This year’s May Day saw faculty unions, professors, staff, and students across the Seattle Colleges standing in solidarity amidst a growing budget crisis and proposed furloughs backed by Governor Bob Ferguson. These proposals would require faculty to take unpaid leave in order for the state to save money.
Unions like the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 1789 and the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) 304 participated in the walkout and delivered speeches during the event.
Faculty librarian and union member Althea Lazzaro spoke about the purpose of the walkout, “The purpose of this walkout is to demonstrate faculty, staff, and student displeasure with the cuts that we’re experiencing from our administration and from the state because of chronic underfunding of community college education.”
Lazzaro followed this up by saying that they hope to “gain recognition for the long-term effects of underfunding and mismanagement,” claiming that the community colleges are vital to help students get their transfer degrees and train workers.
“So much right now is getting torn down and torn apart because of federal policies that are underfunding and manipulating education, and what’s happening here is just so good. We want to protect it,” said Lazzaro.
Helena Ribeiro, President of AFT-1789 and tenured English faculty, also shared her concerns, “We hope that the district will make different choices in terms of budget bouncing, and that they’ll choose things that won’t affect students and faculty, and staff.”
Ribeiro pointed to a policy known as section management, which cancels a class if it isn’t filled to a certain percentage by a specific date. “What that means is that students end up having less choices for their classes and it also means that usually in that case, a part-time faculty member loses their job,” explained Ribeiro.
Various student speakers from the humanities department and the wood tech program also shared their concerns about the administration’s lack of funding. A food drive was also set up in the courtyard, and food and beverages were provided for attendees.
Another speaker who participated was Washington State Representative Sean Scott, who said:
“I think it’s really important that our state do right by the educators that are doing that important work. The educators and administrators, and so that’s one of the reasons why I was happy to join today, and I’m happy to see this movement in the middle of my district.”
Scott followed up by saying, “I believe that administrators are doing… some of the best that they can with limited resources that, unfortunately, the state legislature has not provided them enough.”
When asked how our colleges might persevere through the budget crisis, Scott offered:
“We also need to make sure that our elected officials in Olympia are hearing from us in Olympia. We have a number of protests and a number of demonstrations that took place at one point in the governor’s office. And these movements played a very important and pivotal role in reducing the harm that could have been done through the budgeting process this year.”
Author
Angelo Harper is a student at Seattle Central College perusing his AA degree for Journalism. Born in Seattle and raised in Shoreline, He wrote for his high school newspaper for two years before graduating and on the side he likes to write rhymes and perform under the stage name “Lil Fax Machine” where he has collaborated with local artists from the Seattle area on several tracks and a few music videos.
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