This next blog post is important to read and understand, as the largest school district in our state, Portland Public Schools, is in a critical contract negotiation process.
Oregon Save Our Schools has four core values: an end to high-stakes testing to evaluate schools, teachers, and students; education policy developed by those closest to the classroom (teachers, family, and community), curriculum developed locally rather than top-down mandates, and fully funding and providing a quality, well-rounded education.
These issues are at the forefront with the latest contract negotiations with Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers. We at Oregon SOS understand and agree with the actions taken by the Chicago Teacher's Union as they put a child's learning conditions as a focus in their negotiation process. A teacher's working conditions are a student's learning conditions whether it is lack of air conditioning, smaller class sizes, teacher-created curriculum, or stable and adequate salaries and health care coverage so teachers can focus on teaching instead of worrying about feeding their family as well.
Negotiations of late in Oregon (for example, Parkrose, Reynolds, Gresham-Barlow, Eagle Point, and Medford) have taken a less collaborative path as districts seem to be taking advantage of the economic situation to push a more top-down created corporate education agenda, to expect teachers to do more with less, to support high-stakes testing in evaluating teachers, and to weaken the voice of the union--a voice that is working to give students the education they deserve. The following is a blog submission/post by a PPS teacher who shows how Portland is like Chicago. It is important to pay attention to Chicago, because what happens there can, and is happening, elsewhere--even here. It is naive to think that is won't.
By Portland Teacher (writing anonymously out of fear of
reprisal)
On July 11, more than 40 supporters of the Portland
Association of Teachers (PAT) attended the ninth bargaining session between the
union and Portland Public Schools (PPS). To their dismay, negotiations were cut
short when the district blindsided the PAT bargaining team with a nine-page
legal document that contained a detailed list of issues the district refused to
bargain over.
In a press release after the recent bargaining session, PAT
President Gwen Sullivan responded to the district’s maneuver:
The district’s move is part of a
calculated strategy to pigeonhole negotiations into a discussion about
teachers’ salaries and benefits. This will allow PPS to increase class sizes,
attempt to close schools in low-income neighborhoods, and tie teacher
evaluations to students test scores—. District officials know that their stances on these
issues are highly unpopular among most parents and students, so they are using
the law to restrict bargaining to “mandatory” issues.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THIS MOST recent move is part of
an aggressive public relations strategy that emerged as the school year came to
a close. At the end of May, the school board attacked the Portland
Association of Teachers (PAT) in a , a mass , and an . The
school board declared its dedication to “transforming Portland’s outdated
teacher contract” and unveiled a new proposal that offered teachers 1 percent cost-of-living
raises for the next four years while maintaining the vast majority of their
initial proposal’s regressive contract language.
By slightly increasing their compensation offer while
ignoring all other areas of the contract, the school board hoped to paint the
teachers’ union as greedy and unreasonable. This is also the reasoning behind
their more recent attempt to restrict bargaining to issues of compensation and
benefits.
Their hope is that parents and community members, who are
losing their jobs and homes in some cases, and struggling to get by on low
wages in other cases, will side with the district because teachers have better
salaries, health plans and pensions than they do. In reality, however, , a successful attack on the teachers’
union will make it easier for other employers to attack workers.
What was most striking about PPS’s end-of-the-school-year
media assault is that the school board repeatedly attacked Portland teachers
for looking to the Chicago Teachers Union—one of the most innovative unions in
the country— for inspiration.
in which PAT
President Gwen Sullivan appeared alongside Sara Chambers from the Chicago
Teachers Union, the school board lied to parents, claiming, “Before these negotiations even opened in
March, PAT leaders brought in organizers from the Chicago Teachers Union to
prepare for a strike in Portland…Portland is not Chicago. A teachers’ strike
doesn’t have to happen here. It’s not what Portland students or families
deserve.”
But ironically, just a month after making this declaration,
PPS is using a tactic directly out of the Chicago playbook. By restricting
bargaining to “mandatory” issues, the Portland school board is using —a strategy which ultimately led to a strike.
Of course, the school board absurdly obvious statement is
true: Portland isn’t Chicago, neither is it Seattle, nor is it San Francisco.
But what the board doesn’t realize is that Chicago has become a battleground
between two visions for education.
One vision wants our schools to be run like a business—with
CEOs at the top, teachers as the workers, and students as the products that
teachers are supposed to “add value” to. On the other side, there is an
educational justice movement that says our students are human beings, not test
scores, and that children deserve participatory, critical curriculum grounded
in their own lives—and that teachers should be respected and given the autonomy
and the time to individualize instruction, plan and prepare engaging lessons,
and give meaningful feedback to every student and parent.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FOR THOSE reading the Portland school board’s propaganda and
trying to figure out which vision for public education the district subscribes
to, ,
written by Steve Duin, might help shed light on PPS’s priorities. Duin examines
the district’s choice to extend a no-bid contract to consultant Yvonne Deckard,
hired to help gut the teacher contract, while simultaneously laying off a
well-respected social-service worker. Duin’s article begins:
and have one thing in common. Their employer, ,
doesn't track the hours they work. Deckard is a union negotiator who bills
$300 per hour and has a no-bid $15,000-per-month contract with the
district. She was paid a half-time
salary this year to work a ridiculous number of hours on the health, addiction
and hunger issues that cripple students in the classroom. Guess which one
the district decided it can no longer afford? Wednesday was the last day
in Lehnhoff's six-year run at Roosevelt."
Duin goes on to describe the hundreds of students that
Lehnhoff has helped despite receiving less than one-tenth of Deckard’s salary.
He then hits the nail on the head when he explains why PPS would fire Lenhoff
while rehiring Deckard: “Because in a world obsessed with test scores and
graduation rates, the district can't track and quantify the difference Lehnhoff
makes.”
So while Portland and Chicago certainly have many
differences, the corporate reform agenda is driving the actions of both school
districts.
In Portland, the district is not closing down 50 schools in
Black and Latino neighborhoods, but PPS did shut down two predominately Black
and Brown schools two years ago, and tried again this year to shut down another
two low income, high-minority schools. And like Chicago, .
Like Chicago, the Portland school board wants to get rid of limits to class
size and teacher workload. Like Chicago, the Portland school board wants to
increase the amount of unpaid labor teachers do every day while getting rid of
our job security.
So whether the school board admits it or not, they are
playing the same role in Portland that Mayor Rahm Emanuel played in Chicago,
and they are fighting for that same corporate vision of education.
It will be up to Portlanders to learn the lessons from the
other side in Chicago—.
The Portland Association of Teachers is making it clear that
this fight is about more than just better pay. , “Portland educators have come to the table not
just to discuss salary and benefits, but to begin a conversation about equity,
appropriate use of student assessment, class size and allowing professional
educators the time and space to do what they do best--teach our children.”
Like Chicago, PAT will need to help build a movement of
parents, students and teachers that can fight for our vision for public schools—the schools our students deserve.