Class Size Brings Strike by Teachers

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Teachers are fighting for smaller class sizes, arguing that the district should spend some of the $21 million it has in reserve to alleviate overcrowding.

KENT, Wash. (AP) — On what was scheduled to be the first day of school, students and teachers at Mill Creek Middle School here never made it through the front door. They stood or sat outside by the flagpole, waving signs and yelling at passing motorists.

The teachers have just ended a second week on strike, keeping more than 26,000 students at 40 schools out of the classroom.

The strike is not centered on wage and contract issues. Kent teachers are instead fighting for smaller class sizes, arguing that the district should spend some of the $21 million it has in reserve to alleviate overcrowding.

The district maintains that it needs to save the reserve money in this economy and that classes are not as crowded as teachers say. Some teachers complain that they do not have enough desks for students, with more than 30 children in some elementary and middle school classes.

Teachers said they were ready to stay out as long as it took to convince the school district that classroom overcrowding hurt academic achievement.

They have drawn the support of a handful of students who took to the picket lines during their extended summer vacation.

“I support them 100 percent in smaller class sizes for a better education,” said Stewart Kunzelman, a 13-year-old eighth grader.

Teacher strikes are illegal in Washington State, and a judge said each teacher would have to pay $200 a day in fines if not back in school by Monday.

It is the only teacher strike in the nation taking place this week, and experts said such strikes were becoming rarer.

But that is not necessarily the case in Washington; teachers in a city east of Seattle staged a two-week strike last fall.

Rich Wood, a spokesman for the largest teachers’ union in Washington, said strikes were not that common because most states did not allow them and some ban collective bargaining.

Mr. Wood said strikes in Washington State are about very local issues. Last year’s extended strike in Bellevue, Wash., focused on district control of curriculum. Strikes in Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania last fall concerned salaries and retirement.