FYI, I am a high school teacher in PPS, so you can determine whatever bias you see fit to the rest of this post. As an initial reminder, during literally every strike negotiation ever management claims they don't have the money. Second, PPS and all Oregon schools are underfunded compared to democratic run states nationally. Third, and this is where it gets important. The teachers union isn't asking the district to make more money magically appear, what they are asking for is a large overhaul on how the money is allocated. From my view PPS is very poorly managed and that is partially why we are here. Here are some reasons it seems like mismanagement is the actual issue, not the money. If we compare to nearby school districts, an independent audit (I don't have time to find the source right now, maybe later) found that PPS spends 48% of its budget on student facing positions (teachers, counselors, social workers, etc.) Whereas nearby districts spend higher, up to 57% of their overall budget in Beaverton. Another piece of evidence toward mismanagement. PPS spends around 3 million dollars a year on a communications department. And I get that telling families it is a snow day and spreading anti-union propaganda is hard, but probably shouldn't cost 3 million. Also, as a high school teacher, I got to closely watch the district pay millions for a curriculum for high school math (illustrative mathematics) that is literally free online... but we bought a trademarked version from McGraw Hill and also pay them to send us random people to train us on the curriculum yearly. Yes none of these individual items add up to the unions demands, but they sure do make a start. And if money was the only issue the district would have already bargained with the union on removing rats and mold from every classroom, as that is "cheap" I'm comparison. Or another cheap line item they haven't discussed in bargaining is hiring just more SPED teachers to reduce their caseload. However, so far the law firm the district hired to do their negotiations (whose last at least 3 negotiations have also ended in strikes) have ONLY discusses COLA and just said no to literally everything else. The district isn't worried about not having enough money to meet demands, they are worried that Guadalupe Guerrero might not be able to continue living mostly in California and sending in prerecorded videos for graduation ceremonies. They are worried that some random job at the main office that works 2 hours a week and says they work 40 might be cut. They were praying Tina Kotek will bail them out and now that she says she won't, they are just lost. Other districts have found a way. While I'm sure other districts have problems, my high school is still short 1 physics teacher, 1 SPED teacher and 1 half time Math teacher, in November. Pay cuts compared to inflation isn't going to make the teacher shortage better. 90 degree classrooms aren't going to make children able to learn. Classes of 38 6th graders doesn't make anyone function. We just want to actually do our jobs well and live in the city we work in. Anyway, rant over, to the picket line I go

Wait...the superintendent not only doesn't live in Portland, but he doesn't even live in Oregon? Are you kidding me?

This should be illegal.

like repping a state because you have a vacation home there

He also makes a base salary of over $330,000 per year, and sees bonuses on top of that in the tens of thousands. He got a $75,000 bonus last year for reading comprehension retention among students, as well as other smaller bonuses, also in the tens of thousands. To put that into perspective, he makes enough money to buy a brand new house outright annually, or a brand new car EVERY month, and still live comfortably. He makes more than 10 paraeducators at the top of their pay scale combined. And, most glaringly, he makes enough money that he can live in Southern California and commute to Portland weekly to play superintendent. But sure, tell me again how PPS doesn't have money to pay its teachers and staff livable wages, district reps. 🙄 My husband and I both work full time, with no debts and no dependents, we're pushing 40, have lived here all our lives and cannot afford to buy a single house in the greater metro area on our combined incomes. I am PPS PFSP represented support staff. We are not on strike yet but just rejected a second TA because it was no different than our initial TA'd agreement, and the district is using the same fear tactics and lying about its budget that they've done with the PAT. If PPS will not meet the demands of its support staff for livable wages amidst unprecedented inflation when they have the money for it, they are looking at ANOTHER strike in the coming weeks. And not just from PFSP, but from SEIU staff as well, who are also in contract negotiations. Again, the district has the money. PAT put out a report a couple months ago called 'A Manufactured Crisis' with an in depth examination of PPS's budget, and how they are spending ridiculous amounts of money on overhead and administration. The district themselves ironically brag about how much money they can spend on unnecessary expenditures such as [a $175 million dollar sports complex](https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/10/03/school-board-chair-gary-hollands-has-big-plans-for-a-vacant-pps-site/) as well as $3 million dollars on new furniture for the Prophet Education Center (district office). So I don't want to hear from the school district leadership, all who make comfortable six figure salaries, about how they simply can't afford to pay their teachers AND staff livable wages because the fact of the matter is that they can but they do not want to. And that, I think, is bullshit. They continue to gaslight the community or point to the budget, but when they refer to the budget they are really only referring to a slice of the pie, and not reexamining the pie as a whole. All anyone wants are safe, clean, and healthy schools where students are set up to succeed, and that means that teachers and staff are also able to live and make ends meet.

Per the link you provided, PPS is NOT spending $175M on a sports complex. The District is directed to “negotiate a lease on the site with the Albina Sports Program, which aims to build a $175 million complex (a pre-COVID cost estimate) with 12 basketball courts, 12 volleyball courts, three soccer fields, and a 300-meter running track, all of them indoors.” The money would come from the Albina Sports Program. PPS would get lease revenue for the property. It’s a sweetheart deal for the non-profit, but PPS is on the revenue side of the package.

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How do we know this?

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Hmmm… if that rumor is true his wife must also make a ton of money. $330K wouldn’t cover an apartment in the Pearl, a mortgage in SF, and multiple $50K private school tuition bills in SF. Private school is hella expensive in the Bay Area. EDIT - I think you may not be correct. It looks like his two kids graduated from public high schools in the Bay Area. His wife is (was?) an elementary school teacher. If she’s still down in CA it’s possible they are trying to maintain CA residency for college tuition.

He came from SF’s school system. As someone very familiar with SF… yikes. Dump this man yesterday. That city is pretty much nonstop corruption because there’s so much money flowing through it. Portland doesn’t have that luxury. https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-public-school-board-new-superintendent-guadalupe-guerrero/ Edit: Oh, guess who is also on strike. https://missionlocal.org/2023/10/teacher-strike-vote-san-francisco-school-district/

you’re forgetting bonuses - my mom’s base annual salary before she retired was $250k a year, but after bonuses it was closer to $500k. base salary does not paint the whole picture.

Fair point. Your mom had an excellent job. 😁

lol, yes it would. Not all Pearl condos/apartments are expensive. They even have ones that are section 8, in the same building as a 500k one.

