Portland Public Schools officials have agreed to hire 150 teachers to reduce class sizes and teacher workloads, part of a bargain that narrowly averted the first teachers strike in district history.
Students would receive additional days of instruction next year, atop the current 176.
Teachers would receive 2.3 percent salary increases annually for the next three years.
Those provisions were some of the key compromises contained in a tentative agreement that the Portland Association of Teachers and district officials signedlate Tuesday, according to sources with knowledge of the contract terms.
Full details of the contract agreement were not available.
The new teaching hires would mean a 5 percent increase over the roughly 2,900 teachers currently working. The precise number of additional school days is not yet clear.
Signing the document suspended plans for a union walkout that was to start Thursday. The union’s members and the seven-member Portland School Board now must ratify the temporary deal for it to become fully binding.
Union officials were still working out a process for circulating the contract’s terms among members Wednesday afternoon.
When news trickles out about the deal that negotiators arrived at, the public will see both teams agreed to concessions on some priorities to accomplish others.
The union in January demanded the district reduce class sizes and workloads in a new contract by hiring 175 new teachers. The district said it would hire 88 and did not want the language within the contract.
In the end, the district agreed to meet the union more than halfway on new hires and place the language outside of the contract in a separate “memorandum of understanding.”
Portland Public Schools also agreed not to eliminate incentives for teachers to retire early, one of the school board’s goals.
The district’s latest offer on salary increase was 2 percent each year; the union wanted 2.6, 2.55 and 2.5 percent. The two sides met in the middle at 2.3 percent annually.
Teaching hires, salary increases, the length of school year and early retirement incentives were among the final sticking points in negotiations that played out since April 2013.
Concessions that the two sides described in the past, prior to Monday and Tuesday’s marathon bargaining session, included:
- the district dropping its effort to eliminate a cap on the number of students each teacher is assigned;
- the district agreeing to continue paying 93 percent of teacher health insurance premiums, rather than setting a dollar limit on district contributions;
- the union allowing a greater role for teaching qualifications versus seniority in determining layoffs, though with some;
- the union allowing brand-new, “probationary” employees and external candidates an earlier crack at applying for open positions.
People on both sides have said the agreement is a fair one that includes give-and-take from the teams. Teachers union president Gwen Sullivan said her team was dedicated to making things better on the ground for teachers and students.
“Our goal this whole time was about making things better on behalf of our kids and our working conditions and being able to do our jobs,” said Sullivan. “This was one step forward to do that.”
Portland Association of Teachers officials have held details of the deal close, saying they want members to find out about the issues from union leadership. As of Wednesday morning, few outside of the union’s bargaining team seemed to know about the exact terms of the agreement.
“We just want to make sure they’re well educated on what the changes are,” said Sullivan.
That’s because part of the deal throughout the process includes letting the district take away some contract language on subjects that are not mandatory discussions under collective bargaining law.
Pam Knowles, a co-chairwoman of the board, acknowledges that both sides will have to live with some concessions in the deal that averted what would have been a historic walkout.
“Nobody is happy with a good deal,” said Knowles. “This shows a lot of compromise from both sides.”