Message sent to our membership on May 29th, 2020

Dear PAT Colleagues:

The PAT learned this week that Portland Public Schools is enforcing the Work Share requirement of a 20% reduction in work in a way that was never discussed or agreed to. While the District's expectation remains that educators should be working 5 hours a day or 20 hours a week, if in the course of your week you anticipate working beyond 32 hours, please notify your supervisor immediately. Your supervisor must then tell you what duties they will be taking off your plate for the week to ensure that you can complete your work within the 32 hours, or proportion thereof if you are employed at less than 1.0 FTE. If your supervisor fails to provide adequate adjustment to your workload for the week, you should not work beyond your 32 hours. Otherwise you risk being removed from the Work Share program for that week. 

Because PAT members work about 40 hours per week (when the two-hour staff meeting is counted), the four-day furlough total number of hours worked must be no more than 32 hours (four days of eight hours a day). As such, PAT advises you to keep a careful record of your work activities. 

What does tracking your hours mean? For each type of school that is a little different. Keep in mind that the current collective bargaining agreement requires that you follow a particular distribution of time each day. 

Elementary School:

•     Every level of educator:
  • 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after each student day
  • 30 minutes of a duty-free lunch period
  • 15 minutes at the end of the day for additional planning time

•     Elementary School Educators:
  • 64 minutes of planning time each day [40 minutes a day of planning, PLUS at least 120 additional minutes per week of planning (can be more in some schools) which averages out to an additional 24 minutes per day.]

Middle School:

•     Every level of educator:
  • 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after each student day
  • 30 minutes of a duty-free lunch period
  • 15 minutes at the end of the day for additional planning time

•     Middle School Educators:
  • Not less than the equivalent of one (1) standard class period per day

High School:

•     Every level of educator:
  • 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after each student day
  • 30 minutes of a duty-free lunch period
  • 15 minutes at the end of the day for additional planning time

•     High School Educators:
  • Not less than the equivalent of one (1) standard class period per day

The rules that PPS is enforcing require all PAT educators to count their work day as the contractual 7 hours and 45 minutes, along with time worked outside of those minutes. As Work Share participating educators, you must then add time spent grading, planning lessons, contacting parents, producing distance learning videos, IEP meetings (in all forms), additional tracking minutes, etc., into the total number of minutes per day and per week.

High School classroom educator Ms. “A” might work the daily 7 hours and 45 minutes, plus an additional 1 hour of planning how to conduct distance learning, 1 hour producing the distance learning video lesson, and about 1 hour answering parent/student emails. That means PPS believes that Ms “A” worked 10 hours and 45 minutes that day. If that was a typical day for Ms. “A”, her work week would look like:

Monday:         10 hours 45 minutes

Tuesday:        10 hours 45 minutes (total of 21 hours and 30 minutes for the week)

Wednesday:    10 hours 45 minutes (total of 32 hours and 15 minutes for the week) Ms. “A” must request that her building administrator reduce her required work in order to have her total work for the week remain below 32 hours. 

Thursday:       Work must be reduced by building admin for Monday - Wednesday in order for Ms. “A” to work on Thursday.

We know that no PAT member wants to work this way, but the rules that PPS has decided to enforce require that this be done. Remember that the Work Share program is designed to save jobs next year. Saving jobs next year means a better year for all of our students.

Please be careful with your time and make sure to notify your supervisor if you are likely to surpass your hours and need workload adjustment to ensure that you do not exceed your 32 hours in a given week.

In Solidarity,

Portland Association of Teachers
http://www.pdxteachers.org/