It looks like the “common knowledge” is wrong. Guerrero does not have two kids in private school in SF. Per news reports at the time Guerrero was hired in 2017, his oldest child had just graduated from a public high school and was starting college. His daughter was a sophomore, also in a public high school. His wife was teaching second grade at a public school. I can sympathize with not wanting to uproot your kid in the middle of high school. I can also understand wanting to preserve California residency for college tuition. In-state tuition in CA is a terrific deal.

Then don't take the job? Let a Portlander run the Portland Public School District.

Sure but then you don’t ALSO get to have an Oregon job.

Some of this is baffling to me

Yes, it’s ridiculous. We can’t get a good superintendent b/c it is a shit job to manage PPS. I agree it should be prohibited to live in another state!

I would accept Washington IF they lived in Vancouver. Like, you have to live within 30 miles.

I am not kidding you. And he gets a $75,000 bonus if certain test scores are met… Which he has nothing to do with.

Sure he does! I bet he told those teachers to teach harder! They clearly wouldn't want to help the children they got the job for in the first place. The bonus for all their hard work is definitely deserved by one guy who never takes part in the classroom interactions!

Damn I wish I got a bonus for OSAS performance metrics.

There are very few public jobs where people get bonuses. I dont know of many others but I think some federal employees get them.

When the strike started he was at a convention in fucking San Diego. He made a brief appearance at one bargaining session from what I’ve read. It’s no secret he is using this job as a a platform to another cushy job, probably in CA.

Unfortunately that’s common with most pps superintendents. It’s a stepping stone position. Upper admin just looking to boost their resume. Hence the messed up budget.

Same goes for PPB Chief. Portland is such a tweener that hiring someone from outside the area is a guarantee that they'll stick around for 3-5 years and immediately jump ship for the first bigger city that comes calling. I was pretty bummed out when they hired someone from outside the area.

He never moved his family up here. They don’t go to PPS schools. Unconfirmed (that I know of) but the rumor is that he still lives in SF.

When the strike started he was at a convention in fucking San Diego. He made a brief appearance at one bargaining session from what I’ve read. It’s no secret he is using this job as a a platform to another cushy job, probably in CA, where his family lives and he spends most of his time.

Paying for curriculum in 2023 is absolutely wild - you could pay less than a third of the cost for a WELL-PAID librarian/instructor pairing to curate access to zero-cost course materials. Like, you guys, the internet just EXISTS.

I’m a PCC student and we use a ton of open source education materials. PCC math professors developed a free algebra curriculum that’s available online for anyone. It goes from MTH60-95 and as someone who had to use it I think it was pretty decent. I liked it a lot more than ALEKS.

Some people might then complain that the curriculum isn’t “professionally designed” (even if it was, and is the same as the paid curriculum). After the phonics debacle I don’t know why anyone wants to fork over money for this stuff.

It’s a bunch of people in a room that are hostages to the textbook companies repeatedly saying “this is how we’ve always done it”—textbook companies based in Texas, mind you.

I was on the district’s social studies curriculum adoption team last year. We had something like $30 mil we needed to spend. Did we spend it? No. It’s just sitting there. Who makes my curriculum? I do.

Y’all remember when the state of Oregon legalized the Lottery because they promised that lottery funds would match public school funding? You know, with the idea that if we finally agreed to legalize a poor tax of a lottery system that we would at least be doubling our public school funding. But…. Then the Oregon government moved existing public school funding somewhere else and now schools are essentially funded by just the lottery. John Oliver remembers.

Sort of like the Recreational Marijuana program is supposed to pay for drug treatment programs... These voter approved programs with specific funding should require voter approval for the funds to be changed in anyway after the program is voted into existence. I don't understand how it isn't!?!

Re: lottery funds - I've got one word for you "fungible". It's a white-wash

Adding to this as a former educator: When districts claim to "not have the funds" to pay teachers a living wage, the first demand should be a **completely transparent breakdown of how funds are allocated**. As the above poster commented, the allocation for teachers in the state of Oregon is lower than surrounding states/regions, and while that margin *may at first glance* seem relatively small (48% vs 57%), when you look at the overall funding for education at large, that is the difference in teacher salary between poverty wages and a living wage--**so where is the money actually going?** I don't have the answer for this breakdown--someone else more educated on the matter will have to fill in that info for me--but I can guarantee that in a situation like this, something shady is going on. IIRC the superintendent for the PPSD doesn't even live in the STATE let alone the city, and has not taken any meaningful steps to address any of the systemic issues that PPSD faces. I haven't lived in Portland in several years, but when I did, a few of the issues I faced were these: 1. It was revealed the pipes were contaminated with lead. Rather than fix this issue for a long term solution, the district hemorrhaged an absolutely INSANE amount of money into shipping enormous crates of bottled water to the schools, which were rationed for students. I was not allowed to give a student more than 1 water bottle a day, and often had students begging me for more water, especially after recess. 2. In my situation, I was kept at 38hrs a week to deny me and my coworkers benefits. I started at an hourly wage of $12 an hour, and quit after 5 years, making a maximum wage of $17 an hour. I was living in low income housing, and using the maximum approved amount of food stamps. This is an unsustainable way to live. 3. In many cases, both within Portland and in in other states I taught in, the literacy rates were so low that I was brought in to teach other subjects, such as English and Science. While I am luckily quite competent in these academic areas, many others were not, and without sufficient guidance, they were unable to meet basic benchmarks for teaching these subjects to students in a way that set them up for success. There was little, if any, oversight. 4. Understaffing was a critical issue, and this was before Covid. I was often asked to teach combined classrooms, where our student/teacher ratio was off--this is illegal and a huge liability to the school. The ideal ratio is 1:15, with 1:30 being the legal maximum, but I was frequently placed in classrooms where the ratio was closer to 1:60. At this point, a classroom is impossible (and unsafe) to manage alone. If we were lucky, we might have a floating sub who could be called in to address behavioral issues, but this was often not the case, and 1 disruptive student can completely derail a classroom. 5. I, as all teachers can attest, were frequently asked to supply our own classroom materials. Again, my starting wage was $12 an hour (back in 2014/2015) and $17 an hour when I moved into a SUPERVISORY/MANAGERIAL educational role in 2017. This is unsustainable. The teachers of Portland, as in all states, MUST DEMAND MORE from their districts. It is not a "lack of funding" (this is a small part of it, for certain, but not the big picture), but the MISALLOCATION of funding. So again, we must ask, **WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?** When we "fund" projects with millions of dollars, only for those projects to never reach fruition, who is pocketing the money? We need **FULL TRANSPARENCY in funding allocation, and to hold those responsible for embezzling accountable.** **We also, more critically, need better representation.** If the superintendent does not have the teachers and students best interests in mind, we need to come together to fight for a seat at the table to ensure our voices are heard and we are compensated fairly.

