Strained labor negotiations defined the start of the school year for three school districts in Southwest Washington.

Vancouver Public Schools’ classified workers and district leaders reached a tentative agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement Monday night, following a strike authorization vote by the union last week.

Teachers in La Center School District ended their roughly week-long strike after reaching an agreement late last week and returned to classrooms on Monday.

And striking classified workers in Evergreen Public Schools reached a deal with the district last Thursday, ending a delay in the school year that had extended into a third week.

Core issues in negotiations among the groups included compensation and benefits, staffing ratios, and time off. But the challenges these school districts are facing are ones that districts across the state, region and country are dealing with, too — from inflation and staffing shortages to declining student enrollment.

So, why is it that three districts in Clark County reached the point of strikes when others haven’t?

Experts say the local news media market, the area’s history of education labor movements, and long-standing relationships within the districts are all possible factors at play.

Media markets and money

It doesn’t surprise people like Larry Delaney, the president of the Washington Education Association, that school districts in the largest media markets in the Pacific Northwest — Seattle and Portland— would go on strike more often.

“The idea of educator strikes is not something that you’d look at the news and go, ‘Oh, wait, what’s happening? I’ve never seen this before,” he said. Instead, it’s more likely a family flipping on the local news would say, “Oh, there’s another one.”

Delaney said news coverage has “normalized” strikes — for lack of a better word, he added — for districts near Portland, especially, following Oregon’s largest school district going on a nearly month-long strike back in 2023 that garnered plenty of media attention.

“I don’t think it’s looked at as ‘the extreme action’ that it may be if we were in Pasco or … Yakima,” he said, “some other communities that haven’t seen that.”

Districts in surrounding areas may see the news stories and the actions by the unions, and, as a result, feel more inclined to take similar steps during a challenging time.

State and federal funding cuts are hitting schools all over the state. And declines in student enrollment are compounding financial difficulties in schools across the country.

Katy Payne, chief communications officer for Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, said districts are still recovering from the drop in state funding that came with declining student enrollment during the pandemic. Enrollments are recovering in Washington, she said, but they’re not back to where they used to be.

When asked what Delaney is hearing from districts facing similar financial challenges but outside the labor hot spots of the Central Puget Sound area and Southwest Washington, he said, “Not a lot.”

Delaney said there are some exceptions to the declining enrollment in Washington, including the Tri-Cities area of Pasco, Richland and Kennewick, where populations seem to be growing.

“I figure when you get an In-N-Out Burger in your town, you know, something is there. There’s a population there to support that,” he said. “And so, there are some pockets where we see that growth, but by and large, we’re seeing declining enrollment.”

Meanwhile, districts are seeing the cost of goods and services continue to increase, Payne added, putting additional pressure on school district budgets. In some communities, she said, districts aren’t collecting enough local money through a voter-approved levy to complement their state and federal funds.

Education groups in Washington say this puts local school leaders in a tough spot.

Tricia Lubach is the executive director for the Washington State School Directors’ Association, an organization that trains and advises school board members. Lubach said WSSDA pays attention to how strikes go in other districts to learn what went well and what didn’t in case they need to advise their members during a tough negotiation.

“Board members feel a lot of pressure to not only make sure that they are opening school on time and getting kids in so that they can learn and so that parents can go to work and do the things they need to do,” she said, “but also to take good care of their staff and ensure that they’re well paid, well compensated and feel valued.”

All these factors combine to create what Delaney called a perfect storm when it’s time for contract talks.

“Because of the financial challenges, districts are more likely to push back against salary increases,” he said. Meanwhile, educators may be more likely to say, “We get that money is tight, but you need to invest in your most valuable resource — and that’s people.”

Propelled by Washington’s labor history

Delaney said a key factor in how education unions behave in Washington is their connection to other labor groups, like WEA’s partner, the Washington State Labor Council.

“It helps to let educators know that, you know, they’re a part of something greater,” he said.

Historically, Delaney said, education labor groups have struggled with defining themselves as a labor union versus a professional association.

