SCHOOL-BUS STRIKE UPDATE: Drivers’ union and employer to meet Thursday

As of right now, Thursday will be Day 6 of the drivers’ strike against Seattle Public Schools‘ yellow-bus service provider First Student – but for the first time since the strike began, the two sides will be meeting. The district has posted an update saying a federal mediator is involved, and the drivers’ union Teamsters Local 174 has posted an update saying, “First Student has finally reached out to the Teamsters and a meeting will be taking place tomorrow, February 8, 2018. We are hopeful that this meeting will bring us closer to a resolution to this strike.” This news follows the Seattle Education Association teachers union’s show of support for the drivers this afternoon, with demonstrations around the city including this one in West Seattle.

M February 8, 2018 (6:20 am)

Thank you WSB. The district doesn’t even bother letting parents know anymore. We haven’t received any communication at all about Thursday. If it wasn’t for the WSB I would have no idea what was going on.

Jon Wright February 8, 2018 (7:45 am)

The school district has been emailing and robocalling every day with strike advisories. And our child’s principal has emailed. And so has her teacher. We are receiving plenty of communication from the school district.
- JC February 8, 2018 (10:53 am)
  
  Interesting… Like “M,” I haven’t received any updates from the district. For most events (early release day, etc), we get called on two cell phones, our home phone, and e-mails sent to two accounts. There must be a glitch in the communication related to this event…

zark00 February 8, 2018 (12:23 pm)

They’re only doing the emails and calls to parents of kids who ride a first student bus – not to all families like the early release notifications that go out to everyone.

That said, SPS claims that they are updating their FB and Twitter with strike news, aaaaand the last update on either was Feb 1st. So that’d be another SPS fail – what can you expect though, we only gave Sup. Larry Nyland a $13,800 raise this year, he only makes $289,879 now – can’t expect him to coordinate district communications on a paltry 3rd of a million a year.

To be fair, he said he was donating his raise to the district general fund. I still think he is paid enough to be able to follow through on communication from the district.

Pedro February 8, 2018 (4:04 pm)

To be fair, SPS posted information about the strike on February 5, with an update on February 7, right on the main page of its website.

To be fair, SPS is probably posting the entirety of the information it has, since it is not a party to the labor dispute and their are significant limitations on First Student’s ability to convey information to SPS until a deal has been reached.