The 11th-hour deal that averted a strike between Seattle Public Schools and its teachers union will include raises that exceed 8.8% over three years, plus a pilot program to study changes to special education.
“I’m a little tired but happy,” Superintendent Ben Shuldiner said Wednesday morning, standing inside the library at Alki Elementary School, a freshly built building a short walk away from the shores of the Puget Sound.
The tentative contract was announced just before 11 p.m. Tuesday, narrowly averting a strike. Next it must be reviewed and ratified by the union membership and the Seattle School Board, which will each need to meet to vote on the agreement.
The Seattle Education Association’s 6,000 members — which includes teachers, counselors, paraeducators and others — will vote on the contract at a general membership meeting on Sept. 11 at the Seattle Center.
The agreement was negotiated over the past several months as the district finalized a budget that included substantial cuts to close a deficit of roughly $87 million. During news conferences earlier this week, as rhetoric between the district and the union escalated, Shuldiner said the district was “broke.”
“It’s difficult because we’re broke. If we had money I would love to give it to everybody. But the problem is, we don’t,” Shuldiner said at a media briefing Monday afternoon.
But on Wednesday, Shuldiner seemed satisfied with where the agreement landed fiscally.
“It keeps us well within our ability to possibly stay solvent,” he said.
Shuldiner declined to share many specifics of what was in the contract during Wednesday’s news conference, saying district leadership will share more after the tentative agreement is signed.
The final raises negotiated were “a little higher” than the 8.8% raise over three years that he had mentioned to SPS families in a lengthy Sunday email detailing the district's offer.
“That’s how negotiations work,” he said. “But it’s a number that we really feel very proud about. It’s one that stays within … our budget.”
Union representatives also declined to share the full terms, but did confirm the tentative agreement includes at least a 2.6% cost of living increase for all members, plus additional wage increases for paraprofessionals, certain office and clerical staff, and other classified staff — meaning those who don’t hold a state certification.
How the contract will affect the district's overall financial outlook remains to be seen. In 2024, SPS families rallied against the district's plan to close about 20 elementary schools in the face of a looming deficit. That plan was ultimately scrapped, but the district's money woes remain. School closures and consolidations are always on the table," Shuldiner said Wednesday.
The district will spend about a year and a half studying changes to special education, with the hope of rolling out a pilot program by the third year of the contract "that would allow us to try some ideas," he said.
That pilot program would allow a portion of SPS students to receive special education services at their neighborhood school, which is not always the case under the current model. Historically, the district has bussed some students miles away from their home to designated schools where they can get certain services.
Shuldiner said he didn't know yet how many and which schools would be participating in the pilot.
Staffing for special education was the main source of disagreement between management and labor in the final days — and hours — of negotiations. Around 16% of students enrolled in the roughly 50,000-student school district receive special education services.
It's unclear if a pilot program was what the district originally proposed, or something more sweeping. Shuldiner rejected the notion that it was a compromise, saying that any big changes to special education under the contract would've needed a road map.
"Do I think we could have done (the pilot) in the second year? Maybe," he said after Wednesday's news conference. "But I'm thrilled. You got to start with the big picture."
Shuldiner said the negotiations represented a refresh on labor relations. He said that over the past few months of bargaining, he got the sense that there was historical “trauma” in the relationship between the district and the union.
"What we were able to do over these many, many months was to really start to trust each other, he said.
© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
