The Advocate, December 18, 2019

1. President’s Message: A Time for Helping Others
2. Our Overage Pay Dispute with the District
3. Probationary Teacher Mid-Year Evaluation Timelines
4. OEA Promising Practices Grant Opportunity
5. Teacher for a Day: Bringing Decision-makers Into Our Classrooms
6. Solidarity with Custodial and Nutritional Workers!
7. Elementary Report Card Redesign
8. Join Us for these Upcoming Events!

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On behalf of myself and the entire PAT leadership team, we wanted to wish you a happy and restful break.

We also wanted to remind you of the OEA Foundation, a wonderful organization to support, as well as a way to help any of your students who may be in need.

Established in 1995, the OEA Foundation provides educators with up to $100 grants to help students meet basic, urgent, and immediate needs so they can succeed in school. Cash grants from the Foundation fill needs unmet by any other source.

Since the beginning, the key source for these critical grants has been donations from OEA members and staff. The OEA family continues to be generous in their support, through payroll deductions, cash and online donations. You can give just $1 or $2 dollars a month!

The Oregon Education Association funds all of the administrative costs of the Foundation, which allows all donations to be used to provide direct assistance to students.

The OEA Foundation has purchased countless pairs of eyeglasses, provided many students with winter coats, paid for dental work and doctor visits, fitted new shoes on lots of feet, and even replaced a broken bedroom window.

When all is said and done, the OEA Foundation works to ensure that the physical, social, and emotional needs of students do not stand in the way of success in school.

If you know of a student you can help, apply now.

Find out more information, donate online, or apply for a grant.

In Solidarity,

Suzanne Cohen
PAT President

n the 2018/2019 school year, PAT members secured contract language that formally recognized the impact of class sizes and caseloads. Both sides recognized that students are adversely impacted by large classes and by limited service time due to large caseloads, and agreed that educators should be compensated when their workload exceeds a mutually agreed upon standard.

Because this agreement was the first of its kind in Oregon, and because none of the District staff responsible for processing overage pay were part of the negotiations, PPS initially failed to implement a fairly large portion of the overage language.

PAT and PPS eventually smoothed out these differences, in an effort to avoid a lengthy grievance dispute regarding overages. Last year, we reached a common understanding of how to implement many of the new parts of our contract, and the vast majority of PAT members received correct overage payments when they were required.

Unfortunately, several of the remaining issues were still being ironed out when the District declared on December 11^th that PPS is no longer going to work from our common understandings, and instead simply implement its interpretation of our overage language.

The most egregious example is PPS’s wildly different approach to A/B schedules at the Middle School level, compared to High School. Essentially, PPS claims that because the periods are of different lengths, Middle School students only count as half a student for the purpose of overages. A PAT member who works an A/B schedule in Middle School can therefore be assigned 300 students a semester (or 440 students for Specialists) before the educator would receive compensation for overages.

Probationary teachers are formally evaluated at least two times during the school year. By the last work day before Winter Break, all probationary teachers should have received their first evaluation report.

This mid-cycle evaluation must be based on at least one formal observation cycle, which requires a pre-observation conference, the observation, and a post-observation conference.

In addition to the formal observation cycle, the mid-year evaluation may include evidence from informal observations, artifacts, assessments, and other evidence collected throughout the first half of the school year.

The mid-cycle formal evaluation requires a Mid-Cycle Summative Evaluation Meeting, separate from the post-observation conference. Prior to that meeting, the evaluator must give the educator a draft of the Mid-Cycle Summative Evaluation Report (Form 5) at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting.

Any rating given in the evaluation report must be based on direct evidence that is written in the evaluation report. Review Article 27 of the PAT/PPS contract and the PPS Handbook for Professional Growth and Evaluation to determine whether the required procedures have been followed regarding your evaluation. Both are available on the PAT website.

If the evaluator has stated that they “DO NOT RECOMMEND” you for continued employment if your performance continues as it is, contact your PAT Rep ASAP. You also have the right to submit a written objection/rebuttal that is attached to the evaluation report in your personnel file if you feel the evaluation was incomplete or unjust. The written objection should normally be made within 30 days of receipt of the evaluation.

A template to assist you is provided here.

Every year, the Oregon Education Association gives Promising Practices Grants to educators to support student learning and professional development for OEA members across Oregon. This year, there is $2,000 available for grants to PAT members.

Grants can be used to fund projects or materials that support improved student achievement. The application is available here and applications are due to [email protected] by January 31, 2020.

Applications will be reviewed by the Instruction and Professional Development (IPD) committee on February 5, 2020. OEA makes final decisions in late April or early May.

In the event there are more funds requested than are available, the committee will consider the following in determining how to disperse funds among qualifying grant applications:

• Is the grant requester a first-time applicant?
• Does it serve a historically underserved population of students?
• How many students will be positively  impacted?
• Does it support an early-career educator?

On Thursday, December 12^th your Legislative Committee hosted their Teacher for A Day event. We had nineteen teachers hosting legislators, legislative candidates, union leaders, and District personnel across the city. Teachers put their guests to work teaching lessons, leading small groups, and dissecting pig hearts, and provided an authentic experience of a frontline PPS educator.