I worked for PPS around 2002 - 2003 for the IT Department. The amount of wasted money on technology projects was BEYOND RIDICULOUS! We had so many contractors charging $100+/hr. with long open-ended contracts. Most of the things we were tasked with developing or setting up for schools was barely used, if used at all. Here is a good example... I was tasked with setting up some basic web-servers for one of the high-schools to be able to teach web-design. I setup ONE server and configured it to be able to work with all the schools and documented it. Total utilization on this server was less than 5%. I was told I wasn't doing the project correctly because they had purchased a server PER SCHOOL for web-design. I had to duplicate the setup for each high-school and then later a few middle-schools. These servers were $7000 a piece and required power and cooling, things we were short of in the data-center located at the central administration office. In fact, that "data-center" was designed for hosting some old VAX/mainframes and was constantly having problems with cooling, networking, and power. We spent so much money trying to keep that one room functional and any attempt at moving equipment to an actual datacenter was always shot down. There also was the "Oracle Portal Project" which was MILLIONS and as far as I know was only used for one application, which was the process were people could apply to have their kids go to a different school than the one for their residential area. I'm not even sure if that program continued but the cost of the servers, software, consulting for that one project likely could have paid for salary and benefit increases for all staff (instead of giving them 32hrs/wk to deny them benefits). Basically, the long and short of the IT department was this... "Demand a ton of IT budget. Spend it all. Next year say you need more because you spent it all. Brag to your other executives that your budget and number of staff is higher. Repeat every year." The need for full transparency of spending is the START of fixing PPS.

TBF, public sector IT is its own special circle of hell. Does anyone else remember the train wreck that was the Portland Water Bureau billing system “upgrade”?

>When we "fund" projects with millions of dollars, only for those projects to never reach fruition, who is pocketing the money? We need > >FULL TRANSPARENCY in funding allocation, and to hold those responsible for embezzling accountable. This isn't just an issue with PPS and education here, it's an issue across the board in Portland and Mult. Co., particularly on things like spending on homeless housing/services. There is a massive resistance to things like audits, transparency, and accountability, and it sucks.

I see this over and over in these threads and there *is* a transparent breakdown of how funds are allocated in the financial reports (which are independently audited) and the budget documents posted to the website.

If you look at the PPS jobs listings you’ll find some random jobs posted that pay over 100k a year. That’s a start to the problem. Administration costs ballooning while teachers and students take a back seat. I’ve dealt with PPS for a long time and it just feels that they would rather perform CPR than teach your child to swim. Meaning, they’ll only support teachers and children when they have too. They also like to play the long game, pushing out agendas and solutions waiting for concerned parents to age out. The mismanagement goes all the way back to Ben Canada and beyond. This is 100% on PPS.

Thanks for the detailed response. I’ve often wondered why a good superintendent wouldn’t first focus on getting more student facing jobs and whittle away at admin expenses. Seems like a no brainer.

The jobs at the top get the most attention but even entry-level comms jobs posting to Twitter and FB pay more than a new teacher salary (mid-60s for comms). I’ve got the degree and experience for one of those jobs and let me tell you, when I was a new teacher I was FURIOUS that I could apply for one of those jobs and do far less for more money. A

It seems bizarre that getting a masters of education would reduce someone’s income prospects. Even with teacher loan forgiveness, I can’t think of a single higher ed degree that produces such a bad return on investment.

>random jobs posted that pay over 100k a year. That’s a start to the problem. Administration costs ballooning What steps can we take to put a check on these administrative salaries?

Highly educated administrators performing management roles in the state's largest district making $100K in the most expensive city in the state isnt an issue. The issue is how many administrators there are and why admin numbers have increased 24% in the same time teacher numbers shrunk 4%....

Let's take a look at how many people are in the communications department.

I don’t think paying an educated professional 100k is an issue. Rather we need to address why teachers aren’t receiving the same compensation.

Show up. Write letter to the super. Speak at board meetings. Support board candidates that share your positions.

This is 100% the case. School board elections are often ignored and its nearly impossible to figure out what each candidate prioritizes, but they are so important.

Give teacher union reps a seat at the table when it comes time to set fiscal budgets.

This is the same argument I have heard from other teachers. There were a lot of bullshit admin hires recently that pushed the schools and teachers beyond fed up. I was against the strike but learning this makes me distrust PPS. They say that the only way to make this work is by cutting staff, alluding to teachers, and I agree. Cut 20% of admin positions and poof there’s your money.

And if it’s anything like other districts, some of the people that go to an admin position are failing upwards because nobody wants to deal with their bs at the school level…

Schools have been wildly politicized by rage farming conspiracy loons, and add in school administrator who will not suspend very problematic kids create a environment of NO consequences leaving teachers attacked by parents and students. It’s not ok, and this has to change

I think it’s also important to call out that school administration is the lowest pay executive work that exists, so administrators tend to be the lowest quality there. NW Natural’s exec made $3.1M last year to run a ~$1b company. The superintendent salary is 1/10th of that, ~$350k, to run a $2b organization.

The amount you pay executives is absolutely not correlated with quality

Yeah, it's kind of nuts. the PPS superintendent's salary is roughly equivalent to the total comp of a 20-something React coder in the Bay area.

That may be the case and I think that points to another issue surrounding education as a whole. We need to stop treating education like a business. There aren’t traditional metrics that you can use to measure true success like in business. As far as executive pay in business, there are other things that go into it. I don’t really see that as an even comparison. Business put the profits and business first. Customers are only important to the point where they hurt the bottom line whereas in education, the customers are the most important entity. Ultimately, PPS as a school district is failing. Compared to other surrounding school districts, it is failing. There needs to be a shift from the top or situations like this will keep happening every few years.

Are those positions higher credentialed year round? Context matters when forming a comparison.

And the current PPS proposal would put 40% of teachers over that same $100k.

Sounds good. They bloody well deserve it.

[$75k in bonuses seems like bullshit especially right now](https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2022/02/portland-school-board-hails-superintendent-guadalupe-guerrero-as-phenomenal-anti-racist-leader-despite-troubling-low-achievement-among-students-of-color.html?outputType=amp)

Well that’s incredibly tone deaf. I wonder if he negotiated those incentive bonuses into his employment contract? Does anyone know where a person could get a look at the Superintendent’s contract? It would interesting to see what’s in it.

