The Seattle Education Association will ask its roughly 6,000 members on Aug. 26 to vote on whether to approve a tentative contract or authorize a strike that could begin Sept. 2, the first day of school for nearly 50,000 Seattle Public Schools students. The vote, scheduled for 5 p.m. at the Seattle Convention Center, comes one day before the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Aug. 31.
A strike authorization vote does not guarantee a work stoppage. Bargaining would continue, and an agreement reached before the contract expires would cancel any strike, according to union spokesperson Julie Popper. But the union and district still had roughly 50 unresolved items out of 57 total proposals as of Aug. 25.
Unresolved items and union priorities
The union has reached tentative agreements on seven items, including ASL interpreters, school safety protocols to protect immigrant students, employees' right to return after reassignment, timekeeping, and artificial intelligence. The remaining items include three key union priorities: teacher pay, special education staffing, and class sizes.
The union is pressing for reduced pressurization, a term describing the workload teachers carry beyond direct classroom duties, and for more educator planning and collaboration time. SEA is seeking a 1 to 3 percent wage increase for certificated staff and 3 to 5 percent for classified staff, in addition to state-funded cost-of-living adjustments. Those figures are more modest than the 7 percent increase won in the 2022 contract.
According to the union, the average Seattle teacher salary is $96,170 annually, and the average classified staff salary is $67,858.
Budget vote coincides with union vote
On the same evening as the strike authorization vote, the Seattle School Board is scheduled to vote on the district's proposed 2026-27 budget. The General Fund Operating Budget is $1.34 billion, with more than 72 percent allocated for teaching and teaching support.
The district's budget book warns that without swift action, the fund balance is projected to go negative in 2027, which would trigger binding conditions under which the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction would take increasing oversight of district finances. The 2026-27 budget uses $21.2 million of the beginning fund balance, leaving an ending fund balance of $40 million. It identifies approximately $10 million in central office savings and $10 million in school-based savings.
A January 2026 district budget study session projected the structural deficit at $87.58 million for 2026-27, growing to $96.8 million in 2027-28 and $102.5 million in 2028-29 absent structural changes. The presentation cited significant funding gaps in transportation, special education, multilingual programs, and substitute costs, along with declining enrollment and multiple expiring labor agreements.
Previous strike and contract history
The last time Seattle teachers went on strike was in 2022, when a work stoppage delayed the start of the school year by several days. That strike ended with a contract that included a 7 percent wage increase for educators, significantly larger than the current union request.
The SEA's own publication notes that since at least 2012, nearly every negotiation has led to a strike authorization vote, with actual strikes occurring in 2015 and 2022. The current negotiations are the first under Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, who took office in February 2026.
District financial outlook
The district's own long-term financial projections show a structural deficit driven by declining enrollment, special education and transportation cost gaps, and expiring labor agreements. The budget book warns that without intervention, the fund balance would go negative by 2027, triggering state binding conditions that could remove local fiscal control.