Check out a list of our host teachers and their guests!

• Jess Hutchinson @ Abernethy hosted Roshni Sabedra, PPS Senior Manager - Employee and Labor Relations
• Kyle Cook @ Arleta hosted Emily Gafne, PPS Senior Manager - Employee and Labor Relations
• Stephanie Macdonald @ Beach hosted Andrea Salinas, Oregon State Representative
• Valerie Turner @ Beaumont hosted Michael Denbrow, Oregon State Senator
• Ilsa Bruer @ Benson hosted Adam Meyer, candidate for House District 36
• Richard Melling @ Chapman hosted Serin Bussell, Candidate for House District 33
• Chrishana Tucker @ Chapman hosted Dr. Lisa Reynolds, Candidate for House District 36
• Ian Mauer @ Cleveland hosted Paige Kreisman, Candidate for House District 42
• Elaine Winn @ Creston hosted Rob Nosse, Oregon State Representative, House District 42
• Julia Peattie @ Harrison Park hosted OEA Vice President Reed Scott-Schwalbach
• Laura Jenness @ Harrison Park hosted Elvyss Argueta, OEA State-wide political organizer
• Maureen Kenny @ Lincoln hosted Andy Saultz, Candidate for House District 33
• Kelly Dwight @ Madison hosted Lavert Robertson, CEO of All Hands Raised
• Janelle Nelson @ Markham hosted Christina Stephenson, Candidate for House District 33
• Ali Herron @ Marysville hosted Stephanie Soden-Back, PPS Chief of Staff
• Nahir Perez @ Rigler hosted Barbara Smith Warner, Oregon State Representative House District 45
• Kesia Micheletti @ Roosevelt hosted Tina Kotek, Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives
• Loan Zieh @ Rose City Park, hosted PPS Chief Financial Officer Cynthia Le
• Melody Hiser @ Skyline hosted Jennifer Williamson, Oregon State Representative for House District 36, and candidate for Oregon Secretary of State

After spending several hours in classrooms, teachers and their guests were invited back to the PAT office for lunch and a debrief of the time in the classroom. Our teachers clearly communicated our dire need for smaller class sizes, mental health support for our students, less standardized assessments, and updated facilities.

The Nutrition Services and Custodial departments in PPS are in a staffing crisis, thanks to longstanding under-funding. Conditions are so poor that workers in both departments are frequently resigning on the spot.

These workers are represented by SEIU Local 503 and have been negotiating with the District for seven months. Despite the District’s decision to hire an anti-union law firm, SEIU has made some big gains in Nutrition Services and they are close to an acceptable wage scale. PPS rejected their recent proposal to bring Custodial wages in line with neighboring districts and so they remain pretty far apart.

In addition to this, a major sticking point is retro pay. The District delayed negotiations for several months. As a result, custodians and nutritionists have been working under an expired contract since July, and PPS has refused the union’s demand to make the settlement retroactive.

Our colleagues have struggled with staffing shortages and overwhelming workloads this entire school year, and now it is time for the District to make it right. SEIU is fighting to make these living-wage jobs again to ensure safe and healthy schools for PPS students.

All PAT members are encouraged to show solidarity with our SEIU sisters and brothers by wearing a sticker in support of a fair contract on Friday December 20^th, the day of SEIU’s next bargaining session. You can get stickers from your building rep starting on Thursday. You can also show support by sending messages to the Superintendent and the School Board calling on them to reach a fair settlement with these workers using the following link. 

Do you have ideas for how to improve the K-5 report card? Please come to the Instruction and Professional Development Committee meeting on Wednesday, January 8, 4:30-6:30 PM at PAT. Dinner provided. RSVP on the PAT website.

Our contract gives us the right to talk directly to District leaders about professional issues in our monthly Instructional Practices Council meeting. Last month, they agreed to work toward the goal of redesigning our K-5 report card by next Fall. To that end, we invite you to IPD to discuss what you want in a K-5 report card. Bring your frustrations, ideas, and examples of what could work.

Wednesday, December 18^th

• 4:30 PM: PAT RA

Friday, December 20^th

• 10:00 AM: OEA Retired Travel Committee @ PAT

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

• 4:30 PM: Advocacy Cmte Mtg
• 4:30 PM: Bargaining Cmte Mtg
• 4:30 PM: IPD Cmte Mtg

Thursday, January 9, 2020

• 4:30 PM: Legislative Committee / PAT-PAC Board Mtg

Monday, January 13, 2020

• 4:30 PM: Substitute Committee Meeting

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

• 9:00 AM: District BCT Meeting

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

• 4:30 PM: Black Lives Matter Cmte Mtg
• 4:30 PM: Membership Cmte Mtg
• 4:30 PM: Racial Equity Cmte Mtg
• 4:30 PM: SJCO Cmte Mtg

Friday, January 17, 2020

• 1:00 PM: Contract Administration @ PAT

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

• 4:30 PM: PAT Executive Board Mtg

Thursday, January 23, 2020

• 4:30 PM: Retirement Seminar