Portland Public School Strike Ends! Students Now Set To Enjoy Fun-Filled, Half-Hour Winter Break

The party's over, kids. Time to pay up.

Nov 28, 2023

Portland, Oregon, public schools are open again, thank God. It’s been a long 84 years since members of the Portland Association of Teachers began their strike on November 1. As the parent of a Portland public school student, I was pleased to see that the union and the school district reacted a tentative agreement last Sunday.

Natalie Pate at Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that the teachers union secured “key wins for student mental health support, class size, protected planning time, building health and safety protections, and cost-of-living increases.”

The cost-of-living adjustment is an estimated 13.8 percent over three years. This is closer to the district’s proposed figure of almost 11 percent than the union’s desired adjustment of more than 20 percent.

Teachers and administrators were “very, very close” to an agreement last week, according to school board members, but the two sides couldn’t agree on the structure and role of proposed committees that would weigh in on overcrowded classes. While details weren’t immediately released Sunday, statements from both district and union leaders suggest they found a compromise.

It’s typical Portland that there was extended dithering over the structure of the “shared decision-making” committees intended to discuss a major issue, but at least they reached a compromise on who’d bring the doughnuts and from where.

Superintendent of Portland Public Schools Guadalupe Guerrero and the PPS school board said in a letter announcing the strike’s end: “We are relieved to have our students returning to school and know that being out of school for the last three weeks — missing classmates, teachers, and learning — has been hard for everyone.”

And it’s about to get a little harder. I’d warned my son — because I’m a known spoilsport — that he’d have to eventually make up the days he missed, but he just laughed while beating me again at Super Smash Bros. He was less than thrilled to learn that 11 instructional days will be added to the school year. This includes a couple professional development days that would’ve provided a long weekend in January and April. Students will have to go to school on Presidents’ Day, and the school year will be extended by three days in June.

But those are all 2024 problems. Even the most short-sighted nine-year-old can plan a month in advance. My son is threatening to sue (sorry, his mother’s a lawyer) because almost half of the makeup days will come from the upcoming winter break.

School will now be open during what would have been the first week of wonderful Christmastime (if you celebrate). However, movie theaters showing Disney’s The Wish were also open last weekend. That doesn’t mean anyone was there. Christmas is on Monday, and families planning to travel for the holiday might’ve already made arrangements to leave town the preceding week. And if your parents are coming to visit, what are you supposed to do without your kids free to babysit and provide tech support?

Not that anyone asked me, but I would’ve picked makeup days with the greater chance of having actual students present.

Roosevelt High School freshman Sophia Minko, who says she spent the strike “chilling at home, watching TV and slowly becoming dumber,” might join my son’s imaginary class-action suit.

“I’m mad because I like my full winter break,” Minko said, “and I kind of wish they’d just added it on to summer.”

The strike was a day-by-day situation, so most students claim they just sat around at home, bored, and I’m sure never once made their parents regret their life choices. Students missed out on planned school activities and will now miss out on actual scheduled vacation.

“I guess … it’s necessary,” KeMiya Williams, another freshman at Roosevelt, said, “because, like, we missed [a] whole, entire month of school.”

That’s a very mature outlook. Maybe she can give my son a pep talk.

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