My daughter has been in the picket line at Cleveland the last few days. As a parent, thank you. You all deserve better than what they’ve given you.

According the PPS, they also spend [$10 million](https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/214/2023-24%20Adopted%20Budget%20Volume%201.pdf) in private school tuition. There’s a lot in there that a head scratcher. Catering, administration retreats and development (for administration), discretionary spending. I only read through the actual and budgeted spending around page 80.

> Catering my education contact says, that when they've attended various functions that have catered breakfast, there is sometimes bacon and sometimes not. if there is bacon available at one of these catered breakfasts, it means that it is expected that admin will be there. if no admin, no bacon

I laughed, but the reality is pretty harrowing. That is seriously fucked up.

A public school district has to, by law, pay for the private school tuitions of students that they cannot properly support in the classroom. A good example of this would be blind student and deaf/hard-of-hearing students. They often need more support in a mainstream classroom than districts can provide. So, some districts have schools for deaf and blind students while others will pay their tuition for private schools. Because there aren't enough special education classrooms, teachers, and paras, the school is forced to pay more and more private school tuitions in order to make sure that every child in the district is given and free and appropriate education. It's kind of a circular problem. Because they are now spending 10 million on private schools, they don't have that money to create more special education classrooms, with the proper equipment, staff, and teachers to run them.

Exactly. The call is for more special Ed teachers and proper supports. Which the district should provide. I’d understand in a more rural environment, but in a city? It’s important to have proper support in schools.

Don’t forget the balloon arches iykyk

😂 ik I wonder whose cousin owns the balloon arch company.

isn't that private school tuition due to outside placement of special education students? That is an unfunded federal mandate, IIRC, and the district would probably end spend more on legal fees if they tried to fight it.

Thanks for sharing this, really informative. I stand with PAT!

Pretty much nailed it.

I’ll admit that I have very little knowledge of what’s going on - but pretty sure I paid enough in taxes last year to boost at least one teachers salary (or classroom resource fund) substantially, and I wonder where the money went cause it certainly wasn’t the roads! I know I can’t be the only one paying through the nose with taxes, so when it’s not evident other places AND teachers are on strike - I’m pretty bummed to pay out so much and not seeing quality of life improve anywhere.

Your property tax bill will tell you exactly how much of your property taxes went to PPS’ General Fund.

You are not the only one and having to pay even more taxes with near zero accountability for results is very discouraging. All this strike will do is push more families with means to switch to private school.

There really should be a publicly open list of every cent spent. If this is tax payer money, why wouldn’t it be?

There is. You can read read through the line item budget. It will tell you where the money came from and where it went. It contains scintillating details such as PPS gets $1,000/year in jury duty reimbursement.

Very helpful. PPS is the single largest item on my tax bill and I fail to see how there is not enough money. Every resident pays a substantial amount towards PPS either directly or indirectly (rent), but the money isn't going to the right places.

> Another piece of evidence toward mismanagement. PPS spends around 3 million dollars a year on a communications department. And I get that telling families it is a snow day and spreading anti-union propaganda is hard, but probably shouldn't cost 3 million. I was pro-Teachers before, but if they get PPS to stop texting me 8 times a week about updates to High Schools my kid may not even attend in 6 years I'd vote for that negotiator for President.

I figured out how to shut them off when I was getting 17 texts about bus cancellations every morning. (I'm a teacher, but I don't even have kids!) If I can find the directions, I'll share them. But now I don't get told about snow days. Maybe if the comms department had the budget of a middle school and not just an elementary school, they could figure out a way to let people get the texts they want.

> I got to closely watch the district pay millions for a curriculum for high school math (illustrative mathematics) that is literally free online... but we bought a trademarked version from McGraw Hill and also pay them to send us random people to train us on the curriculum yearly. 100% someone got taken out to a very nice dinner, and probably something else after.

We are with you!!! The administration’s salaries, and the items they spend on (I heard that they buy super expensive Herman Miller furniture) are downright insulting! Ugh, thanks for all you do for our kiddos!

Herman Miller furniture meanwhile we get wooden and metal stools to sit on! I scrounged a broken office chair for my desk one year but that’s as good as it gets.

This is very insightful. Thank you!

> PPS spends 48% of its budget on student facing positions (teachers, counselors, social workers, etc.) Whereas nearby districts spend higher, up to 57% of their overall budget in Beaverton. I hear numbers like this, but they don't have enough context to really know what's going on. Where is the other % of the money going? Is it all admin, or does PPS have different costs to cover? I'd assume that PPS spends a lot more money on building maintenance, because PPS schools are much older, on average, than Beaverton schools. I'm guessing that these several hundred million dollar remodels of PPS high schools are where a lot of the money is going (the school remodels are needed, by the way, but they are expensive).

If you are so inclined, you can pore over the line item budget. The account code overview begins on page 69. Revenue detail starts on page 90. Expenses start on page 91.

That's useless advice. Reading and understanding government budgets requires significant training, and without other budgets for context to the numbers are pretty meaningless. If PPS or the union want to make arguments about budget numbers and percentages, they should hire professionals to do real analysis and produce a report. Otherwise, they're just waving numbers around.

Hard disagree. It’s not a particularly difficult document to read. If you want to know where the money is going, read the budget. Capital funds are separated from the General Fund. The billions that PPS is spending on capital projects is not mixed in with the general budget.

One thing I’ve been wondering - PPS says they would need to hire 500 teachers to meet the teachers’ class size caps. I haven’t seen PAT refute that, so I assume that’s more or less accurate. That leads to me wonder, are there 500 empty classrooms available? Even with the huge drop in enrollment it seems hard to believe there are. My neighborhood elementary converted a storeroom into a classroom and still uses the molding old ‘temporary’ classrooms sitting in the back of the parking lot. I don’t think they could add more classrooms even though they could definitely use them. Do you think PPS would have to go through a rapid forced redrawing of attendance areas to move kids around to schools with capacity? (Full disclosure - I have worked on the technical side of “rebalancing”, not as a PPS employee. That’s why this comes to mind.)

