BREAKING: Portland Public Schools Reveals Terms of Teachers’ Contract, Votes to Ratify

Highlights of how some key disputes were resolved are after the jump.

After more than 19 months without a deal, Portland Public Schools (PPS) and its teachers’ union, the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), appear set to agree have agreed on a contract that covers last year, this year and the next.

The school board met this morning at 10:30 for a closed-door executive session at PPS headquarters. At 11:00, they began a public meeting to vote to ratify the tentative agreement. They voted “yes” unanimously at 11:16 am.

“I do feel like we found common ground,” says PPS Superintendent Carole Smith. “I feel good about where we are… in this economy it was a hard sweet spot to find,” she says.

The PAT ratified the contract yesterday, February 26. A majority of teachers in the district voted to accept the deal.

“We hope the Portland Public School Board ratifies this agreement,” wrote PAT President Rebecca Levison in a statement.

Carole Smith and her chief of staff Zeke Smith (no relation) arrived together at the PPS offices this morning, and talked privately in their car for about twenty minutes before entering the building.

Directors Dilafruz Williams (just back from India), Martín González, Trudy Sargent, Ruth Adkins, and David Wynde were present for the vote. Pam Knowles and Bobbie Regan were away, and joined by teleconference. Regan asked if the board could “just vote yes” before deliberation, but Chief Legal Counsel Jollee Patterson said that wasn’t possible.

“It took a longer time for us to reach a resolution than any of us wanted to take,” said Sargent, referring to the year and a half of lurching negotiations.

When the parties gave each other their final offers two weeks ago, there were still some disagreements.

After the jump: some of the major issues, and how they were resolved in the tentative agreement.

Work Day
Teachers are on the clock for 15 minutes before and after class each day. PAT wanted them to have that time to themselves; PPS’s final offer called for teachers to perform school duties for up to half of that time (7.5 minutes)
• Who wins? DISTRICT. “Teachers may be required to perform duties up to one-half of the fifteen (15) minutes before and/or after the student day or preparation period.”

Student Day
PAT wanted to limit the student day (the amount of time a particular student spends in class) to six and a half hours. PPS “insists on deleting this language,” wrote the PAT in its newsletter this month.
• Who wins? DISTRICT. That language has been struck in the agreement. There is a clause, however, that says that (non-high-school) student workdays of less than 6.5 hours can’t be increased by more than 15 minutes year-over-year.

Conditions for Layoffs
The PAT called this “one of the most ridiculous proposals so far:” PPS wanted to be able to lay off teachers based on “competency” rather than seniority. To be considered “competent” in a subject area, a teacher must have taught in a specific subject for three of the past ten years. So if a teacher taught geometry for two years and then chemistry for three, and wanted to teach geometry again, he would be laid off before a first-year geometry teacher (who, we might mention, would require a lower salary).
• Who wins? TEACHERS (sort of). The language about required years of experience has been deleted from the agreement. “Competency” in a given subject area is still a criterion for layoffs, but teachers who don’t have recent experience can still qualify as “competent” if they have completed training in the past five years “that is agreed upon by both the district and the unit member as adequate preparation for the assignment.” (The district’s final offer proposed limiting this window to the past three years.)

Salary
Each year, all but the most senior teachers (about half) receive an automatic “step” increase in pay. Any pay increases being discussed would be on top of that.
PPS proposed: 2% increase for 2008-9; no increase for 2009-10; and a one-time bump of 1% for 2010-11, only for the employees who no longer receive the “step.”
PAT proposed: 2% for 2008-9, 2% for those without a step in 2009-10, and 2% for everybody in 2010-11.
• Who wins? Hmm. Okay, so nobody “wins.” There’s a 2% increase for all teachers next year (2010-11), and there is NO increase from last year to this year. So it looks like 2%-0%-2% for the three years. A source close to the teachers’ union has signaled that they didn’t get what they were asking for. PAT President Rebecca Levison refused to comment, saying only that the teachers are “relieved that a settlement has been reached.” More to come.

PPS had also proposed to implement up to two furlough days for teachers if the Legislature’s special session failed to allocate $6 billion from the general fund to K-12 education. By the time the session wrapped up yesterday, the full $6 billion had been allocated. “That’s pretty good compared to years past,” says State Representative Jules Kopel Bailey of Portland.

“The K-12 funding situation in this state continues to get worse… and when it comes to bargaining with our employees, it creates an enormously challenging environment. I don’t think anyone on this board thinks we can balance the budget entirely on the backs of employees,” said Director David Wynde before the vote.

“I’m really glad we came to a fair and respectful settlement,” Levison told the board after it voted.