Supervillains, Rats, & PDFs

The PAT Strike of 2023 is allegedly over, but I’m going to document it some more, because this isn’t really over. Also, the press coverage of the whole shit show was paltry capitalist appeasement.

This was my letter to the school board November 13, 2023 nearly two weeks into a strike that never should have happened, and deals specifically with their ongoing campaign of sleazy, insinuating communications.

I got two texts from PPS yesterday. I had some kind of feelings about the second one: PPS and PAT met over the weekend “nonetheless settlement was not reached and schools remain” closed.” My son might say “Areyou Serious Right Now?” He’s a laconic teenager who hasn’t been in school for two weeks. My children will tell you I am notably less temperate in my reactions. What I thought was more like “what the actual @#$% is this gaslighting pile of radioactive poo? The nerve of you people taking up space on my phone with your nonsense.”

I do not need a text telling me you have not fixed theproblem of my children losing seven instructional days and counting over thelast two and half weeks (more than 5% of the time my senior needs to graduate). It would be one thing if PPS had been sending out information about their proposals for the prior two weeks. That hasn’t happened, apparently because PPS hasn’t been making any proposals, which reflects a deeply offensive lack of urgency. Either that, or PPS is incompetent at both bargaining and communicating with the public that it nominally serves.

Please understand I am not someone who thinks the Board and administration are cackling supervillains, rubbing your hands in glee while hoarding money to pay the superintendent’s California cronies. I have spent the last 25 years in corporate, management adjacent positions. I have been personally accused of participating in bizarre conspiracies and/or throwing my weight around against “the little guy”. I have struggled with administrative challenges, including the need for improvedprocedures and training, for which the people being trained lack enthusiasm. I have also had people who have no idea what I do question my professional processes. All of that to say, I’d like to have more sympathy than I do for the predicament in which PPS finds itself.

Seriously though, what are all those high priced communications people doing? Sending out nicely formatted pdfs where the headline is “there will be budget cuts to accommodate this Generous Proposal?” Anyone who does that, after weeks of silence, is doing it to poison the pool for their opponent. The main purpose seems to be to make PAT look bad. Why is public money going to a marketing campaign that elevates the toxicity of this painful situation? Faith in PPS is going to take years to recover, and you’re not even bothering to be transparent and regular in your communications.

This is all before reaching the content of the proposal, which appears to be patting itself on the back for committing to reduce class sizes over 30 by ONE student. In elementary school. 30 kids in an elementary school class is already objectively absurd. Can I possibly be reading this right? This is the kind of proposal that should have been in play months ago. What kind of proposal could this possibly have been an improvement upon?

Then this morning I went out to support my kids’ teachers. They are clearly exhausted but are cheering each other on asking “how many of us work in class rooms that have no heat in the winter” [RAISING HANDS] “how many of us work in classes with no ventilation when its hot” [MURMERS OF ASSENT]“ how many of us have rats in our classrooms” [practically everyone RAISES HANDS] “How many of do what we do with a smile on face any way?” [EVERYONE CHEERS].

Recognizing that PPS is dealing with several decades of underfunding, physical plant issues, staffing issues, and other funding issues, can you just manage to communicate enough so that everyone in town doesn’t think you’re a bunch of clueless, arrogant buttheads? Maybe explain what you’re actually spending money on? Rebut the accusations that you’re spending millions on new furniture, sending administrators to sit in workshops all day, and the superintendent’s speech writer FFS. You would get hella credibility if you could truthfully say the superintendent doesn’t have a speech writer. If you can’t say that, and there is such a function, stop it at once. Also, what plausible excuse do you have for NOT agreeing to disclose procurement conflicts? Does that even have a fiscal cost?**

Because here’s the thing: I know the resolution here is going to be painful. No one is going to get what they want and the teachers won’t get what they deserve because they’re not even asking for all they deserve for what they do. Curriculum modernization or whatever it is y’all are up to might not be a bunch of wank. I don’t know. I do know I don’t always get to travel and go to conferences in lean years, even when I would learn something useful there.

Unless and until PPS can say you are spreading the pain fairly, and prove it by cutting the top salaries in the district, and cutting administrative costs (like comms staff, fad curricula, construction project managers paid six figures), PPS will have no mandate.

Even though cutting the salaries of everyone making $200,000 by ten percent only nets you $2 million, every teacher makes a quarter to half of that, and you are asking them to take less than the actual cost of living. I know you’re calling it “COLA”, but the actual value in the proposal against cost of living in Portland means its not actually “cost of living”. You may not care how many people hate you (because the government is never popular, trust me, I know). But is it good for the institution for the entire community to perceive you as the ones stonewalling teachers, trying to starve*** them back to the classrooms? Is that what you want? Because that’s how it looks now.

• **I’m trolling them there. I know why that’s not a good bargaining point in a CBA. It’s not really in NLRB jurisdiction.
• ***Spoiler: that’s exactly what they were trying to do.