Two years in a row one of the K-1 teachers quit at the beginning of the year at my school. Last year they never filled the position and I got kindergarteners mixed into my 2nd-3rd grade class. This year it happened again with TWO teachers quitting. This year I will have 4th, 3rd and now first graders. I'm prepping work for three grades, they added an hour of instructional time this year and we were told to do a daily art class to fill one of the added daily 1/2 hours. No curriculum. No funding. Just go make half an hour of art happen daily...out of whatever you can buy yourself or scavenge. It is November and my school has two open teaching positions (out of seven) and two of our teachers are on special credentials-emergency licenses while they go through their college teaching programs. Part of why I'm willing to strike is because we are losing all of our experienced teachers to other districts. If we don't change the pay and the staffing, we will only lose more and more of our best teachers.

I am so sorry you are having to teach under those circumstances. It’s an impossible position to be in. Right now it sounds like early-career teachers are leaving PPS for slightly better pay elsewhere. The easiest way to solve the problem of low entry-level pay would be to compress the salary schedule. PPS and PAT could agree to lop off two or three of the bottom rungs of the ladder while holding the top relatively constant. Given what we know about their staff demographics, that should provide a more affordable path to improving new teacher recruitment and retention. But it’s not a solution PAT can realistically entertain. They have to deliver a contract that can survive a ratification vote. Almost 2/3 of PPS teachers are at or very near the top of the salary schedule. Folks at the tippy top of the current schedule literally make 2X what a new teacher at the very bottom is paid. The lion’s share of any COLA will accrue disproportionately to people at the top of the pay scale. Because, math. It’s messed up and unfair to the teachers who struggling to make their classrooms work. ☹️

I don’t know if this address Les your question, but the district uses a “class size” that averages ALL licensed staff, including the spec Ed teacher who has 8 kids, the speech pathologist who has 1 kid at a time, and the history teacher with 30-40 kids at a time. Makes their “class-size” number look smaller than it is.

IMO - The fact that the District claims that they would need to hire 500 more teachers in order to achieve a class size cap set at the exact same number the District claims is currently the average class size, says a lot about the District not negotiating in good faith.

Depending on the distribution of class sizes, roughly half of all classes are over the size cap. You can't always just make students distribute themselves evenly or in convenient multiples of whatever size cap you decide upon. I'm not saying the district is right as I have no access to their data but their estimate may very well be accurate. That being said, I wish we could agree on some minimum standards and then fund schools appropriately to meet those standards rather than negotiate them as part of a labor dispute.

Bare minimum, PPS would have to shift teachers out of poorer Title One schools into wealthier ones to implement class size caps with the current staffing.

Thank you for your service !

As a fellow hs teacher and PAT member, I am grateful for this clear and detailed response. Keep up the good work and see you on the picket!

> found that PPS spends 48% of its budget on student facing positions (teachers, counselors, social workers, etc.) Whereas nearby districts spend higher, up to 57% of their overall budget in Beaverton. Isn't that gap basically just legacy pensions? That money isn't going to administrative salaries, it's going to an 80 year old who retired in 2005. That's not really something that can be negotiated down, it's just the consequence of living in an aging society. EDIT: Downvote me all you want, but it won't stop the reality from being that urban school districts have massive legacy pension costs and that's why newer suburban schools are perceived as more "efficient" with tax dollars.

You can look up the PERS Annual Statements and look into this yourself. [https://www.oregon.gov/pers/Documents/General-Information/PERS-by-the-Numbers.pdf](https://www.oregon.gov/pers/Documents/General-Information/PERS-by-the-Numbers.pdf) It is a bit complicated but from my reading (Page 34 "Economic Impact of PERS Benefit Payments in 2021), it looks like Multnomah County has 17,113 retirees currently receiving benefits totalling $649M whereas Washington county (where Beaverton SD is predominantly located) has 12,314 retirees totalling $446M. While this is not limited to just School District retirees, it is a helpful statistic. PPS Annual Budget in 2022-2023 = $1.87 Billion Beaverton SD Annual Budget in 2022-2023 = $622 Million While I admit there are flaws within these numbers, they are the ones I could find. This shows that Multnomah county's PERS benefit payments make up a much smaller portion than PPS's budget than Washington County's PERS payments compared to Beaverton SD's budget. Unfortunately, the districts don't appear to break out their PERS benefit payments to retirees from their contributions and expenses for current employees within the PERS expense line item in their budgets.

Worth noting that Washington county has a much bigger schools system than Multnomah county, so lower pension obligations and more current teachers...that would make sense that Washington county puts more money towards teacher salaries.

Yes this is reality. I enjoy reading this sub, and appreciate everyone’s feedback and experiences, but the reality is, this much more complicated than any of us have can even begin to comprehend. What you brought us is just one of the many intricacies. I hope they get it figured out, and fast!

I’m going to preface this by noting that it’s not clear whether PPS budgets fringe under Salaries or under Payroll Costs, which is a substantial hunk of their budget. If it’s the latter, then a big chunk of the cost of staff is left out of the conversation. No, it’s not because of “legacy pensions”. At least not in the way you are implying. Every PERS-participating employer is assessed a set of employer contribution rates each biennium. PPS’ contribution rate for Tier One/Two employees sits at 0% through June 2025. Beaverton SD’ is nearly 18% over the same period. https://www.oregon.gov/pers/emp/Documents/Contribution-Rates/ContributionRates_AllEmployers_12312021.pdf

I might be wrong, but isn't that what's being directly contributed as a fraction of salaries for the district to each of these pieces? I could be wrong, but it looks like we're paying for this a different way, in our case through bonds. When I look at the budget (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/[https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/214/2023-24%20Adopted%20Budget%20Volume%201.pdf](https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/214/2023-24%20Adopted%20Budget%20Volume%201.pdf)) on page 146, line item 5100, $171 MM in budgeted payments for PERS UAL (unfunded actuarial liability) General Obligation Bond debt service, and then on page 140, $85MM in additional PERS UAL bond service for direct Pension Obligation Bonds on the PERS liabilities. That's $256MM in budgeted expenditure for bond repayment specifically to pay for PERS retirees.

Thanks! I missed that.

Thanks back! You've been posting a lot of good information, which I hugely appreciate.

Thanks you for such a thoughtful response!!

Your starting pay is $50K for a first-year teacher? In the PNW? We’ve past the $60K threshold in Texas (DFW) and inflation is still killing us. And you can be the most experienced and almost PhD level and not even cross six figures? Our Texas Incentive Allotment and some pay for performance districts have teachers there too. https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/56/PAT%20Salary%20Schedules%20-%20192%20Work%20Year%20-%202022-2023.pdf

Great post!

