“The community we represent has just been made the victim of legal extortion.”

This was the verdict in a letter to the Federal Way News by two of the five members of the Federal Way school board — Richard Schoon and board president Rol Malan — regarding the settlement that ended the Federal Way teachers strike on Sept. 17, 1974. The two men claimed that the school board had been forced to agree to a “financially unsound” strike settlement to protect lives and property from an impending riot by members of the Federal Way Education Association.

According to Schoon and Malan, about 400 of roughly 900 education association members had gathered at Steel Lake Park on the morning of Sept. 17. These members “appeared intent on violence” and to back-up this claim, the board members cited a mediator from the federal government’s mediation and conciliation service, unidentified newspaper reports and unnamed board “intelligence sources.”

Earlier that morning, education association members had engaged in civil disobedience at the school district bus yard on South 320th Street, using their bodies to prevent school buses from leaving the premises. They left apparently after receiving a judicial injunction to leave the premises. The association’s officially-announced plan was that after meeting at Steel Lake Park, members planned to march back to the bus yard and resume their civil disobedience. Malan and Schoon implied that this planned march back to the bus yard — canceled after the strike settlement was reached — would actually have been the beginning of a riot. Thus hearing of imminent violence, the school board moved to reach a settlement, which included a “financially unsound” teacher salary raise of 8.5 percent.

The first display of civil disobedience that morning had apparently been without violence and there is no conclusive evidence that Federal Way Education Association members planned a riot. However, a Seattle Times article quoted association president Patrick Dunham as stating that he had called the Steel Lake Park meeting in order to cool down tempers because “there had been some discussion of violence among teachers.” If true, it is not clear how many teachers, amongst the hundreds of association members, seriously intended to carry out a riot.

A week after Schoon’s and Malan’s letter, Dunham dismissed claims by the two men. He argued that they based their claims of thuggish picket line acts by teachers — such as verbal harassment, vandalism of the cars of strike-breaking teachers and spitting — on an “overgeneralization of the few incidents we all know did occur.” He attacked Schoon and Malan as “paranoid and out of touch.” The association president insisted that that the strike settlement was not the result of extortion but a fair compromise between both sides.

Meanwhile, board member Vera Fredrickson led a delegation of parents to a King County Council meeting to berate members for allegedly showing a blithe attitude about association violence. Fredrickson and the parents demanded that the council call a grand jury to investigate alleged teacher atrocities during the strike but were informed that the council had no authority to do so.

Fredrickson also claimed that the King County Sheriff’s Department was unprepared for the “massive violence” the teachers allegedly threatened on the last day of the strike and pursued a “hands off” policy toward illegal teacher activities on the picket line.

In response, in his official report on the strike, King County Sherrif Laurence Waldt admitted that his deputies may have missed teachers’ illegal actions as they monitored picket lines. He protested that his department had been given no clear guidelines by political and judicial authorities as to how to handle picket line situations. He claimed that persons claiming to be victims of crimes during the strike refused to press charges or cooperate with investigators.

From the perspective of Federal Way Education Association members, the uproar about their supposed thuggery was paranoid exaggeration and possibly part of a public relations campaign used by school board members to discredit the union, which had just defeated them in a strike.

They could point to the fact that no teachers were charged with a crime during the strike, apart from five who were later acquitted of vandalizing a car at Kilo Junior High. Conducting the first teachers strike in King County history and one of the first in state history, they looked back on it with pride. They had shown their colleagues in other districts that, in the face of school board opposition, it was possible to secure greater financial security and control over how they taught their students.

Whatever the exact truth about certain events during the strike, concern about teacher conduct during the strike was quickly overshadowed by the severe financial crisis facing the district during the 1970s.

In part reflecting a nationwide revolt against increased property taxes, voters in Federal Way, stretching the years 1973 to 1980, rejected 22 consecutive school funding levy ballot measures. The funding levies required, then as now, 60 percent voter approval in order to pass. During this period, the district at times seemed on the verge of complete collapse. The Washington state government withdrew its accreditation from the district’s junior high schools and threatened to do so for the high schools.

The teacher’s strike of 1974 was a major highlight of a decade where the level of tumult for Federal Way schools rose to a level scarcely seen before or since.

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