Welcome to Seattle
Public Schools' site for informing the public on our collective
bargaining agreements and ongoing negotiations.
INTRODUCTION:
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS AND DISTRICT GOALS
Over
the next several months, Seattle Public Schools will be negotiating
new contracts with some of the labor unions that represent most of
our District employees. These negotiations are very important to
ensure that we continue to help every student succeed, make
progress on our Strategic Plan goals and start the 2009-10 year
smoothly.
The
most important goals for these contract negotiations are
to:
- Strengthen teaching
and learning so that we can ensure an excellent education for
every student; and
- Promote
accountability by measuring performance, so that we can ensure
that all staff members are working effectively to achieve our
central goal of student achievement.
These are also the
central goals of our District’s strategic plan,
Excellence for All, and they inform everything we do. For
these negotiations, the District’s
proposals are designed specifically to support these goals by
including provisions that will:
- strengthen
professional development and training opportunities,
- measure performance,
and
- support strong
principal leadership and increase staffing flexibility
Two
of the current negotiations that will affect the largest number of
our employees are:
GUIDELINES FOR
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
To
ensure that valued staff are treated with dignity and respect
during the negotiating process, and to provide clear and accurate
information to community members, the District and the labor unions
have agreed to a set of guidelines for the contract talks. They
have committed that these negotiations will be:
- RESPECTFUL. The
District and Unions will negotiate in good faith and with a common
goal – ensuring the success of our students.
- TRANSPARENT. We
will post the current contracts and the District’s key
proposals for the negotiations on the SPS web site.
- FAIR. Our
greatest resource is our staff, the people who make learning
happen. Our negotiations will acknowledge the dignity of their work
and the value of their contributions to our schools and
students.
- INFORMED. Our
negotiations will incorporate up-to-date studies from local and
national experts. In addition, to ensure that we are sharing
accurate information and to preserve good faith, ONLY members of
the District’s bargaining teams will speak about the ongoing
negotiations on behalf of the District.
COMMUNITY ROLE IN
THE CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
Because contract
negotiations are part of a legal process between the District and
its employees, contract talks are only open to members of the
negotiating team. Negotiating team members are only permitted to
discuss the content of the contract talks with members of the SPS
Executive Management Team (for SPS members of the negotiating team)
or with their representative group (for association members of the
negotiating team). Members of the community are not permitted to be
part of the negotiations, and the negotiations therefore do not
include a community engagement process.
However, because we
want to be transparent with the community about our proposals for
the these negotiations, SPS has posted its current collective
bargaining agreements with each labor association on this web
site. SPS and the unions have also posted their
proposals for the 2009 contract talks so that community members
can learn about the goals that are shaping the process and
understand how the contracts may change as a result of the
negotiations.
Because the
negotiations are not open to community members, the District will
not be answering emails about our negotiations, nor will the
District solicit public or staff input.
The
District welcomes staff, family, and community engagement on a wide
variety of topics. Please see www.seattleschools.org and
click on "Get Involved" for information about how to be engaged in
the success of Seattle Public Schools.
Last
update 06/01/2009