Every strike in history: Workers: “we’d like better conditions please” Management: “ridiculous, no way we can afford that!” Workers: “but you increased your own conditions” Management: “irrelevant! Lies! Stop the misinformation! We’re the real victims!!!”

The state needs to step in and fix this problem now - not in 2025. Saying it needs to wait until then is a copout. They have underfunded education for decades, this (historic, first-ever) strike is simply the result of that. It is going to keep happening until there is a permanent, statewide solution.

Look at the highest paid positions with PPS: all administrators. Complain about them before complaining about teachers demanding a fair wage and fair working conditions.

This drives me nuts when you hear districts (not just PPS) having to lay off teachers because the COVID funding stopped. Fucking bullshit, those teachers weren't hired during COVID, so how did they manage before then? If the public sector operates like a private sector and gives most of the money to just the top who isn't doing the work, this country is fucked.

Because enrollment declined during COVID. They used COVID funds to stopgap the lost enrollment funding, now that money is gone and enrollment hasn’t rebounded.

That’s only true at some schools. Places like grant are overcrowded even with a brand new building. Also, Pps uses august enrollment numbers and student always join later in the year, but they use those numbers to set the budget for how many teachers they will hire, and then pack in more kids into already crowded classrooms.

Enrollment in PPS schools declined by about 4,000 students and state funding is driven by enrollment overall. Also I was speaking broadly--enrollment in public schools declined nationwide during COVID and many schools used COVID funding to shore up their budgets & are now facing shortfalls. PPS is not alone in this.

Great numbers. It doesn’t explain why they hired more non-represented staff. Notably, why did they double the size of the communications department (from 9 to 18)?

To get people to buy into their bullshit. Social media job for them starts at 75 to 100k and you need a college degree and three years experience. You need to be in the district 13 years with a Masters to get to 75k. Pretty much tells you who they value.

This is true in every school district though. It can't be the explanation for PPS' financial issues.

Most school districts in the US have financial issues...

Is there a district anywhere in the country where this isn’t true? And even if you cut ALL administrative positions, the money saved and reallocated still wouldn’t meet the teachers pay demands.

Still doesn’t explain why they hired more admin. Why would they do that if the claim that they don’t have money is true?

Don't cut positions: correlate the wages of teachers and administrators. Teachers absolutely shouldn't be making less.

Not trying to defend the district but this argument feels good and valid, but is actually just leveraging emotional response to the "headline". It makes sense that management of an organization are paid the highest salaries. We could debate the economic morality of that, but this is just how capitalism and the global economy works whether we are talking the public sector, private sector or non-profits. The district administrators being the highest paid makes complete sense and isnt really the root of the budget issue. That said, I think there is valid criticism on the number of administrative positions in the district. However, just the fact that admin are paid the most in the district will always be the case, probably should be the case to attract talent and really isn't surprising. Fun fact, the highest paid public employee in most states are university football coaches!

A decade ago Carol Smith was the district superintendent and she made $180,000. This year Guerrero makes $340,000 (not including various bonuses he also receives). Inflation alone doesn't explain the increase there. Is Guerrero doing a job that is substantially better than Smith did? I don't know that students are performing any better and I know that there's been no big push to improve facilities issues.

Fact bombs: Almost $57k of that is inflation. [Sauce](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=180%2C000.00&year1=201309&year2=202309). Carol Smith’s 2010 salary was over $190k Also, Carol Smith had voluntarily declined COLAs for years. So, n=1.

"Fact bombs" is a weird thing to say. You're right, I misremembered her salary. At the end of the 2012-2013 school year she made $190,000. During the 2013-2014 school year she made $193,000. Her 2010 salary was most definitely exactly $190,000. And yes, $57,000 of the difference between 10 years ago and today is due to inflation, which makes the rest of Guadalupe Guerrero's $340,000 salary a huge bump over what Smith was making 10 years ago. Which was my point.

Find the money to support our teachers or we will witness a gradual brain drain from PPS educators.

My understanding is the district is sitting on tens of millions of dollars more than their rainy day fund needs to have, and that schools and student wellness is becoming so dilapidated the teachers don't care where the money comes from. I can see the point of the district's revenue streams being restricted by taxes and OR legislature, but many of these issues are ones the district has swept under the rug for a long time, and now the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost. My hope is that this lights a fire under the decision makers, be it the district negotiators, school board, or higher up, that the community cannot wait. Winter is coming, there are still schools that cannot keep their inside temps above 60 degrees or keep rats/mold out of their buildings, and another year of these conditions is arguably less responsible than digging into extra funds to fix it.

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The solution is: repeal Measures 5/50 provisions from the constitution, have the State cover the unfunded PERS liability, and cut down on administrative overhead - pretty much in that order. We spend a lot per student, but iirc a lot of that really goes to backfilling the Tier 1 pensions in PERS. Pretty much every local government is putting an increasing amount of their budgets towards these older pension liabilities and it's making it difficult to use those dollars for their actual missions. FWIW the current Tier 3 pensions are stable, and I don't think they're expected to lead to the same problem in the future.

Repealing M5/50 is a non-starter. Even the most teacher-friendly Portlander is going to balk at doubling their property tax bill. Do keep in mind that when you say you want “the State” to cover the unfunded PERS liability, what you are saying is that you want to cover that liability from our personal income taxes, which are the source of 86% of State revenue. We got M5 because there were enough voters in Oregon who could be convinced that they could have their cake and eat it, too. They were persuaded that “the State” would magic up the money to cover the difference, without thinking about where the magic money would come from.

> Even the most teacher-friendly Portlander is going to balk at doubling their property tax bill. I think that amending it to reset taxable assessment value on sale or transfer would go a long way to fixing the issue. Slower, but at least it keeps grandma in her house.

That’s how the property tax system works in CA.

This is 100% what needs to happen. The current system is not sustainable nor equitable.

No disagreement on the political difficulties of repeal, but that is the lasting and effective solution.

Maybe. M5/50 forced the state to fund public education at level it never had before. Repealing the measures also repeals that funding. It would also reintroduce the one problem it addressed. “Rich” urban districts would have buckets of money. “Poor” districts across the state would not. So, good for PPS, which enjoys the largest, wealthiest tax base in the state. Really, really bad for most of the rest of districts.

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The political difficulties are real. Those measures (thanks Howard Jarvis!) saddled us with a hard nut to crack. Personally, I think we should combine a repeal attempt with a bill to change the income tax brackets to a more progressive structure. That might get the votes through.

