Miranda Shook
Good evening, members of the Board.
My name is Miranda Shook, and I work in Marketing and Public Information as a graphic designer and photographer. I care deeply about this college and the students we serve. My work helps promote educational programs, resources, events, and student experiences, and helps communicate a sense of belonging to our college community.
Classified staff are facing a 0% and 0% offer while our workloads continue to grow. As someone who has worked hard to take on additional responsibilities and contribute wherever I can, it is discouraging to see the value of that work reflected so little in our compensation.
This is not sustainable for staff retention, morale, or ultimately, student success. When experienced staff leave, the work does not disappear; it is redistributed among the people who remain, increasing workloads and making it harder to provide the level of service our students deserve.
I am asking the Board and college leadership to treat staff retention as a student success issue. Classified staff are an essential part of Edmonds College and essential to our mission of Teaching, Learning, and Community. We deserve to be recognized and compensated accordingly.
Thank you,
Miranda Shook
Manda Pelly
Good Afternoon,
Members of the Board, I am Manda Pelly, a classified staff member at Edmonds College. I’m here today on behalf of our Washington Public Employees Association Classified Staff Bargaining team.
To be completely clear: classified staff are exhausted. The tentative agreement on the table is a profound indignity—offering classified staff 0% in general wage increases is driving the further erosion of our wages as inflation skyrockets. Meanwhile, faculty will receive a statutory COLA to match inflation; widening the pay gap between the staff who maintain this campus and the faculty who teach here.
Staff labor is the engine of this institution. Every single day, we hear that 'student success' is our top priority—but staff labor is student success. Students cannot succeed when the staff advising them, supporting their facilities, and managing their financial aid are burned out, underpaid, and pushed to the brink.
We have reluctantly agreed to our current Tentative Agreement which will be presented to membership for a vote solely because we do not believe continued conversations with OFM will be progressive. The state’s refusal to invest in its workers has backed us into a corner where damage control is our only option. We are accepting this deal out of pure exhaustion, not because it is fair.
If this Board and our college leadership truly believe that student success matters, you must recognize that you cannot value students while devaluing the staff who serve them.
As you feel the inevitable impact of staff burnout, dissatisfaction, and organized action over the life of this contract, I urge this Board to act. Advocate directly to Governor Ferguson and our state legislators. Remind them that classified staff labor cannot continue to be systematically devalued—and demand that our state leaders put state dollars where value lives.