PORTLAND, Ore. — The historic first Portland teachers strike is over, bringing teachers and students back into classrooms. In the deal that ultimately ended the strike, teachers got some of the things they asked for — more money and planning time — but had to concede on some of their biggest asks.
Another outcome of the strike: Oregon schools districts are drawing scrutiny to the way public education is funded in the state, with some officials saying that big changes are needed.
Here's a breakdown of what Portland teachers were asking for and what they ended up with. First, the Portland Association of Teachers had asked for a cumulative 22% raise in cost-of-living adjustments over the next three years. Prior to the strike, Portland Public Schools had offered them a raise of 11%.
When all was said and done, teachers got 14% in raises over the next three years, and about half of teachers will get an additional 10% step increase.
But when it comes to class sizes, teachers did not get anywhere near what they wanted. The PAT had demanded hard caps on class sizes, different numbers for each grade level. In the end, they dropped that demand in favor of some softer options, agreeing to have teachers get paid extra for teaching classes over a certain size.
Portland Public Schools had said that most classes in PPS elementary schools have fewer than 25 kids, but they also said that if they agreed to class size caps, they'd have to hire hundreds of more teachers.
On the topic of planning time, teachers did get a bit more than what they had prior, but not as much as they'd asked for. At the beginning of the strike, the PAT wanted 440 minutes per week for all teachers at all grade levels. That's about an hour and a half each day.
What teachers got was 410 minutes each week, around an hour and 22 minutes each day, and additional planning and grading days throughout the school year. But that's still a small increase over what they had before the strike, which was a little over an hour a day of planning time.
PPS promised to put more money into mental health support for students, investments in special education and bilingual teachers, and said it would address problems with rodents, mold and classrooms that get either too hot or too cold.
The PPS school board and teachers each ratified the agreement this week.
As part of the agreement, teachers will received back pay for the weeks they spent on strike in November, and their health insurance coverage will not be impacted.
Meanwhile, make-up days for all the ones students missed have been added to the school calendar, including the controversial choice to have class the week before Christmas — almost the first half of winter break.
The strike and its fallout
So, was the strike worth it? PAT President Angela Bonilla told the school board this week that the strike needed to happen because of everything schools have dealt with since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"When we talked about the possibility of the strike, we really had to think about what the impacts would be on our students, because the memory of COVID closures is so present," Bonilla said. "We understood that we were taking a risk, and it was a calculated risk in order to really bring these things to light and push for better conditions for our workers and also for our student learners.
"We understand that we were disrupting learning, but we understood that we were disrupting disrupted learning, and the goal was to get to a point where we could ensure that students had high-quality education and that our educators had the working conditions they needed to provide that quality education."
Portland Public Schools said that the agreement is going to cost them an additional $175 million over the next three years, and they don't have that money in the budget. They said that the district is going to be seeing some cuts over the next few years — and those cuts will be felt in the classroom.
School board member Andrew Scott said that the state of Oregon needs to step in, indicating that lawmakers are ultimately responsible for the strike.
"We cannot afford (the contract) because the governor and the legislature have failed to adequately fund education in Oregon, full stop," Scott said. "I want to be very clear about the following points: this strike is a result of Gov. Kotek and the Democratically-controlled state legislature failing to do their job.
"Support for public schools in Oregon has been slowly declining since the passage of Measure 5, but we cannot continue to blame a poorly designed ballot measure from 30 years ago. In this last legislative session, there was never a serious conversation about funding education at the level the state itself says is needed for our students to thrive, the Quality Education Model ... during the campaign I asked then-candidate Kotek about funding at QEM, and she said that's not going to happen."
The Quality Education Model, or QEM, is a report produced every two years by a state-formed commission, which is supposed to detail how much money Oregon should devote in order to operate schools at their current service level, or how much more would be needed to fully fund schools and help them reach high achievement levels. It's delivered to both lawmakers and the governor.
During this year's legislative session, Democratic lawmakers crowed about sending a record level of funding to education, about $10.2 billion. But that amount represented what QEM considers "current service level" funding. In order to reach full funding, that amount would have needed to be closer to $13 billion.
As the strike wore on, PPS officials began insisting that what K-12 schools had received from the legislature was not enough. Some lawmakers clapped back, saying that school officials had agreed to the $10.2 billion they got.
In the wake of the strike, Gov. Kotek said that she wants to create a new office within the Oregon Department of Education to make sure that public school budget information is more transparent. She also wants lawmakers to consider a statewide salary schedule for teachers and take a closer look at how much education truly costs.
"We have to take a deep dive on how we're doing our school funding formula, so we'll work with the legislature on that, and we'll be asking my chief financial officer and the Department of Education to weigh in with legislators on how to review and revise the methodology on school funding, so when we come into the 2025 session we will have a better understanding on what the needs of the districts are," Kotek said. "Because we're just we're not quite there. There's a big disconnect between current service level and what we're seeing at the local level."
PPS board member Andrew Scott had an idea for how to scrounge up more than enough money for schools, but it's an idea that would undoubtedly be an uphill battle to implement — what he called "kicker reform."
"For 20 years, everyone has said it's impossible. We are about to send $5 billion dollars back to Oregon taxpayers because of the kicker law. That funding would have been transformational for every school district in Oregon," Scott said. "And the reason the state has that extra $5 billion dollars is because wealthy Oregonians and businesses are doing better than they ever have, and as a result, they're paying more in taxes than they expected."
Instead of capturing that bounty and investing it in Oregon's future, Scott said, it's just being handed back as a tax rebate under the state's idiosyncratic law.
"So, let's stop having people tell me it's not possible and start figuring out how we can make it possible, and if Salem doesn't want to do it, we can put together an initiative," he continued. "Trust me: if we could harness just 50% of the anger that was directed toward this board over the last few weeks and redirect that anger toward the kicker, I guarantee you we'd have that thing overturned next year."
Historically, the idea of touching the kicker has been politically radioactive. When asked about it this week, Kotek said only that she's open to the idea if lawmakers decided to take it up — but it's likely to be a non-starter in Salem.
"There are folks who are really struggling right now financially. That kicker rebate next year is going to be important for those households," she said. "I'm not saying we shouldn't have a future conversation, but we have seen the cost of living go up ... we have seen inflation level off, but food prices have not gone down — and people need help, and this is one way that they will get some tax relief next year ... (it's a) longer conversation, up to the legislature."
Whatever the takeaways, the teachers strike in Portland is sure to influence other school districts throughout the state. About a third of them are in contract negotiations this year, and some are already looking to the state Capitol. Earlier this week, the superintendent of the Salem-Keizer School District — the second largest in the state behind Portland — called out lawmakers, blaming them for a funding model that has left her district $30 million in the hole.
Even with those planned cuts, Superintendent Andrea Castañeda said it does not solve her district's overall budget woes. That's a scenario that a number of Oregon school districts could be grappling with over the next year or more.
The next round of funding for Oregon schools will not come until the long legislative session in 2025.