Portland teachers challenge school board

May 19, 2009

PORTLAND, Ore.--At a recent meeting of the Portland Public Schools (PPS) board, the teachers union presented the board with a giant-sized "check" for $69,120,000 to highlight the long hours worked by teachers every year that go uncompensated.

More than 300 teachers, librarians, counselors, speech pathologists and other specialists packed the meeting, where Portland Association of Teachers member Rebecca Levison blasted the school board. She pointed out that teachers have been without a contract for 345 days and went on to say:

We have been asked to do more with less. We have been asked to implement hastily made decisions and poorly designed programs that negatively impact our students. We continue to witness firsthand the district's misplaced spending priorities: half of a million dollars spent on Blackberries for district officials while teachers use their own cell phones to call parents; hundreds of thousands of dollars on outside consultants when we have the necessary expertise right here in this district; the list goes on and on.

Whenever there has been a budget crisis (and that is often), teachers are the ones expected to make the sacrifices. Five years ago, teachers worked 10 days without pay--equal to a 5 percent pay cut--to prevent a shortened school year. Now the school board is again demanding a longer workday and a longer school year with a pay freeze.

PPS has a history of disregard for its teachers. When the union invited two board members to a meeting to simply listen to teachers' concerns, they flatly refused.

The school board wants to balance the budget on the backs of the teachers, yet it is the school board's inefficiencies that exacerbate the situation--and the students suffer. For instance, PPS spent millions on materials for a new curriculum, which included computer software. But they didn't buy the hardware to run the system!

The board has a bloated public relations department of at least 10 people, while students cram into ever-larger classes.

Teachers have employed a rolling work-to-rule campaign, but the school board's intransigence indicates that it will take a lot more to prevent teachers from being the ones to pay for the budget crisis.

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