Strikes in Evergreen and La Center Keep Schools Closed as State Lawmakers Make Strikes Easier
For thousands of families in Clark County, the school year hasn’t even started. Students in Evergreen Public Schools (one of the largest districts in the state) are entering their second week without classes due to a strike by classified staff, while nearby La Center School District has also been shut down by a walkout. Instead of backpacks and lesson plans, parents are left scrambling for childcare as classrooms sit empty.
Washington continues to tolerate strikes that many other states simply forbid. Roughly 37 states, plus Washington D.C., prohibit teacher strikes outright, with only a handful allowing them under narrow circumstances. Washington is already unusual in permitting strikes to proceed despite a longtime state law that technically bans them. The Evergreen strike is just the latest example of how the state looks the other way rather than enforcing the rules.
And lawmakers are about to make things even worse. Senate Bill 5041, signed this year by Gov. Bob Ferguson, goes into effect in January. It will allow striking and locked-out workers to collect unemployment benefits, the extent to which varies based on the circumstances. While this new law has not yet taken effect and does not apply to the ongoing strikes in Clark County, it points to a troubling future. By subsidizing walkouts with taxpayer-funded benefits, the Governor and majority in the legislature is setting the stage for more strikes, longer strikes, and deeper disruption for families.
SB 5041 was one of 19 bills included in Future 42’s 2025 State Legislative Scorecard and was passed exclusively with Democrat votes.
No one is disputing the value and importance of teachers, especially good teachers, but Washington now boasts the fourth-highest average teacher pay in the nation, yet performance ranks remain in the middle of the pack. As Ken Vance, editor of Clark County Today recently pointed out:
While Washington has the fourth-highest average teacher salaries in the nation, the state is 14th in ACT scores, 28th in SAT scores, and 35th in high school graduation rate.
The state has a goal of having 90 percent of its students test at grade level (State Smarter Balanced Assessment). In the 2023-24 school year, 50 percent of Washington students tested at grade level in English, 44 percent in Science and 40 percent in Math.
Washington is also now trailing Mississippi across a variety of educational outcomes.
This disconnect shows the problem isn’t a lack of money—it’s a failure of priorities. Districts with teacher unions like Evergreen and La Center are proof: spending keeps climbing, property taxes keep rising, and students still get locked out of classrooms.
Washington should be focused on outcomes, not enabling endless strikes. Instead, with SB 5041, the majority of lawmakers have taken Washington from a state that was very much an outlier in terms of allowing teacher strikes—and made us into an extreme outlier by creative actual financial incentive to strike.
Students need classrooms, not picket lines. And Washington needs leaders willing to enforce the law and stand up for families—before the new unemployment-for-strikers law makes walkouts the norm, not the exception.
Education should be about kids first. Right now, it isn’t.