Teachers and staff in the Renton School District are expressing their frustrations about a lack of support for aligning curriculum with the new national reading, writing and math standards adopted by Washington state.

At a recent school board meeting on Dec. 10, four teachers spoke during the comment period, one near tears, addressing problems with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. The standards are academic benchmarks for reading and math that lay out what students should know and do at each grade level and after high school.

Fighting back tears, Katie Thorleifson, a teacher at Campbell Hill Elementary, reported that 11 out of 14 teachers informally surveyed at her school said they have thought about quitting.

The teachers spoke of a lack of curriculum for the Common Core Standards, changing leadership at their schools, low morale, a lack of training on the standards, increasing teacher/student ratios, problems with technology and a lack of the teachers’ voice in major decisions.

“They are at the tipping point; there’s so much piled on them that they are at their last straw,” said Cami Kiel in an interview Dec. 16. She is the president of the teacher’s union, the Renton Education Association. Kiel also offered her testimony at the school board of what she’s hearing from teachers.

Teachers have expressed concern about their colleagues and there’s minimal and very limited tools to align the Common Core Standards, she said.

“When we finally do adopt the curriculum, there’s no time for teachers to sit down and learn it,” said Kiel.

A substitute teacher shortage is also contributing to these issues as teachers can’t break away from their classrooms to get the training they need on the new standards. However, the district administration is aware of the problems and interested in listening to the concerns, Kiel said.

“They are really interested in problem-solving, but there are so many problems where do we begin,” she said.

The district has been working with teams of teachers for many months to adjust Renton’s curriculum and to provide updated classroom learning materials to align the Common Core Standards and the Smarter Balance test that measure the standards.

“The work to adopt new curriculum and learning materials is a lengthy process that requires the groups of teachers and district staff to be careful and thorough in choosing what we provide our teachers to present to students in classrooms,” said Randy Matheson, district spokesperson.

The work is daunting. One recent group of educators and staff were working to adopt elementary-school reading curriculum and after their review, they didn’t think the materials were good enough for their classrooms. So they started the process over with new materials.

Last year, teachers, principals and staff were expressing a positive and optimistic view of the new national standards. Now, the mood seems to have soured as the process to align the standards to curriculum and do the required assessments clunks along.

“Most of all teachers are tired,” said Becca Ritchie, a sixth-grade computer teacher at Nelsen Middle School. “Many comments were made by my colleagues that October felt like May. Their workloads keeps them busy and along with that, now they have to prove they are good teachers. They do not have the energy to show up at a school board meeting or write an op ed piece. They can’t fit in one more meeting and because they are not there, neither are their voices.”

Ritchie has taught for 24 years at Nelsen and said that in recent years the school has been losing teachers in the double digits every year.

“I have experienced meetings where we are told ‘teacher voice’ is wanted,” Ritchie said. “I attended to find that all of the key decisions have already been made and basically the meeting is to rubber stamp those decisions and to be able to say ‘we had teacher voice.’ But it wasn’t authentic, true teacher voice. This is disheartening.”

Kiel called the district’s response to the disconnect in teaching materials a “crash course.”

“The district understands they need teachers’ voice, but how loud can a teacher’s voice be? I think there’s a legitimate rush to get things on the table, to get things done,” she said. “It’s a crash course rush instead of being really thoughtful and having the teachers’ voice that’s necessary.”

District administration maintains that they are committed to doing better and providing teachers with the curriculum and teaching materials they need to continue to improve student learning.

“Our teachers are hard-working, caring, committed professionals who demand a high level of service from the district so that they can do their best in classrooms,” said Matheson. “We are committed to providing them with those materials and the support they deserve.”