After three weeks, the Albany teachers strike is officially over.
Members of the Greater Albany Education Association voted on Monday night to ratify their new 2024-27 collective bargaining agreement, with 87% of votes in favor, as reported to the school board by Superintendent Andy Gardner.
The school board, just minutes after the ratification vote was announced, also voted to approve the new contract, as well as the plan for how to reopen the schools.
Teachers returned 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, acknowledging the support her members felt from parents, students and other community members.
Two kids hold signs at a parent-led rally in Albany on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, supporting Greater Albany Public School teachers on strike.
Courtesy of the Greater Albany Education Association
The association represents roughly 600 licensed educators, including teachers and counselors, across the mid-Willamette Valley city. Members began striking on Tuesday, Nov. 12. This was the first strike in the district in nearly 40 years and the longest in the district’s history. Union officials say it’s one of the longest strikes in Oregon ever. Portland Public Schools’ strike last year lasted nearly the entire month of November.
Albany students missed a total of 10 days during the strike, and educators missed 12 work days, including parent-teacher conferences scheduled for last week. Portland’s strike totaled 11 lost instructional days in all, by comparison.
District officials originally proposed adding 7.5 make-up days to the calendar to address the instructional time lost during the strike, while the union wanted to restore all 10 lost student-contact days.
In the end, they agreed to make up 8 of the 10 missed student days and add one more teacher work day. The agreement makes up some of those days by turning what were teacher work days into days students come to school. Teachers and administrators also agreed to extend some early-release and half days to full school days.
The revised calendar extends the school year slightly into the summer break. Friday, June 13, is now the last day for students, followed by a teacher work day on Monday, June 16.
What did Albany teachers get from the strike?
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, guaranteed prep times and two bathroom breaks.
But perhaps more than any other article in the Albany contract, the change that educators and parents may find most compelling relates to a hard cap limiting class size. It’s an issue that Oregon teachers unions have prioritized for years without necessarily getting the changes they want.
Portland Public Schools teachers went into their strike a year ago also wanting “hard caps,” where students would be placed in other classes or schools if their initial class reached its limit. They did not get those in their final settlement, to the chagrin of many union members, but instead established committees to discuss specific classroom situations.
In Albany, the new contract establishes the first hard caps in Oregon, but only for kindergarten classes. In a summary of the contract changes, union officials said the new class size thresholds for pre-K classes are 18 students in Title I schools, which serve more students from lower-income households, and 20 students at other district schools. For kindergarten classes, those numbers are 22 and 25, respectively.
If a class hits the cap, union leaders said the district can try rearranging teachers or students to bring the class size below the limit, but if they can’t, another teacher would be hired. If there is space, they would split into two classrooms. If there isn’t an available classroom, then the class could be brought under the teacher-student cap, by having two teachers team-teach the class. The class size caps will not go into effect until next school year.
The new agreement also establishes a new elementary building-level review process to help with class size, as well as a districtwide class size fund of $500,000 to cover costs associated with classes over the threshold. The fund will be refilled each year.
Gardner told the school board that compensation was a huge issue — though not the only issue. The new agreement in the first year of the contract includes a 7% pay increase for educators with one-15 years of experience and 9% for those with more.
“We know that the teachers of this district had fallen behind inflation,” he said. “We know that they were not comparative, particularly our senior teachers at the top end with other districts.
“And so, it is really gratifying to be able to change that compensation,” he continued, “and we want our people to work here in confidence that they are not losing $7,000 a year at the top end to another district.”
Union leaders told OPB the “cost of the improvements” made by the three-year agreement is expected to be around $20 million, though some expenses are tied to inflation. That means the total cost could change some.
Moving forward, Gardner said they aren’t finished, but they’re in a good place.
“There’s work to do, obviously, to heal, to come together, to let go,” he told the school board Monday night. “But I do believe that this contract has made us a better district, a more collaborative district, and we will work forward optimistically.”
