Bremerton School District employees threatened a walk-out on Thursday barring a pay raise from the district.

The announcement followed months of unsuccessful negotiations between unionized classified staff (non-teachers) and a negotiating team made up of school district administrators.

“We are the lowest paid clerical assistants and paraeducators in the whole peninsula,” Ed Angelbeck, a spokesperson for the 185-member Bremerton Professional Education Association, said. “Our members are getting a little riled up.”

In remarks to the school board Thursday evening, Angelbeck expressed frustration that pay for certain school district positions – like assistant superintendent and finance/HR director – had increased more than 20 percent in five years, while starting pay for classified employees – teaching assistants, clerical workers and office staff – had increased just 17 percent in 10 years.

“How do you expect to keep, or even attract, quality workers with such low pay?” he said.

BPEA members sat in the audience wearing coordinated T-shirts and holding paper signs at the public meeting. It was one in a series of “rallies,” as Angelbeck called it, held by classified staff in recent weeks.

Paraeducators and other support staff, unlike teachers, do not have state certifications. They are responsible for a wide variety of tasks ranging from in-class support for teachers, to riding the bus with special needs students, to supervising lunch, to dealing with bloody noses and other injuries.

“They hire us, and we do pretty much whatever they want us to do,” Angelbeck said.

The request for a raise follows closely on the heels of a wave of pay increases for educators across the county and across the state.

Teachers in Seattle, Pierce County and in all of Kitsap County’s school districts received pay raises this year, ranging from 19 percent for first-year teachers on Bainbridge Island, to 45 percent in the Central Kitsap School District, where starting annual salaries jumped from $36,500 to $53,000.

Last month, the Bremerton school board approved an 18 percent raise for teachers in the district, up to $52,600.

Starting pay for classified staff, however, held at $14.55 per hour. Comparatively, hourly pay for classified staff in Bainbridge, the district with the highest pay for non-teachers, is $19.50.

Bremerton superintendent Aaron Leavell said he is in support of a pay raise, adding that negotiations are ongoing.

“No one ever wants to be in a position where your employees feel like they need to walk off their jobs,” he said. “We’re all looking forward to the negotiations coming to completion soon.”

However, Angelbeck said the district’s negotiating team had not neared an acceptible offer.

“We’re far from reaching a mutual agreement,” he said.

The next bargaining meeting is scheduled for October 17, which will be determinative, Angelbeck said, as to whether a walk-out vote would be held.

Leavell said he hoped the parties would be “a lot closer by then, and hopefully finished by then.”