After a protracted bargaining session that lasted until three in the morning on Monday, a tentative agreement to terminate the district’s teacher strike crumbled, forcing Albany schools to close for the tenth day of classes.
If the strike in Albany, a mid-sized city in the Willamette Valley, lasts past Tuesday, it will be one of the longest teacher strikes in modern Oregon history, lasting longer than the 11 days that Portland Public Schools students missed in November 2023 due to a strike by the Portland Association of Teachers.
The Greater Albany Education Association claimed in a statement put on its website that the agreement had collapsed due to differences over terms for returning to work, which was also the last bone of contention in Portland. They reported that as of Monday morning, teachers were once again on the picket line.
Speaking on behalf of the 8,900-student district, Becca Mallery stated that the question was how much, if any, back pay teachers would receive for the days they were on strike and how many of the lost school days would be made up in June or throughout the academic year.
According to Mallery’s statement, the district seeks to add 7.5 make-up days to the schedule, which would include taking the place of days that were previously designated for professional development and grading.
She also stated that the district is hesitant to add make-up days to the end of the school year since, according to her, doing so would not have the same educational value as making up time lost during the first semester and that option is usually saved for snow days.
In addition to proposing that teachers be compensated for time spent outside of regular work hours on grading, curriculum development, and parent communication to make up for work days lost due to the strike, the Greater Albany Education Association stated that it would prefer to extend the school year into June and do away with early release Wednesdays for the remainder of the year.
Members of the bargaining team sent a message to their members on Monday, stating that management is still taking a punitive stance to reduce wages rather than letting us make up the time with our kids.
Since the start of the strike on November 12, teachers have been unpaid for at least 12.5 days. Conferences between parents and teachers that were scheduled to take place right before Thanksgiving vacation were canceled.
The same issues that have plagued other school district contract discussions around Oregon are at the heart of the strike: the union’s demands for more planning time, larger wages, fewer classes and caseloads, and more assistance in managing student behavior.
On Sunday, the two parties negotiated a provisional agreement that included a strict cap on kindergarten class sizes and cost-of-living adjustments that, depending on seniority, ranged from 11.8% to 15% compounded over the next two years. Prior to the breakdown of negotiations over return to work terms, they had outlined plans for a return to school on Tuesday morning.
To make matters worse, Albany has also been the epicenter of the cultural conflicts surrounding schools that erupted during the outbreak.
Melissa Goff, who later served as an education adviser to Governor Tina Kotek and currently chairs the state’s Teachers Standards and Practices Commission, was unceremoniously sacked by the school board in 2021.
In anop-edfor According to the Oregonian/OregonLive, Goff argued that the school board that fired her did so in an effort to reverse the diversity, equity, and inclusion policies she had supported. She also claimed that her dismissal was caused by conservative PACs meddling in our local school board elections.
Then, in a May election in 2023, Goff’s last ally on the district’s school board lost his seat. Most people agree that the current board members are more conservative, including Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist, who has been on the board for a long time and has a lot of political connections. In February 2022, they recruited Andy Gardner, who is currently the superintendent.
Julia Silverman writes for The Oregonian/OregonLive on education. Her email address is [email protected].
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