Auburn teachers rally, send a message to state legislators – do your jobs

Published 11:00 am Thursday, June 4, 2015

For many of her 29 years teaching, Tracy Brown had a classroom at her disposal.

No longer.

For five years, Brown, a K-5 reading specialist at Washington Elementary School, and her students have found themselves squeezed into a storage closet, cheek by jowl.

Not even a classroom number on the door to dignify the situation, just the bald words “Storage Closet.”

“I have my National Board teacher credentials, I should be teaching entire classes, but I can only handle seven students because I have a classroom that barely fits seven,” Brown said. “Seven is where if someone stands up, we all have to move at the same time.”

Brown and Leslie Lafayette, a fourth-grade teacher at Washington Elementary, were among the more than 100 teachers, students, school board members and supporters — most of them in message-bearing red shirts — who converged on Auburn’s City Hall Plaza on May 28 after school to protest inadequate state funding for education.

And to send a message to state legislators — do your jobs.

Lafayette said the lack of adequate funding for education negatively affects space, the number of teachers, class sizes, and much more, adding that fair pay for teachers is at the bottom.

“My main concern is poor funding for education, that students are not getting the quality of education that they deserve, as was decided by the state Supreme Court in the recent McCleary decision,” Lafayette said. “We have classes that are busting at the seams. We have teachers in closets, we have a music teacher pushing her cart from room to room. It’s shameful, it’s ridiculous.”

Diane Jordan, president of the Auburn Education Association, said there is too much testing going on, and right now it’s sucking up valuable teaching time.

“Kids need to learn before you test them. And we’re not finding a whole lot of time for learning. Tests start in March and continue to the end of the school year,” Jordan said.

Cathy deJong, a second-grade teacher at Washington Elementary, said there are many things that any teacher across the state would say they are concerned about, but the real issue is students.

“We recently had a Supreme Court ruling that said legislators need to do their jobs, and they need to do what the court said, and that’s to fully fund education for all of our kiddos,” deJong said. “It shouldn’t matter whether a kid lives in Auburn, in Bellevue, or on the east side of the state, every student deserves to have a fully-funded education program at the school they attend.”

DeJong said while the Auburn School District is supportive and “a wonderful district” to work in, there are still things teachers like her have to do in the teeth of inadequate funding that they shouldn’t have to do.

“I have 22 students in my classroom, which is a pretty good class size. But they range in ability from say, reading from a pre-kindergarten level to fourth grade, and I have to meet all their needs during the school day,” deJong said. “I could use more help with that. I could use more resources. We could use more reading instructors, more teachers to help with interventions for kids who need it at a low-reading level and help for kids at a high reading level.

“There are extras the district can’t afford to do for teachers; it wants to, but it can’t,” deJong added. “I just think the Legislature needs to recognize the importance of having lower class sizes, especially in the primary grades, so that we can intervene quickly and early with kids, so that they’re on grade level, able to meet Common Core state standards and be ready to move on to college after high school.”

District Superintendent Kip Herren implored the Legislature to do more.

“To go seven years without a cost-of-living adjustment, that’s not a pay raise, that’s not a pay raise, that’s an initiative that was passed by a 70-percent majority,” Herren said. “That’s a fairness issue, and they’ve ignored it completely.”