Parents Coalition, an advocacy group that formed during the strike, told teachers that his group will not rest until the Kent School Board is recalled.

The board angered parents and teachers when its president, Jim Berrios, canceled the regular September meeting, saying the board has nothing to discuss.

Berrios said Monday that the meeting was canceled because school was not in session and there was nothing on the agenda that needed board action. He also said he has been working with district administrators on strike-related issues and has been very accessible to teachers and parents alike, in one instance having set up a meeting with those picketing in front of his house.

Under the new contract, elementary class-size limits will go down. In grades K-3, a teacher now will get help from an aide when a classes exceeds 26, compared with 28 before, and the maximum class size will be 29 students, down from 31.

In grades 4-6, teachers will get help when their classes exceed 30 students, one fewer student than before. And the class cap went down from 34 to 32.

There were no class-size caps in the upper grades, and the new contract did not set them as teachers had wanted.

But the new contract does provide that when a teacher's combined daily class load rises above 147 students in middle school or 157 in high school, a substitute will come in to spell the teacher for up to a day and a half each quarter.

Those numbers will go down in the contract's second year to 145 and 155 students, respectively.

The new contract puts Kent's class-size limits more in line with those of other area districts. In Auburn, for example, teachers in K-2 receive help when their classes exceed 25 students. In Federal Way, it's 26 students for grades K-3, and in Seattle, it's 27 for K-3.

A few districts have limits on the sizes of high-school classes, as Kent teachers had sought, but many do not.

In 2000, Washington voters approved an initiative aimed at lowering class sizes. But earlier this year, when the Legislature made cuts to cover a $9 billion shortfall, it cut funding for that class-size-reduction effort from $460 per student to $131.

At the same time, lawmakers have talked about lowering class sizes as part of a major overhaul of state school funding. The state's superintendent of public instruction, Randy Dorn, is leading a committee looking at how to put a new school finance plan in place.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com