Leaders of Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers finalized a tentative agreement Sunday, allowing 43,000 students to return to school Monday for the first time since Halloween, union and district officials said Sunday afternoon.
A final sticking point – an additional $4 million in raises – was resolved in favor of teachers, school board chair Gary Hollands told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Union leaders agreed that teachers will return to work on Monday, even though the district’s 3,500 unionized educators won’t have a chance to review and vote on the proposed contract by then.
Classes will resume after a two-hour late start. It could be a rough reentry for teachers and students alike, as educators have not had paid planning time since their final minutes at work almost a month ago as they prepared to launch the strike Nov. 1.
“The return is going to be strange,” said Linda White, a math teacher at Sellwood Middle School in Southeast Portland. “I am glad that I pushed us to finish our unit on the 31st so we can start fresh with new material. I think the restart will look a lot like the beginning of school, with group activities and some processing. I am probably not the only one who is a little uneasy about how to jump back in.”
In an email to union members, the union’s bargaining team called the agreement “a watershed moment for Portland students, families and educators” and said that the contract would mean more mental health support for students and more time for educators to plan lessons and grade papers, among other priorities.
Sunday marked the 26th calendar day of the strike, the first in district history. The labor action canceled 11 days of school, setting back education for students trying to regain ground after the pandemic, and lopping off even more work days for teachers, leaving them without regular paychecks and putting their health insurance at risk.
As part of their tentative deal, the district and union agreed students will get 11 full days of class to make up for those they missed, starting with canceling the first week of winter break, the district said. That means the vacation period will begin Dec. 23 rather than Dec. 16. Two scheduled teacher work days and the Presidents Day holiday will also be converted to teaching days, and the school year will stretch three days further into June.
Under the terms of the re-entry, parent-teacher conferences that were supposed to be held in November will be moved to evenings on January 11 and 12, plus two more evenings set at the school level, and the overall time set aside for conferences will be reduced to 12 hours, from 18, the contract agreement says.
As The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Saturday, the two sides agreed on a host of thorny issues by late Friday, including maximum thresholds for elementary class sizes and middle and high school teachers’ student loads. They reached common ground on committees that will weigh in solely about schoolwide priorities if their school hits those thresholds. The union had sought to allow parents a voice in classroom-level decisions.
And they largely agreed on cost-of-living increases, compromising on 6.25% for this year and 3% for 2025-26.
The remaining point of bitter contention was the raise for next year – 4%, as the district insisted, or 4.5% as the union wanted, at a cost of $4 million more over two years.
The union pointed out teachers will work one additional day starting next school year and said accepting a 4% raise would mean working that day for free, an especially bitter pill for long-time teachers who still recall working 10 days for free in 2003 as a part of a deal to avert a strike and avoid ending the school year in mid-May.
District officials countered that all their wage proposals this year, including its offer of a 4% hike for next year, took into account that the work year would grow from 192 days to 193 next year, a fact that was noted in their written offers.
Under immense pressure from everyone from Gov. Tina Kotek to increasingly furious parents to seal the deal Sunday, district negotiators agreed to pay the additional $4 million.
Hollands, the school board chair, acknowledged that the rancor of the past month and the whiplash of negotiations have taken a deep toll on a district that is still reeling from the pandemic’s extended building closures.
“It is going to take a lot of healing,” Hollands said. “It is going to take a lot of building of trust to get back. But I can’t be mad at the people across from me who care about our kids just as much as I do. We had a difference of opinion. Now we have to be intentional about moving forward.”
When the strike began, many families showed fervent support for teachers, joining picket lines, writing to school board members and district officials to urge a settlement on the union’s terms and contributing to GoFundMe campaigns to aid educators. But as the weeks wore on, an increasing number of parents got antsy about drifting children and unmet work obligations. Some began expressing concern that the union’s ambitious proposals could only be fully met with state education funding reform.
“Our children need [Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers] to learn to trust each other so you can work together to pressure Oregon state leaders to improve education funding,” parent Brent Langland wrote in an impassioned email to district and union leaders, which he shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “The state leadership has to listen to the combined voice of administration and teachers of the largest school district.”
The tentative agreement would result in a 14.4% cost of living increase over three years. The union’s last offer before the strike was for 23% over three years and the district countered with 10.9%.
The first-year raise of 6.25% is far larger than the other five Portland-area districts provided their educators under contracts negotiated prior to this year. Those ranged from 3% in Gresham and Hillsboro to 5% in North Clackamas.
The Portland Association of Teachers’ message to its members noted that the contract would deliver the largest cost-of-living increases over three years in district history. It said it would soon send them more information about the ratification process.
The proposed contract would also yield more planning time for teachers in middle and elementary schools. Those teachers would receive no less than 410 minutes per week to plan lessons and grade papers, due in part to a reduction in staff meetings.
The agreement does not, however, include hard caps on class sizes, which union leaders had pushed for at the start of negotiations and which have been a rallying point for many families. Instead, teachers who are assigned more students than agreed-upon thresholds will continue to receive so-called overage payments.
In a message to families, Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero and school board members also noted the contract would:
>> Provide middle school students with a seven-period day to expand electives and help drive down class sizes
>> Commit $20 million from the city of Portland’s green energy tax to mitigate extra high and low temperatures in classrooms and carry out school maintenance prioritized by educators
>> Add 15 minutes to the school day for elementary and middle students beginning next school year
The deal is not official until ratified by a vote of the full school board and the members of the Portland Association of Teachers. Board approval is assured, but approval by the district’s 3,500 unionized educators is not.
The school board scheduled its vote for Tuesday evening.
The impetus to get back to school on Monday is fueled in part by math: There are not many days left on the calendar to make up for the lost teaching time. The district’s plan to recapture 11 missed days extends the school year to Friday, June 14. Coming back for one more school day on Monday would be a non-starter for most families.
Making up days will also require accommodations for other district employees, including paraeducators, educational assistants, nutrition services workers, custodians and school secretaries, whose unions are negotiating their own separate contracts with the district. All of those employees historically make significantly less than teachers, and it is unclear how their contracts will be impacted by the tentative agreement between the district and its educators.
But district officials have already said that in order to afford the provisions in the educators’ agreement, they will have to find more than $100 million worth of savings somehow, in part by spending down reserves and cutting spending elsewhere. Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero has said district management is prepared to assume “more than our share” of any cuts, but the vast bulk of the district’s operating budget is spent on people who interact with students daily.
