FILE: Union President Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg, left, speaks to members and supporters of the Salem-Keizer Education Association at a rally outside the district's administrative offices in Salem, Ore., on Dec. 19, 2023. The teachers union reached a tentative deal with the district to avert a strike early Tuesday morning.
Natalie Pate / OPB
Salem-Keizer Public Schools seemed poised to follow Portland’s historic teachers strike from November with one of their own this spring.
But that changed early Tuesday morning when the Salem-Keizer Education Association reached a tentative agreement with district administrators, wrapping up about 11 months of bargaining in the state’s second-largest school district.
The deal still has to be ratified. But for now, this means Salem teachers won’t go on strike.
The association represents more than 2,600 licensed employees, including teachers, nurses and counselors, who serve more than 40,000 students at 65 schools. Union members authorized a strike last week but hadn’t finalized a start date. Both sides have repeated over the last several months that they wanted to avoid a strike if possible.
“When educators began [bargaining in April 2023], we knew our contract needed to be revamped from the bottom up, and that’s what tonight’s tentative agreement represents: a new start for students and educators in Salem,” SKEA President Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg said in a recent news release.
“There is always more to do to build the schools our students deserve,” she added, “but these new investments in school safety, educator workload and scheduling, and this new start on addressing class size, mark a paradigm shift in how our public schools will operate on a day-to-day basis.”
FILE: Salem-Keizer Education Association Vice President Maraline Ellis, left, and President Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg, right, stand outside the SKEA offices in northeast Salem on Feb. 22, 2024.
Natalie Pate / OPB
District officials said the $42.5 million cost of the increases over the next two years includes a 9.75% increase in compensation, one-time bonus payments and other provisions, like larger health insurance contributions.
This is all happening while the district — and others throughout the region — are facing substantial budget shortfalls. Salem-Keizer has to cut an estimated $60 million or more for this year and next.
Superintendent Andrea Castañeda told reporters Tuesday that the added costs of the new contract won’t affect the district’s bottom line this budget season. The difference between the district’s “best and final” offer and what’s been accepted in the deal now is being made up in one-time, federal relief dollars that are set to expire soon and weren’t already earmarked for other programs.
“It was especially difficult for all of us to be in a situation where we have some of the deepest cuts we’ve had to make in a decade, simultaneous to some of the most difficult bargaining the Pacific Northwest has seen,” Castañeda said.
“Buildup strikes are emotional events, as much as they are anything else,” she said. “And I can’t speak for others. But I can say that I feel a sense of both relief and gratitude that, through even the most challenging moments and through 15-hour days, the two parties really stayed together and solved even the stickiest situations.”
Class size and the question of how to define a full-time employee were central issues in the final days of mediation. Castañeda said, in the end, they were able to include language that clarified everyone’s understanding of full-time positions and placed more of a priority on class size ratios, particularly in elementary schools.
Salem-Keizer Public Schools Superintendent Andrea Castañeda.
Courtesy of Salem-Keizer Public Schools
Castañeda continued to stress the need for a different funding model from the state.
“This is not a Portland issue. This is not a Salem-Keizer issue. This is not a Bend-La Pine issue. This is not a Medford issue,” she said. “This is a policy issue that is about to impact every district in Oregon.”
Salem-Keizer school board leaders emphasized the same sentiment in their public response to the tentative deal. They’re urging state lawmakers to take three key steps — improve its formula for estimating future costs, fix the state’s special education funding cap, and create systemic solutions to the escalating youth mental and behavioral health crisis.
“Oregon districts are struggling to hold the financially and educationally unsustainable conditions at bay,” the board members said in a joint statement. “Schools serve everyone. And as Oregon’s school systems begin to stagger under an ever-accumulating weight, catching them is everyone’s responsibility.”
According to the union, educators will be invited to informational town halls in the coming weeks to learn specific details about the contract and then vote on ratification. A timeline for member ratification has not yet been set. The tentative agreement must be ratified by union members, then by the school board, before taking effect.