The Kent teachers union voted Monday to defy a judge’s orders to head back to their classrooms this week. Instead, members of the Kent Education Association will continue to strike.

At least one major picket line was due to get under way starting 5 a.m. Tuesday at Kentridge High School.

Union members voted 74 percent in favor of defying King County Superior Court Judge Andrea Jarvas’ order to go back to the classroom Tuesday.

“Our members have decided what we are doing is right,” said KEA President Lisa Brackin Johnson after the vote at Green River College in Auburn.

Noting one of the union’s main sticking points, she added, “we are asking for smaller classes and class size is the big issue.”

It was unclear what the penalties will be.

Jarvas’ ruling last week was in favor of the Kent School District, which had requested an injunction against KEA’s strike.

“The strike by the Kent Education Association is illegal,” Jarvas wrote in her decision, which she announced at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

When asked Monday night if she was prepared to go to jail for defying Jarvas’ decision, Brackin Johnson didn’t mince words.

“If that is what the judge rules, then that is what I will do,” she said.

Brackin Johnson said the KEA negotiating team was ready and prepared to continued negotiations with district officials.

“The bargaining team will return tonight to the negotiations,” she said.

It wasn’t clear if the district’s negotiating team would be there.

Teachers departing Monday’s meeting, where approximately 1,300 took the vote, said their decision to continue the strike wasn’t one they took lightly.

“It was a hard decision. It took a lot of debate,” said Meeker Middle School teacher Ron Colston, who has been teaching in Kent for 29 years. “We had to go with what we feel was right.”