“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:
Rick Liebman, Lead Negotiator for PPS, 503-276-2148

Portland Public Schools reaches tentative agreement with Portland Association of Teachers

Portland, Ore., Feb. 13, 2010: Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract, subject to ratification by the parties. Details of the tentative agreement will remain confidential until the terms are ratified by the parties.”

Portland Association of Teacher Members,

Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract, subject to ratification by the parties. Details of the tentative agreement will remain confidential until the terms are ratified by the parties.

Your bargaining organizer at your site will have more information soon.

Thank you for all of your time and committment.
PAT President Rebecca Levison & PAT Vice President Gwen Sullivan

Whoa. That was timing. I just received an email that PPS and PAT have reached a tentative agreement.

Real PLC’s are initiated from the workers (in this case teachers) and are controlled by them. What school districts have done is co-opt this from business and used it to advance the school reform agenda. Totally against what real PLC’s are. Heck, who doesn’t want to spend time chatting about their class with fellow teachers and, if the other teachers are good, planning some units together. But this is not the program. Too bad PPS’s administration and school board don’t get the destruction their reforms are causing.

This is why the contract stuff is frustrating to me. Every year we are asked to do more with no more time. Another workload issue came up because of Nike and other business leaders who think they know more about education than teachers.

Until 3 or 4 years ago, k-5 teachers who were lucky enough to still have music, PE, or library for their students were able to use that time to make a copy, write a plan, call a parent, or just pee!

This WAS in addition to our pitiful 40 minute after school planning, which is never enough and why we all have to stay late. But the time during music or PE certainly helped us get things done.

Then Carol Smith announced that the district was going to give kids in more schools “enrichments”, but not to worry, because the teacher would be given something to do when their classes were away. (implying that we were NOT doing something during that time).
After that announcement, that time was given over to PLC’s (professional learning communities) and “Imbedded Professional Development”, both of which amount to sitting around with grade level teams talking about student work and learning.
Sounds good in theory right? Except, most of us don’t have that much to talk about, are doing PD every week during “staff meeting”, and have more work than ever making every new district “thing” work.
On a practical level, we lost almost 2 hours a week of planning, but now have more kids, more tests and more district initiatives we have to make work.
This is what the contract is about. Giving us time to do the job you ask of us. Teachers are tired. We want to do our best by these wonderful students, but are not given the time or support to do so.

They probably won’t need it this year either because the Title I budget grew significantly with the addition of the ARRA funds. The pot is at $36 million now.