SEA Demands Safety, Transparency, and Communication in Response to the Current Crisis
Below is a status update of SEA’s six demands as of January 19 at 8:00 A.M. We will continue to update you throughout the week.
On Friday, January 21, we will email another update AND a polling question to all Association Representatives and Board of Directors (to be completed over the weekend). The purpose of the poll will be for ARs and Board Directors to determine if SPS has sufficiently met our demands and whether we call on SPS to pivot all schools to remote for at least one week. We encourage members to provide feedback to their ARs so that ARs can represent members’ voices in the polling question.
1. SEA Demand: To bargain with SPS to revise the metrics of their Continuity of Operations Plan to be responsive to impacts that student and staff absences have on a daily basis. Revisions would include (i) lowering the student and staff absence rates before pivoting to remote, (ii) centering educators’ voices in the decision-making process by providing a mechanism for the building to decide via their building-decision making matrix whether to pivot to remote or close.
Update:
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Tuesday SEA officially called SPS to the bargaining table to negotiate the impacts of the Continuity of Operations Plan as well as to negotiate the impacts of significant staffing and student absences. Some preliminary communications have been exchanged via email. We are scheduled to meet Thursday morning to discuss our demands, including bargaining.
- We continue to insist that SPS listen to educator voice in making any decisions to pivot or close schools. We are also uplifting individual school concerns. We are most successful when we are armed with specific data from school sites such as how many unfilled sub jobs, which positions are unfilled, or BST’s safety concerns.
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Elementary Educators: Click here to take a short survey.
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Secondary Educators: Click here to take a short survey.
2. SEA Demand: SPS will clearly communicate and be transparent about staffing levels to the school community daily.
Update:
- SPS informed us that principals are releasing this information to staff currently. We are asking that they direct/authorize principals to release this information to the entire school community daily.
3. SEA Demand: SPS provide weekly rapid (self-administered) COVID tests for all staff working in person and utilize central non-represented staff to support data entry of these tests as needed.
Update:
- Based on an initial discussion, SPS is concerned about the supply of self-administered rapid tests. They are looking into this and we expect to hear more on their capacity to provide this Thursday.
4. SEA Demand: SPS provide KN95 or KF94 masks at a minimum to all staff and students in person.
Update:
- On Tuesday, Jan. 17, SPS began distributing KN95 and N95 masks to all staff upon request. The District has requested half a million more KN95 masks for students. Requests for KN95 masks go to custodians, requests for N95 masks to go to Health Services Department. We will check back to learn if masks are distributed.
5. SEA Demand: SPS will clearly communicate and be transparent about the lack of contact tracing to the school community and will resume contact tracing directed by the central office.
Update:
- Given nurses are critical to contact tracing in our district, nurses need to be part of this conversation. We are scheduling a meeting with SPS and nurses to address contact tracing concerns.
6. SEA Demand: SPS and SEA jointly advocate to the state for flexibility in instructional days and hours.
Update:
- We presented this to District leadership and are awaiting a response.
[Additional context shared with ARs: State laws require school districts to provide a minimum number of days and instructional hours in a school year. These minimum requirements have constrained SEA and SPS’s abilities to develop solutions to problems that have had significant impacts on our educators, students, and school community.]