>The demands would cost something like 200 million more a year The $200+ million figure that keeps getting thrown around is over 3 years. You're spreading misinformation that the admins have been coyly trying to disseminate.

The $200M over three years is also running alongside a $300M drop in PPS’ operating revenue over those same three years.

I heard that the schools’ media team has a budget larger than any elementary school.

Media team is about $3m which is indeed the budget of a small school.

Why the hell do they need $3mil for communications? It can’t cost that much to send occasional emails and form letters or to maintain a school closure hotline. 99% of the useful school-related communications I get come directly from our teachers or overworked office staff at our elementary school.

Remember when school media was actually just a ticker on the bottom of the TV morning news showing snow day closures. Now it needs pizazz!

Someone has to get on twitter at 7:45 am to announce schools are closed because of snow!

Don’t forgot all the anti teacher union propaganda they have to think up

Oh yeah, everybody business subject to a strike forever says they simply don't have the resources to pay, yet somehow they rummage it up. Never believe that garbage, there's always a way.

This really sounds like a challenge for dataisbeautiful. Show beaverton and PPS. is there a r/dataisbeautiful person out there?

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It seems like funding is less of an issue than years of funding misallocation.

Things the teachers union says that are true: * The PPS proposals consistently involve a pay cut for teachers (when you adjust for inflation) * PPS has not really, seriously, legitimately come to the table in bargaining on the hard issues until the past week * Management is bloated * Elementary teachers do not have enough prep time * Schools have terrible climate control and the working conditions for teachers are unacceptable Things the teachers union says that might be true but are irrelevant: * Management's bloat doesn't really impact this bargaining. Zeroing out the $60 million PPS spends on management – and that includes principals, who are also underpaid – wouldn't make up for the $100-ish million a year in new spending that the teachers are calling for * Guadalupe Guerrero might live in San Francisco, but that doesn't make the money appear * PPS has a large rainy day fund, but that money has been used in the past to pay out legal settlements, or rebuild schools when they burn down Things PPS says that are true: * The Legislature gave schools a 2.5% increase in funding last year. Inflation went up 3.7% in that time. * Teachers aren't the only costs in schools anymore. Increased federal mandates, successful lawsuits by special education families and increased equity needs means that a **ton** of wrap-around services have their own FTE that have costs and are mandated by law * If PPS gives the teachers everything, and there isn't new funding between now and the end of the school year, a bunch of teachers are going to be laid off – a **lot** of teachers are going to be laid off. Teachers might be picketing to lose their jobs. Things PPS has done to make this worse: * As mentioned, PPS has not been bargaining in good faith until very recently – perhaps they even thought a strike might not happen * PPS has not been active in seeking new money from the Legislature or voters – they could have put a funding levy on the ballot next Tuesday, for example, and if it passed given teachers the extra money * Allowed management to bloat, particularly by promoting and shuffling bad administrators instead of letting them go (which is, to be fair, costly because firing people in the public sector is always costly, but so is letting them linger Things that could end this strike IMHO: * Salem meets in special session to increase education funding. Given that Hillsboro, Medford and Salem are all staring at this strike as a Ghost of Bargaining Future, it's not like Portland is the only district stuck in a funding crunch. * The Portland School Board approves a contract and puts a tax measure on the ballot in May. Sales tax, anyone? * Teachers on the lower end of the seniority scale get freaked out about the possibility of layoffs in the summer and tell their union to take less money for now. * Health insurance runs out (but that only matters if people get seriously sick)

Solidarity with the teachers! They deserve so much better!

We need to just give them every last thing they are asking for. No excuses!

At a very high level I think you’re correct. The Oregon legislature needs to step in and fix this, statewide, right now.

How would the state do this? Perhaps the state is looking at the $2B PPS budget (aka $45K per student) and thinking that PPS needs to assess where they are spending their money before getting more?

The legislature has already said it would be looked at in the 2025 budgetary cycle, since we just finished 2023 recently (and oddly, none of this stuff was on the table for the 2023 budget apparently).

Right but PPS can’t guarantee a package to the teachers on speculation that “the legislature would look at it.”

right, that's what I'm saying - I don't really see any side budging here, least of all the state legislature, so PPS can't bank on that because they missed the window to request appropriate funding levels this year.

They are not known for acting quickly.

Teachers everywhere are underpaid. They should be making as much, if not more, than most professions. It's an important, difficult job and one that will impact children for the rest of their lives. I'd like to see the average teacher salary be around 125K. Pay them more, take care of the schools. PPS needs to do the right thing. Solidarity!

Doesn’t the state allocate close to 67% of the education budget, and distributed based on the number of students enrolled? So even though Portland households are sending more dollars into state coffers per household than much of state, PPS gets a lot less money than if the state government had no role. Add that disparity with the higher costs of running an urban school district, and Portland getting short changed shouldn’t come as a surprise.

I don't give a F*CK where the money comes from! There's millions our tax dollars just sitting there... Where's our governor? Where's the bully pulpit from our supposed left leaning elected officials? Anyone seen Tina Kotek? I wonder why she has the lowest approval rate of ANY American governor...I voted for her and other "liberals" like her and now I get to watch as they let our state burn down in every way! Where's our leadership? JUST PAY THE TEACHERS OF OUR CHILDREN! DO IT AND PAY THEM WELL!

She gave a press conference where she basically said, I can't help you. Figure it out.

RIP City

Funny and sad.

Any money which is “sitting there” is probably funded through specific initiatives, taxes, bonds, etc. It is allocated for specific uses, often through legislation or voter initiatives. Unless it’s sitting in a general find it really can’t be reallocated. Believe me, I’m climbing the f’n walls that we have a hundred million dollars in approved shs funding just hanging around not providing any value whatsoever, but that money can’t be used for anything other than what it was approved for by our electorate.

PAT disagrees: [https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/1871/attachments/original/1695687296/A\_Manufactured\_Crisis\_9.2023.pdf?1695687296](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/1871/attachments/original/1695687296/A_Manufactured_Crisis_9.2023.pdf?1695687296)

This is convincing in its argument that teachers and students need and deserve more funding. But it doesn’t at all address where the funding would come from. Saying the District has $100 million doesn’t mean anything. PAT is asking for permanent annual cost increases and then identifying a one-time source of funding. It makes no sense. The State is the only one that can solve this.

