Teachers and faculty members walk in front of the high school with signs Wednesday afternoon in Centralia.
The Centralia School Board passed a resolution for strike action at its special board meeting on Wednesday evening, allowing the district to formally suspend classes and to file an injunction to compel teachers to go back to work.
“Strike is illegal,” said Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos after the special board meeting. “So we need to call for them to give up the strike, and come back to work, so our kids can be back in school.”
The district has not yet filed an injunction, but plans to depending on how negotiations go in the next few days, Davalos said.
The Centralia School District told The Chronicle Wednesday afternoon at about 3:40 p.m. that an attorney had filed an injunction against the Centralia Education Association on its behalf, but retracted the statement an hour later. The Lewis County Clerk’s Office did not have records of an injunction filed on the Centralia School District’s behalf.
Wednesday’s school board meeting took place in the district office board room, and was almost entirely filled with teachers wearing red. Teachers who didn’t fit inside the building stood outside to listen.
Lauri Johnson and Kerri Kite-Pocklington, who are co-chairs of CEA, said the CEA provided the district with a counter offer on Tuesday at about 4:30 p.m. during a bargaining session. The union received its counter until 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.
“The time spent today going over a meeting to file an injunction could have been time spent on a counter proposal and bargaining,” said Kite-Pocklington, while the school board was in executive session.
Johnson said the CEA’s bargaining team was prepared all-day Wednesday to bargain. She did not know how the CEA would respond to the injunction.
“I don’t know,” said Johnson, during the executive session. “Everybody seems to know about the injunction except us.”
Cliff Foster, an attorney who represents Centralia School District, said after the Centralia School Board adjourned that he is now prepared to file the injunction.
“I am ready to file as soon as I get the directive to do so,” Foster said. “I did file in Tumwater today and I anticipate the attorney for the association in Tumwater will be representing the (CEA) as well. I was in Thurston County court today. … I haven’t been near the Lewis County courthouse today.”
Teachers in the Tumwater School District are also currently on strike.
The Centralia School Board met at 5:15 p.m. and immediately went into executive session for an hour and a half to discuss potential litigation with legal counsel, under RCW 42.30.110(1)(i). When the board returned, it passed Resolution 2018-27, “Imminent Strike Action,” unanimously.
Centralia School Board President Amy Buzzard said before the vote that every “inflammatory” statement was removed from the resolution.
The resolution was also on Tuesday’s special board meeting agenda. However, the meeting was cancelled roughly 20 minutes before it was scheduled to begin, due to the district’s failure to post the correct signage 24 hours in advance. Since the meeting was reportedly not compliant with the Open Public Meetings Act, the district cancelled it.
In addition, the district changed the wording in Resolution No. 2018-27 between when it was posted to the district’s website on Monday and before the meeting on Tuesday.
The first version of the resolution allowed the school board to authorize the superintendent to suspend “school instructional program for students, all interscholastic activities under Policy 2150, and all use of District facilities under Policy 4260, or other school programs.” This would have given Davalos the authority to suspend athletics.
“We have an agreement to let athletics continue, even during the strike,” Davalos said. “There are other things that we just don’t want to touch. So that was why we were uncomfortable with that language in the resolution and we made some changes.”
Davalos said the agreement was a “verbal” agreement with the CEA. He did not know how many teachers will run the extra-curricular programs.
The version of Resolution 2018-27 that the school board passed on Wednesday reads that the superintendent is authorized to suspend “school instructional program for students and all use of District facilities under Policy 4260, or other school programs.”
The next bargaining session is scheduled for Thursday.
“We could file (the injunction) tomorrow, we could file Friday,” said Davalos after the Centralia School Board adjourned on Wednesday evening. “We’re negotiating tomorrow and if the negotiation starts to move well, we might not even file an injunction, so we may see how things go tomorrow, decide to hold off and never even file.”
Foster said he worked on the injunction over the weekend, at the direction of Davalos. The district would file the injunction against the CEA and its presidents.
“The association is an entity, so to have an order saying ‘you have to go back to work,’ you have to name the head of the entity to have somebody that will be responsible for fulfilling the order,” Foster said.
Foster said that although the district and teachers union have not reached a collective bargaining agreement, the teachers have individual contracts obligating them to work.
“I’ve never seen one of these strike injunctions ever go past the preliminary injunction, because if there is a contract agreement reached, typically part of the agreement is that the lawsuits are dismissed,” Foster said. “So we just don’t get to that phase. In court, a preliminary injunction is an initial ruling and to make it permanent, there has to be a bigger trial.”
