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PAT Salaries Drop in Metro 14

The District has presented data in bargaining that may show that PPS staffing ratios may be lower than many metro area districts. That is directly related to PAT’s Schools Portland Students Deserve campaign that focused on reducing workload and creating more reasonable learning conditions for students. There is much work yet to be done in this area. However, our focus on reducing workload and improving students’ learning conditions has apparently come at a cost to you. PAT members’ starting and top salaries have both fallen in comparison to other Metro 14 locals. PAT starting salaries are dead last in this group! Below are PERS-adjusted salaries for 2016-17 based on the 190-day PPS calendar for beginning and top salaries*: 

* PERS-adjusted salaries reduce the salaries by 6% for locals who do not have the employee portion of PERS contributions paid by the District. This comparison is based on the 190-day calendar. All other districts have settled for the 2016-17 school year and have received salary increases for this year.

General Agreement Reached on Many Key Bargaining Issues

In early March the District and PAT bargaining teams met to conduct a financial lab. The goal was to reach a conceptual framework for the key financial issues. At that time, we did reach a rough conceptual agreement on salary, duration, and benefits. However, such agreements were contingent upon other factors such as work year and workload that are not yet agreed upon.

State Budget Deficit Impacts PPS Staffing and Bargaining

By now you may have been informed that PPS staff allocations are being reduced. The following link gives some background information on the State Budget deficit: http://katu.com/news/local/portland-public-schools-could-face-teacher-layoffs-for-2017-2018-school-year. PPS has presented various scenarios to cut PAT staff that all include cutting over 120 full time equivalent positions (FTE) from our bargaining group. This would obviously impact class sizes and program offerings. The District is also seeking to obtain two rollbacks (concessions that “roll back” current contract protections) from PAT in order to implement the District plan: 

(1) Eliminate or change the current workload language (and Appendix F) to allow the District to increase student loads at the high schools. PAT wants to maintain these workload protections, but possible modify them slightly to allow for reasonable reductions at the high schools in exchange for limits on student load / caseload at other grade levels.

(2) Eliminate the clause in our work year language that requires the two additional student days that were added in the last contract to be cut before the District could implement a reduction in staffing. If we cut the two student days, it would reduce salary for the days (approximately .5% for each day) and save the district approximately $2 million. This money could be redirected to save approximately 20 FTE.

School Board Considering Increasing Reserves

A change in PPS Board Policy 8.10.05-P: Contingencies & Reserves Policy is being considered to increase PPS reserves from 3% to 5% by 2020 and further increase the percentage to 10% by 2025. The Board is accepting comments regarding this change until April 4, 2017.

School Board Moves to Implement Staffing Plan in Violation of our Contract

You have been since June 30th without a contract. During the period after the previous contract has expired and before a new contract is finalized, state law requires districts to generally maintain the status quo on contract provisions. It is a violation of state law (an unfair labor practice) for the District to implement bargaining proposals that have not been bargained to completion without following the full process and timeline identified in state law. PAT is considering whether the District’s decision to start staffing based on the March 14^th school staffing plan is an unfair labor practice. Our concern is staffing decisions (including unassignments) will be made in the next two weeks based on this plan. These decisions will be difficult to undo once the staffing process is underway.

School Board Ignores Contract Violations over Evaluations

At the same Board meeting as the staffing plan decision, the Board also rejected a request by PPS School Board Member Steve Buel to review systemic violations of the PAT evaluation process. This has resulted in a large increase in the number of members whose evaluations did not follow are contract. These violations include:

• Having no evidence at all in component areas that have “unsatisfactory” or “developing” ratings:
• Including complaints in the evaluations that were never process or verified under our contractual complaint procedure;
• Skipping steps and most forms in the evaluation process;
• Placing members on “Plans of Support” even though such plans do not exist in our evaluation article or Handbook (By doing this the District chose not to follow the language for plans of assistance for probationary teachers.);
• Non-renewing a significant number of PAT members without following the evaluation procedures.

Your team is bargaining to improve language on some of these same evaluation issues. These actions have certainly made reaching agreement on these member rights issues more difficult.

PAT Asks State Facilitator for Meeting to Discuss Interest-Based Bargaining Process

Your PAT team is rightfully concerned about these latest District actions. We find it difficult to reconcile how these actions align with the interest-based collaborative bargaining model that we have been using. We have scheduled a meeting with the state facilitator on Thursday, March 23^rd to discuss next steps with the District’s leadership team.

Teams Consider Lengthening the Workday in Exchange for Reducing Staff Meetings

One of our joint subcommittees explored options to increase the length of the workday by 10 to 20 minutes a day. In exchange we would greatly reduce the number of staff meetings and define how the remaining meetings would be used. The third part of the plan would be to increase professional development days during the work year and at the beginning of the year. The resulting workday and work year would more closely resemble what most other districts in the Metro area do. Please watch your school email in the next week for a bargaining survey over this topic.