The Albany teachers strike is over. Classes resume Tuesday

Update as of 10 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2

After three weeks, the Albany teachers strike is officially over.

Members of the Greater Albany Education Association Monday night voted to ratify their new 2024-27 collective bargaining agreement. The Greater Albany school board followed by approving it in an emergency meeting.

Teachers will return to work Tuesday, with a two-hour delay for students.

“Words can’t fully capture the emotion we feel right now,” said GAEA President Dana Lovejoy in a press release. “We are forever touched by every parent, student, and supporter who has been out with us on the strike lines these past three weeks; your kindness, support, and solidarity meant everything to us, and this agreement would not have been achieved without you.”

As the union summarized it, the agreement includes improvements to better support students with learning differences, pathways to recruit new teachers and retain educators long-term, new school safety protections, and smaller classroom sizes for kindergarten students.

The union’s breakdown of the agreement’s full contents can be read here.

District officials said they know there is “much work to be done” while making up lost days of instruction and building relationships with staff. A more detailed schedule of calendar adjustments for the remainder of the school year will be communicated soon.

“We know this has been a challenging time for all involved with countless sacrifices made by students, parents, the community, teachers, classified staff, and district staff,” read a statement from district leadership. “GAPS will strive to provide quality experiences for all those we serve and aim to produce the best educational outcomes possible as we move forward.”

Update as of 8 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2

The Greater Albany Education Association and Greater Albany Public Schools have reached a tentative resolution, including a Return to Work agreement.

The full labor contract is being presented to union members for a ratification vote this evening. Following union ratification, the school board will hold an emergency board meeting tonight to finalize the process.

If it is approved by both parties, the strike is officially over.

Original story:

By Sunday night, it seemed the teachers union and administrators of Greater Albany Public Schools had finally reached an agreement to settle a new labor contract.

Members of the Greater Albany Education Association have been on strike since Nov. 12. That means as of Monday afternoon, Albany students had missed 10 days of school, and educators had missed 12 work days, including parent-teacher conferences scheduled for last week.

However, things went awry around 3 a.m. Monday, when the union and district management were working out the details in a separate resolution known as the return-to-work agreement.

There is no requirement under Oregon Law that parties negotiate a separate return-to-work agreement, according to district leadership. However, the separate document is key as it outlines how and when staff will return to the classroom and make up for the lost time, affecting both educators and students.

According to the district bargaining team, in an emailed statement from the GAPS communications team, the major issue in the return-to-work agreement revolves around whether teachers will be made whole for all of the days they were on strike, and how many days can reasonably be made up either during the school year or by extending it further into June.

District officials have proposed adding 7 1/2 make-up days to the calendar to address the instructional time lost during the strike. The union wants to restore all 10 lost student-contact days.

The additional student-contact days the district is proposing would replace dates within the calendar that were listed as non-student-contact days. In other words, the district’s plan would not extend the school year. The district bargaining team said this path was taken because families have “expressed strong concerns about extending the school year into the summer.”

Also, the team said, since the time was lost in the first semester, adding days to the second semester doesn’t provide the same educational benefit. Both of these discussion points came up when teachers and administrators in Portland Public Schools were hashing out their return-to-work agreement.

District officials in Albany said they also have to account for the potential impact of snow days or other unforeseen closures.

But the union doesn’t see it that way. In a press conference Monday afternoon, union leaders argued the district’s push to only make up 7 1/2 days is a way of disciplining educators for the strike.

“The main objective of their return-to-work policy is … it’s punitive, right?” GAEA Vice President Max Nazarian said. “It’s a vindictive document to punish educators for standing up for ourselves and for standing up for our students.

“We want kids back in school,” he said, “and they want them back a little bit, but not all the days that we’ve missed.”

Nazarian said the union isn’t asking to get paid by the district for the last few weeks when they were on strike. Yes, they received strike pay from the Oregon Education Association, which comes out of their dues, he said, but that is separate from district pay for contract hours.

“We are willing to work those days,” he said. “We are willing to work a 191-day contract to get paid for 191 days.”

The union said there is one appendix in the contract agreement that has not been settled related to extra duty pay, for positions like coaches. The union said there is a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, already on that item.

However, district administrators said Monday afternoon that they did not believe any articles were left unsigned.

“GAEA’s outstanding article is merely a table of Co-Curricular Salary amounts,” the district bargaining team wrote in its statement. “Both sides had already signed a tentative agreement earlier in the day on the increases to co-curricular salaries. Both sides had sent out information (on Sunday) informing the public of the completion of the total agreement.”

District leaders had scheduled a Monday press conference to take place immediately after the union held one. But the district said it was delaying that so they could meet in person with union leadership to work toward an agreement.

Union members and the school board each still need to vote to ratify or approve the labor contract.