MARYSVILLE – About three dozen Marysville School District classified staff showed up at the school board meeting Nov. 16.

About eight of them spoke on behalf of the district’s 450 SEIU members that include bus drivers, paraeducators, cooks, custodians, mechanics, maintenance, security and warehouse workers.

Leslie Daugf said classified staff work behind the scenes to make school buildings function. They keep them clean, safe and transport and feed 11,000 kids daily. She asked the school board for support as talks go into mediation.

Donna Charsman said the workers want to be valued and respected, and that progress in the talks is crucial. She added that wages in the district are lower than in surrounding ones.

Union president Colleen Bradley, who has been a paraeducator for 26 years, said they are committed to keeping kids safe. However, she said schools rarely have paras in cafeterias, for instance. She also said bus drivers and paras are sometimes assaulted and don’t even have their assignments changed to give them time to heal. “That baffles us,” she said.

Sonya Schei, a para for 34 years, asked why the district has taken the stance of paying workers 75 percent of what the pay is in surrounding districts.

Rick Requa, a bus driver, said, “The kids come first. We don’t do this for the great big money.”

He added that some paras are abused and the next day are back on the job like nothing happened.

Bradley said bargaining talks have been going on since March, and they are not progressing. Their contract ended Aug. 31 but they will continue working on the old one for another year.

They decided to attend a board meeting because, “It reached a point where we were not moving forward.”

She said during the recession they understood to a point lower pay, but now that the state is providing more funds, “We don’t get it anymore.”

Until they get a fair contract, the district will keep seeing an “exodus to earn a wage to survive.”

“We live in the district, pass levies and bonds, but feel we’re not listened to,” Bradley said.

In a statement, The Marysville School District said:

“Many items have already been agreed to, and only three general areas of disagreement remain. A state mediator recently joined the process… The district is confident that its compensation and benefits offer for SEIU members is fair, in keeping with the compensation for comparable positions in other school districts, and represents a wage increase for each member above the state’s cost-of-living raise for school employees. We look forward to continuing these discussions within the appropriate forum: the bargaining table.”