VANCOUVER, Wash. — Hundreds of teachers in southwest Washington and across the state have voted to strike over salaries.
Students in the Evergreen and Washougal school districts were supposed to start classes on Tuesday, Aug. 28, but have already canceled class for Wednesday anticipating another day of strikes.
Vancouver, Battle Ground, Longview and Hockinson schools, which were all scheduled to start Wednesday, Aug. 29 have canceled classes.
Camas teachers have also voted to strike, but their first day of school isn't until next week.
Teachers in those school districts voted over the past week or so to strike for salary increases, but according to state law, teachers (and all public employees) do not have a right to strike.
According to a 2006 opinion from the state's attorney general, public employees have no legally-protected right to go on strike.
And there are no penalties in the law to punish teachers, or any other public employees, when they do choose to strike.
KGW can Verify public employee strikes are illegal and not covered by law -- but there are no ramifications against doing so.
If an injunction is filed by parent groups or the school board, teachers may be forced to go back to work. This would happen if a judge finds the strike has, or will, result in actual and substantial injury.
So how did we get here?
The McCleary court decision in 2012, that found Washington wasn't doing enough to fund education. Since then, the state legislature has approved billions of dollars to fund schools, including $2 billion that would go directly to teacher salaries.
The exact salary increases were left up to individual districts to determine.