Vol. 73/No. 38      October 5, 2009

Teachers accepted the district’s offer of smaller classes for kindergarten through sixth grade. Although this fell short of their demand for caps on class sizes for all grades, the new contract means two students fewer per class in the lower grades than previously.

The agreement also provides for salary increases of 2.75 percent the first year and 1.6 percent the second year, depending on the teacher’s level of experience.

The Kent school district is the state’s fourth largest with more than 26,000 students at 40 schools.

“They’ve put us in such a hard situation,” Patty Burn, an eighth-grade science teacher at Mattson Middle School, told reporters. She has 33 children in one of her classes but only 32 desks.

Teachers said the district could afford to lower class size, pointing to $21 million in a reserve fund. On September 7 teachers voted by a 74 percent margin to defy the injunction handed down by Judge Andrea Darvas that declared their strike illegal. By state law, teachers as public employees are prohibited from striking.

On September 10, Darvas threatened a $200 retroactive fine per day per teacher and a $1,500 fine against the teachers union, the Kent Education Association, if the strike did not end by September 14.

More than 100 supporters, including parents, students, and teachers from other school districts, cheered as teachers arrived September 7 for the vote on whether to continue striking.  
 
 
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