The Puyallup Education Association and Puyallup School District have reached a tentative two-year contract that would compensate educators when classes exceed agreed limits. The bargaining teams reached the deal at 10:35 p.m. Sept. 12 after negotiations that began in April, according to KIRO 7 News. The district’s roughly 1,400 certificated teachers began the 2026-27 school year Sept. 2 without a signed contract, The News Tribune reported.
How the proposed overload payments would work
Under the reported terms, elementary educators would receive $10 per student per day for students above the applicable classroom limit. Educators teaching grades nine through 12 would receive $1.75 per excess student per day. The lower secondary rate reflects the shorter amount of time those teachers spend with each student, according to The News Tribune.
The proposal also changes the way class-size averages are calculated and adds overload payments as new contract language for the association. The reported benchmarks are 22 students in kindergarten and first grade, 23 in second grade, 24 in third grade, 26 in fourth grade, and 28 in fifth and sixth grade. Seventh- and eighth-grade teachers would have a 150-student daily total, while high school instrumental classes would have a 36-student limit, according to The News Tribune.
The workload figures behind the change
Information supplied by the union indicates that kindergarten-through-sixth-grade classrooms were above the district’s classroom-limit goal. The union also reported that 40% of junior high teachers and 30% of high school teachers were in overload status. Separately, KIRO 7 reported the union’s claim that more than half of fourth-grade classrooms were overloaded. No independent district analysis of those percentages is included in the supplied material.
Bob Horton, president of the Puyallup Education Association, told The News Tribune that approximately 106 educators who worked in the district the previous year were leaving because of retirement or new jobs. The district hired about 70 new educators, he said, producing an estimated difference of 36 positions. The reported staffing gap affected fourth-grade, junior-high and high-school classrooms.
The district’s financial constraints
The district’s approved school-year budget lists $476,108,130 in expenses and a projected general fund deficit of about $4.6 million, according to meeting records cited by The News Tribune. District officials attributed the deficit to increased salary costs, insufficient state funding, and inflation affecting utilities and insurance.
District spokesperson Sarah Gillispie said the tentative agreement reflects priorities shared by the association and district while remaining financially sustainable, according to The News Tribune. The district’s replacement educational programs and operations levy would authorize collections of $85.9 million in 2027, rising to $114.4 million in 2030, for uses including teachers, aides and lower class sizes, according to the Pierce County voters pamphlet.
Final approval has not occurred
The tentative contract still requires approval before it becomes official. The district was scheduled to present it to the school board for a Sept. 21 vote, according to The News Tribune. The supplied material does not establish that either the union or the board has completed final ratification, so the payment schedule and other provisions should be treated as proposed terms.
