Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series regarding the Federal Way teachers’ strike in 1974.

On Aug. 29 1974, Federal Way teachers went on strike. The strike was the first public school teachers strike in King County history and one of the first in Washington state.

The Federal Way School board was confident that it had substantial legal ground for opposing the strike. The board immediately obtained an injunction against the strike by King County Superior Court Judge Erie Horswill. Horswill ordered the opening of the school year delayed from Sept. 3 to Sept. 10 so that negotiations between the school board and the teachers — organized in the Federal Way Education Association — could continue. The school board used the delay to organize the recruitment of substitute teachers to open the school for students on September 10 and — so they hoped — eventually break the strike.

The opposition of the school board did little to dilute the feeling among the teachers that their cause was righteous. The Education Association chose to ignore Horswill’s injunction — but would face no consequences for doing so. Federal Way teachers believed they were undertaking a struggle that was deeply personal.

The mission of providing quality education to youth went to the very essence of their being; they wanted to extract from the school board a significant voice in the design and delivery of that education.

As it was, the school board would only grant Federal Way educators, in the words of teacher Ann Kelleher, the right to negotiate “salary and the heating and lighting of our classrooms.”

In addition to seeking greater professional and personal fulfillment for its members, the Education Association also focused on the more worldly concern of increasing teacher salaries.

At the start of the strike, the union demanded a 10.5 percent increase in salaries while the school board offered less than five percent. The board insisted that it couldn’t afford the union’s demands. The Education Association, on the other hand, claimed that the district maintained a reserve fund which provided more than enough money to fund the salary boost demanded by the teachers.

The school board, and Superintendent George Cochran, denied the fund contained anywhere near the amount of money claimed by the Education Association. It appears that the school board agreed that a court appointed auditor would examine district’s finances and thus presumably provide insight as to whether the Education Association’s claims were accurate.

The Education Association’s most notorious activities were undoubtedly its picketing in front of schools. After school opened on Sept. 10, replacement teachers driving individually in their own cars or riding together in district school buses were greeted in school parking lots everyday by jeering strikers holding picket signs.

The strikers frequently chanted “scab!” and apparently sometimes more vulgar epithets at the strikebreakers. Local newspapers implied that acts of minor vandalism to strikebreaker teacher vehicles were the work of the striking teachers. To judge by such news reports it appears that at the very least, the vast majority of striking teachers did not engage in any vandalism or anything more unseemly than directing verbal abuse at the strikebreakers.

The Education Association spokesman denied the participation of any member in vandalism or, in another incident, where logs were placed in front of the entrance to Decatur High School.

A post-strike report by King County Sherriff Laurence Waldt claimed that striking teachers engaged in harassment not only of strikebreaking teachers but against parents in motor vehicles dropping their kids off at school.

The report stated that there were cases of teachers spitting on cars and, in one case, surrounding a car and rocking it. Waldt’s report did not venture an estimate as to how frequently teachers engaged in these abuses.

Five teachers were charged with a crime during the strike, all related to one incident. A woman claimed that teachers caused serious damage to her car as she drove through the Kilo Junior High School parking lot.

She claimed as she drove in the lot, another vehicle deliberately drove in front of her to block her path while her car was surrounded by teachers, including the five charged, who assaulted it with fists and picket signs.

Two of the charged teachers testified that they assaulted the car with their fists because it was traveling at a high rate of speed through a school zone.

The defense argued that the other three teachers were near the vehicle for too little amount of time to inflict the damage on it to the extent the woman claimed. Witnesses corroborated the teachers’ claims and the five were acquitted.

The strike ended on Sept. 17. The school board agreed to give the teachers an 8.5 percent increase in salary and promised to work to decrease class sizes (pending voter approval of funding levies to implement such reductions). It granted teachers a greater voice in determining their own working conditions.

The strike ended but the atmosphere seemed to become even more explosive. School board members charged that the Education Association had obtained the strike settlement through extortion.

In my third and final Federal Way Flashback on the teachers strike of 1974 I will examine the strike’s aftermath.

Chris Green is a member of the Historical Society of Federal Way.