Please support teachers

After 18 months of negotiations — during which teachers have been working under an expired contract — the Mat Su district offered their “last best” offer. Before our team even got a chance to LOOK at the deal, our brand new superintendent sent out a full page essay to every newspaper in the state telling the public how “FAIR” it was.

(Literally, he used the word “fair” thirteen times.)

After preemptively throwing us under the bus, it came as no surprise that this “fair” deal is manipulative, degrading, and designed to screw over teachers. Their offer of a one-time bonus/bribe costs us countless money in the long run, while compensating us not at all for our last year of teaching. Their insurance proposal is designed to fail, horribly, until teachers are left with no other choice but to let the district (mis)manage that money as well — or deny claims outright, which would be legally allowed if they are permitted to run our health insurance in-house the way they want to.

All this while we’re in the middle of a pandemic, when we make less money than both Anchorage and Fairbanks teachers, when we have the HIGHEST class sizes in the state, when we’re teaching 6 classes compared with other districts teaching 3-5, when even the impartial arbitrator pointed out there has been “an overall decline in total compensation.”

General public opinion was already damaged because we dared to ask for reasonable safety measures while teaching during a pandemic — safety measures which have already proved not to be enough, with Colony High, Colony Middle, Pioneer Peak and Machetanz Elementary already (temporarily) shutting down due to Covid outbreaks. We have been told to quit, we have been told to shut up and work, we have been told we’re nothing more than glorified babysitters, and then we were told we were being treated “fairly.”

No one wants to strike. We want to work and we deserve to be paid truly fair wages. But we lead by example, and if the example we need to set for our students is that they need to stand up for themselves in a workplace environment, then so be it.

Please support teachers, if it gets to the point of a strike. Please support teachers, when we ask for safe working conditions for ourselves and our students.

Please support teachers. So we can support kids.

Kluonie Frey,

Wasilla