The union representing about 4,500 Portland educators has set a timeline for members to vote on whether they think a strike is necessary as bargaining negotiations appear to have stagnated in Oregon’s largest school district.

The Portland Association of Teachers’ strike authorization vote is set to begin Monday, Oct. 16 and end Thursday, Oct. 19 or sooner if 100% of PAT membership votes before then.

The union continues to meet with Portland Public Schools, with two mediation sessions scheduled this week and next. PAT president Angela Bonilla said the union was meeting with district officials Monday to talk about financial concerns.

A strike authorization vote provides a rough timeline for when educators could strike if a deal is not reached.

If a majority of members agree to authorize a strike, the union is then required to provide a 10-day notice to the district. That means a strike could begin as soon as Oct. 29.

A strike authorization vote does not mean a strike is definite, just that members are in support of one if PAT leaders call for it.

“Strike authorization is just membership saying, ‘Hey bargaining team, […] we believe you can decide when to strike, we give you that power,’” Bonilla said.

The current PAT-PPS collective bargaining agreement expired in June, meaning the association’s teachers and coaches are currently working without a contract. Union leaders in June called for state mediation, following a 150-day preliminary negotiating period that didn’t result in an agreement. Mediation began in late August.

The union declared an impasse in bargaining after their final mediation session last month.

Compensation increases and caps on class sizes remain among a list of items left unsettled.

Bonilla said members were asked to sign a strike pledge last week, indicating whether they’d vote “yes” to authorize a strike. Internally, the union is organized into nine geographic “zones” across the district. Bonilla said seven out of the nine zones had 100% response to the pledge, but she would not share the results.

Bonilla said the goal of the strike authorization vote is for each member to have a chance to weigh in on the union’s next steps. Having the voting process take place over multiple days and allowing members to vote at their worksites will help reach their goal of full participation, she said. But, Bonilla added, the response for the strike pledge signals that members are “fired up” and ready to start a conversation about what a strike might look like.

Portland teachers have never gone on strike, but they voted to authorize a strike in 2014 before reaching an agreement with the district.

The PAT vote comes at a time when union activity in Portland and the Northwest has grown.

Portland’s classified employees recently rejected ratifying a tentative agreement with PPS. Teachers in Oregon’s next-largest district, Salem-Keizer Public Schools, have moved towards mediation in their negotiations. Teacher strikes in the Camas and Evergreen school districts delayed the start of school this year in those Southwest Washington schools.

Data discrepancy

The Portland teachers’ union and PPS have argued over district spending figures during this process. The disagreement seems to indicate the extent of distrust between the two parties.

A coding error by the Oregon Department of Education indicated PPS invested substantially less money in direct classroom spending when compared to other large districts in the state.

Union leaders had the data displayed on the association’s website and in printed materials. The district corrected the numbers with ODE and updated the union, but they argue the union is still distributing the outdated information.

Bonilla told OPB they have thrown away and recycled as many remaining fliers with the inaccurate information as they could find, and no fliers with that data have been sent to communities since the union was informed of the error. She also said they added a disclaimer on the union’s website and made the online version unable to be opened by readers while they work with the person who runs their website to get the newest version posted.

Bonilla says the union’s overarching criticism remains — PPS spends about 48% of district funds on direct classroom support, compared to Beaverton’s 56%, Hillsboro’s 55% and Bend-LaPine and Salem-Keizer’s 53%, respectively.

The union argues the district “can’t put students first if you put teachers last.”

“PPS management is using their reporting of their data and ODE’s misprinting of the data to misrepresent PAT as if we intentionally lie to the public,” Bonilla said. “The new numbers still share the same sentiment, which is why I believe they continue to harp on this honest mistake.”

PPS still argues the union’s proposal is prohibitively expensive. District administrators made a budget presentation to the union’s bargaining team last Monday to show the district’s financial limitations.

“I was an aide, a paraeducator and a middle school special educator. So, when our teachers say the work is hard, I know,” said Renard Adams, chief of the district’s research, assessment and accountability department and a member of the PPS bargaining team.

“We can both acknowledge the work is hard and acknowledge that there are very real financial limitations on what we can offer if we want to sustain the success we’re seeing in our schools,” he said. “We ask our educators to come back to the bargaining table and work with us to find a compromise that keeps our students at the center.”