Oregon teachers are preparing for a walkout on May 8 because schools have been chronically underfunded since the state’s Measure 5 passed in 1990, shifting the source of school funding from property taxes to the responsibility of the state.
Since then, the state has financed schools at 21 to 38 percent below what its own research suggests districts need to be successful and thrive.
In 1999 there was an attempt to address the budget shortfall in Oregon with the Quality Education Model, which set minimum funding levels for schools based on what an adequate public school experience should provide for all students. However, legislators included a work around allowing the state to avoid meeting funding requirements if they wrote a report explaining why they couldn’t meet their obligation.
They have written such a report every year since.
Due to the low pay, teachers have resorted to taking on shift work as retail clerks, warehouse workers, Uber drivers, and baristas.
Now, budget shortfalls are regularly disrupting communities across the state and have set the stage for the walkout.
Take, for example, the Beaverton School District, which is carrying a $35 million budget deficit. In 2012, the district axed 344 teachers due to budget deficits, creating a massive overflow of students in classrooms.
The remaining teachers had little time to focus on individual needs, and instruction time became limited to test preparation. Students and parents were expected to take on the load of student learning by way of homework, leaving many capable students vulnerable to falling through the cracks. Oregon has the second-worst state graduation rate in the nation.
Due to the low pay, teachers have resorted to taking on shift work as retail clerks, warehouse workers, Uber drivers, and baristas on top of their more-than full-time teaching schedule—both in the classroom and grading assignments before and after school.
These kinds of scenarios are playing out elsewhere. According to an American Federation of Teachers report,“In 2016, 25 states were still providing less funding for K12 schools than before the recession, after adjusting for inflation. In 38 states, the average teacher salary in 2018 is lower than it was in 2009 in real terms.”
Texas’ funding for schools between 2008 and 2019 has dropped by 20 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Oklahoma by 15 percent and Alabama also by 15 percent. Schools can hardly function at such a low level of funding.
To make matters worse, forty-one states have cut teacher pay. The worst examples are Mississippi, where teacher pay was cut by 16 percent, Colorado, which cut it by almost 16 percent, and Oklahoma, where it was reduced by 15 percent.
Teachers around the country have lobbied, contacted legislators, attended town halls, and held rallies. Walkouts and strikes have had some positive impacts on education spending, but budget increases haven’t made up for the years of cuts.
After witnessing what educators in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia were able to achieve, teachers in Oregon have decided a walkout was their only option.
Stephen Siegel, special education teacher in Oregon’s Reynolds School District, told me, “May 8th is almost exclusively symbolic, as we have all but promised to return to work the following day. But my hope is that it emboldens workers and particularly educators to continue to build a more militant labor movement, one that is unafraid to use its most powerful weapon when the time is right—the strike.”
The demands of Oregon teachers are similar to those in other states: pay raises for teachers and support staff, reduction in class sizes, increase in support such as teaching assistants, counselors, nurses, and librarians, and an increase in overall funding for public education.
Teachers and their unions in Oregon have been working in tandem to get these issues resolved.
State legislators have responded by proposing a few options. One is a commercial activity tax, which would shift some business revenue toward education. A projected $2 billion in expected revenue would go into a “Student Success Fund.”
The caveat is that it would not be for general funding for school districts but will depend on each school submitting a proposal on how they will use the money. The money will then be doled out piecemeal.
The lack of appropriate, let alone necessary, funding of public education reflects the lack of value we place on education, and our underappreciation of an informed and educated public.
Major corporations based in Oregon, like Nike, Amazon, and Microsoft, pay little to no taxes while profiting from city and state infrastructure. They are, in effect, cheating the federal government, and our students, out of much-needed revenue.
By walking out, Oregon teachers are showing us just how inadequate our public school system has become, and demanding that we do much better.
“My labor is mine and mine alone to give or withhold, Siegel tells me. “This day of action is another small step toward waking up the working class to the real power they possess when they organize and act in solidarity.”