Mead teachers union continues to rally as no contract has been reached in negotiations with school district

A cherry -red mass descended on the lawn outside the Mead School District office Wednesday as more than 250 educators and their supporters convened in solidarity with their union’s bargaining team.

Inside the office building on Farwell Road, representatives from the school district and the Mead Education Association sat around a bargaining table to iron out the details of a renewed contract for certificated employees, their current contract set to expire at the end of the month.

“We are a group of educators who grind every day,” union President Toby Doolittle told the horde of rallygoers wearing the union’s signature red. “We come and we meet the challenges every day in our classrooms, and quite frankly, it is time for the district to uphold their obligation.”

Mead Education Association represents all non-administrative school employees with certificates, including teachers, nurses, therapists and speech language pathologists, totaling 625 members in the district.

The district and the union have been at the table since May in several negotiation sessions. Doolittle declined to share specifics of what’s on the table, but said his union’s priorities surround designing systems for inclusion of students with special needs and preventing behavioral issues that pose safety concerns.

“The district is acting dishonorably in how they are treating not only the certificated educators, but how they’ve treated our classified colleagues over this entire year as each has bargained,” Doolittle said. “What they’re trying to do is they are trying to renege on agreements that we made long ago that impact our staff and our ability to do our jobs.”

In a statement sent Wednesday evening, Mead School Board President Michael Cannon wrote that district negotiators have proposed “solutions to enhance special education, tiered systems of support, and school safety,” but said the union’s proposals “come with significant costs.”

“Rising salary and benefits costs have limited the district’s ability to fund critical priorities promised to voters, such as updated curricula, infrastructure repairs for aging facilities, modernized equipment, and additional safety deputies,” Cannon wrote.

Cannon pointed to increasing staff salaries putting the district in a pinch. Per the salary schedule previously bargained between the district and union, certificated staff last school year were paid between $57,000 and $117,000 depending on years of experience and their degrees earned. The average Mead teacher had a base salary of $92,000 in the 2023-24 school year, according to data from OSPI, taking home an average $11,000 in supplemental pay.

Average pay has been on the rise for Mead teachers in recent years, steadily increasing from about $78,000 base pay averaged in the 2018-19 school year.

“The district has made significant investments in supporting our educators, with salaries that reflect their significant value to our community,” Cannon wrote. “It’s disheartening that the MEA overlooks these investments while pushing a narrative that ignores the district’s stated desire to work with our teachers to identify the most effective ways to address educator needs and concerns. It’s obvious that their tactics are to avoid any talk of salaries and costs because they know that doesn’t play well with taxpayers.”

Doolittle, a former social studies teacher at Mead High School who now leads the union full time, said what educators need is more time to collaborate with each other and come up with districtwide plans to address behavioral issues, their current approach being too “reactionary,” he said. He also wants a districtwide system to boost inclusion of students with special needs.

“Right now, it’s a free for all at each building. We don’t have a comprehensive definition of what inclusion is, and we don’t know what we’re doing,” Doolittle said. “Some individual teachers have a great process, and it’s working really well, and there’s no reason why we can’t use those in all of our buildings.”

One such teacher is Gina McGlocklin, who’s spent 11 years teaching special education at Colbert Elementary School. She’d previously worked with the Northwest Dyslexia Alliance, and used her connections to arrange training for staff at her school. She’d like to see more training available to more teachers around the district.

“Bringing in training for teachers really has made learning better for all of our students; dyslexia is just one example,” she said.

When reached Wednesday after negotiations finished for the day, Doolittle said there were “productive conversations,” but he still “expected more substantive response from the district.”

“Still, our significant issues remain unaddressed,” he said Wednesday evening.

There are two more bargaining sessions on the calendar for August 25 and 27. If no tentative agreement for a contract is reached by August 28, union membership will discuss next steps at their general assembly meeting that day, Doolittle said.

In Doolittle’s 25 years working at Mead, union membership has never held a vote to authorize a strike.

Asked about the potential of a strike, Doolittle said his members wanted to be in school on the first day on Sept. 2.

“It’s the most special day of the year,” Doolittle said. “With that said, we need in place substantive action by the district to ensure our students are safe, our kids’ learning needs are met and we are able to give them the education they deserve; for us, that is our paramount duty.”