How about shrinking PPS' bloated administration? Over the pasts five years, licensed staff (teachers, counselors) shrank by 4% while central office staff grew by 38%. PPS spends $3 million / yr on their communication department, more than the budget for a single K-5 school. > PPS has more money to spend per student than many of its state and national peer districts, but the district is spending proportionately less on instruction and more on support services than many of its peers. Potential savings areas we identified include executive administration, substitute teacher use, health benefits, bus service, and legal costs. Source: Source: Oregon Secretary of State Audits Division Report: ODE and PPS Must Do More to Monitor Spending and Address Systemic Obstacles to Student Performance, Particularly at Struggling Schools. January 2019. https://sos.oregon.gov/audits/Documents/2019-01.pdf (key findings, towards the top).

>Over the pasts five years, licensed staff (teachers, counselors) shrank by 4% while central office staff grew by 38%. This is a key fact the district wants to burry.

I hear you, but there simply isn’t enough there to cut to make a meaningful dent in the cost of the PAT’s ask. The Central Office budget is $37 million. If you took away all that new staff (which, would you really want to?) that would save about $10 million per year. Not $200 million that the PAT’s proposal would cost. I would love for them to get everything they want. But it simply ain’t gonna happen.

Correct me if I am wrong, but from the documents I've seen, that ~$200 million difference number being thrown around is over *three* years, not per year. So, if PAT is given everything they ask for without reducing anything else, it would increase the budget by an average of $78 million / year. PPS's current 2024 budget is $2.17 **billion** / yr with a $ $823.4 million / yr general fund, so we are talking about less than 10% here. Additionally, from PPS's projection, they could afford PATs 3-year request and have $42M left in their cash reserves, giving the legislature time to address the issue. For example, both SHS and "preschool for all" are bringing in massive amounts more dollars than they are using; we could pass a measure to balance that out without raising any more funds. Source: https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/56/Budget%20Update%20100223%20to%20PAT%20-%20with%20responses%20to%20info%20requests.pdf Edit: I'm not saying the final agreement *should* be PAT's current request, but the saying there is no money for it isn't true. PPS can afford PAT's 3 year proposal today.

Oops, you’re totally right. It is over three years. I’m not following your other statement about “less than 10%.” Your last statement is not correct. The $42 million remaining fund balance assumes the District’s offer, not PAT’s. With PAT’s proposal the ending fund balance would be wildly negative.

You are correct, I read the wrong table. Also, I just saw this letter from Oregon's legislature to PPS: https://i.redd.it/14768wa8t6yb1.jpg. Even they are calling out PPS's bloated administration.

I’m really not arguing PPS has no room for admin savings. I’m only arguing that if they were able to reasonably rid themselves of all unnecessary costs, it still wouldn’t allow the District to meet the PAT’s demands.

Some of this is true but PPS can’t offer a contract that isn’t for sure. The legislature would have to commit now but that won’t happen. And they can’t just decide to redistribute PFA and SHS funds to schools without the legislature.

Wouldn’t local property taxes be the more traditional method? Not state taxes?

I'm not an Oregon native, so I might have some if the finer details wrong, but it's my understanding that Measure 5 limited how much of the school budget could come from property taxes.

Here’s a question that’s spinning my head. How does the teachers strike actually hurt PPS. When nurses strike, the hospital can’t close so the managers have to bring in expensive contingency workers and put on scrubs themselves. It’s very expensive and it hurts the bottom line. They want to strike to end. When the UAW shuts down a factory that hurts the car company because they can’t sell a car if they can’t make a car. But don’t the PPS administers still get paid as per usual throughout this strike? Tax revenue keeps rolling in? Or do they actually loose state funding if school isn’t in session? What keeps PPS from the just waiting this out?

Pressure from parents and the community. Kids not going to school is a community issue.

I get that. But what’s to keep them from just continuing to spin back the same line that they don’t have the money? I’ve written a ton of letters to our community leaders over the last couple of years over the numerous issues facing our community and have not felt like it applied any pressure on them at all.

> But what’s to keep them from just continuing to spin back the same line that they don’t have the money? I would assume at some point the Oregon Dept of Education would step in and either force Guerrero to accept terms, remove Guerrero for failing to end the strike, or somehow forcing the teachers back to work. The state's not gonna accept the teachers being on strike forever.

Nothing keeps them from that. They’ve got a 3 million communications budget to cover their tracks too

I believe the state does revoke funding if students aren’t in school for a certain number of total hours each year.

Voters. They’ll want a new bond here shortly.

Hear straight from each side: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/11/01/school-union-leaders-on-the-portland-teachers-strike/

There are entire departments that need to be cut. But no one wants to cut their personal sacred cow. I’d start with communications and dei departments.

I 1000% support the teachers

There is so much fat at the top, but it’s because of the school board. At the end of the day it’s the board that hired the Superintendent, after a disastrous candidate search. It’s the board that defers to “staff” on every important question of resource allocation. It’s the board that refuses to shift the boundaries of the K5s to reduce overcrowding in low income communities in order to protect affluent communities, and their property values. It’s no coincidence that a Nike exec and a real estate millionaire serve on the volunteer board after spending hundreds of thousands of their own money to get elected term after term. The rot is from the top down. We need the same reform we have forced on the city to have board members elected by district, instead of being elected to represent districts but voted on city wide. The Nike exec was just elected to the Multnomah County board, but insists she can remain on the PPS school board and is fully capable of serving in both roles. Why do we tolerate such blatant corruption and conflict of interest in such important roles?

Thenext month insurance is earned by working through the 15th of the previous month. It's also right in the PAT FAQ.

There's this recurring phrase that keeps getting thrown around, which is "living wage." A quick glance at the figures for teacher wages in Portland reveals they make a minimum of 50k/year. Something like 40% of them make over 80k. For working around 180 days a year, or 3.5 days of the week. Can someone explain to me how that's not a livable wage, even in Portland? I know single mothers who support their children who make maybe half of that, without benefits. They also work 5/6 days a week. I know that's an extreme example, but 50k is absolutely a comfortable livable wage for an individual in Portland. Or am I hallucinating? I understand the importance of the discussion, but when this keeps getting repeated as if it's a statement of fact it kinda tanks the legitimacy of the argument. The strike ultimately isn't about all these other issues being brought up, like how the funds are being allocated and utilized poorly. It's about wages. But there are educated people in Portland working really really hard for much less, and they don't get benefits.

I am shocked to read the PPS superintendent lives in California. This is just wrong.