But he’s seen a shift in the last 25 years or so that’s allowed local groups to feel more emboldened. This hasn’t happened everywhere, he said, but it’s definitely something he’s seen in Clark County.

“If you were to talk to educators back in the late 90s, they might have said, ‘Well, you know, unions, those are people who get their hands dirty, and that’s not who we are,’ ” Delaney said. “But I think as we’ve just seen more of the division between the haves and the have-nots, the idea of being part of the broader labor movement is something that is appealing to a lot of people.”

Delaney was in La Center earlier this month. He saw union workers from SEIU, the pipefitters’ union and more on the lines with school staff.

That’s especially impactful for smaller communities like La Center, he said — knowing other education unions, labor groups and the broader community are there to support you goes a long way.

“There’s good feels that come along with that,” he said. “The idea that the labor movement is saying, ‘You’re in the right space. We’ve got your back. We’ll be here with you.’ ”

Evergreen has also served as a unique example in the area.

“The history of the labor movement in Southwest Washington, particularly the educational labor movement, really started with Evergreen,” Delaney said, adding that Evergreen in the early 1970s was the first WEA unit to go on strike, setting a significant precedent at risk of jail time.

Evergreen has had a handful of strikes since, Delaney said, including three in the last six years, two by the certified staff union that represents teachers and one by the classified union.

Relationships matter

Whether disagreements over a contract will result in a strike can boil down to relationships between unions and districts, as well as within worker groups, such as classified and licensed staff.

As Delaney put it, they’re in “a relationship business.” It’s a lot easier for the teams to reach common ground if they trust each other and believe they’re each bargaining in good faith.

“In districts where there’s a good working relationship between the union and the district administration, you generally don’t see strikes,” he said, then emphasized “generally.”

Lubach, with the school directors’ association, agreed that healthy relationships between workers and administrators go a long way. As a school board member for 20 years in Central Washington, she found that respectful relationships led to more successful negotiations.

“If you think about any kind of a relationship where there’s developed this feeling of ‘us against them,’ it’s really hard for school districts, and probably associations as well, to get themselves out of that loop,” Lubach said.

“I think that’s partly why you sometimes see those happening within geographical areas,” she added, “because sometimes you have the same types of supports for different districts.”

The relationship between licensed and classified workers is also key.

“We know [for certified educators], we’re doing pretty good … when it comes to compensation. Statewide average last year, Washington ranked fourth in the nation in certificated educator compensation,” Delaney said.

The average teacher salary in Washington, as Lubach shared, is $91,720 — behind only California, New York and Massachusetts.

“That doesn’t mean that we stop bargaining,” Delaney said, “but when we take a look at our siblings in classified units, they have not seen those gains.”

He said it isn’t hyperbole to say many classified educators have to work two or three jobs just to cobble together a living wage.

As a result, when teachers have gone on strike, classified workers often don’t have the financial freedom to stand on the picket line with them.

But when classified workers strike, and teachers say they won’t cross the picket line, Delaney said that puts additional pressure on the district to give them a fair contract.

Strikes in Port Angeles and Mount Vernon last year saw those dynamics play in their favor, he gave as examples. Evergreen this fall saw the same show of solidarity for its striking classified staff.

On the other side of the bargaining table, Lubach said school board members should understand their roles and what does and does not help in the negotiation process. She warned that districts and unions are not always subject to the same restrictions on what information can be shared with the public regarding bargaining.

“I would really encourage the public to ask a lot of questions, to look at patterns that have happened over the years,” she said. “You need to make sure that you’re asking a lot of questions and getting it from more than one perspective, and not necessarily buying into what you see on social media or are hearing secondhand from other people.”

Moving forward, it may take some reflection to improve these tense but crucial relationships.

“If you look at a district like Evergreen, I think it begs the question: ‘Why do strikes keep happening here? What are the dynamics?’” Delaney posed. Is this something that needs to be addressed with the union? District leadership? The school board? The community? All of the above?

“I don’t know all the details,” he said, “but if this is happening in one school district and it’s not happening anywhere else in the state to this frequency, why is it here?”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/16/southwest-washington-school-strikes/