Tag: Portland

  • Portland State agrees to reinstate 10 laid-off faculty members

    Portland State agrees to reinstate 10 laid-off faculty members

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    Dive Brief: 

    • Portland State University agreed to reinstate 10 non-tenure-track faculty members it laid off last year, though the institution’s president argued that officials still believe the reductions “were necessary and appropriate.” 
    • The decision follows a November ruling from an independent arbitrator that ordered the public university to reinstate the laid-off employees and concluded that the administrators had violated their collective bargaining agreement. 
    • However, Portland State President Ann Cudd said in Tuesday’s announcement that the university still must close a $35 million deficit over the next two years. “These reinstatements do not change that reality,” Cudd added. 

    Dive Insight: 

    University officials originally announced the layoffs in December 2024, notifying 17 non-tenure-track faculty members that they would be let go in June. At the time, officials said the changes were due to “changes in their departments’ programmatic and curricular needs.” 

    The announcement came as part of a larger effort to trim $18 million from the university’s budget by the end of the last fiscal year. Portland State also revamped administrative and academic structures and sent retirement offers to employees to plug the budget hole, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.   

    In May, the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors’ Portland State chapter approved sending grievances from 10 laid-off faculty members to arbitration. The other seven did not contest their layoffs. 

    On Tuesday, Cudd pushed back on the arbitrator’s findings, asserting the layoffs were conducted in “good-faith” and complied with the employees’ collective bargaining agreement. 

    “Nonetheless, we’ve decided the best step forward for our campus at this time is to comply with the arbitrator’s order,” Cudd said. 

    A university spokesperson said in an email Thursday that details about the “timeline and back pay are under negotiation.”

    The university has been attempting to remedy a budget shortfall following steep enrollment declines. 

    Portland State enrolled 19,951 students in fall 2024, down 21.2% from five years earlier. Along with the resulting decrease in tuition revenue, the university receives less money from the state because appropriations are partly based on the number of degrees and credentials it confers to Oregon residents. 

    According to the arbitrator’s findings, the driving force behind the layoffs was Portland State’s budget shortfall at the time. Because of that, the university was obligated to follow a “lengthy process” that includes declaring financial exigency. 

    But the university instead said curricular changes had driven the reductions — a reason that requires a less intensive process for layoffs. But the arbitrator said even if that had been the proper avenue, the university hadn’t followed the necessary steps to lay faculty off under that process either. 

    Moreover, the arbitrator found the university “redistributed” work performed by the laid-off faculty members. 

    For instance, the university offered some of the laid-off employees adjunct positions to teach the same courses they previously taught full time — but generally without benefits or the same level of pay. It also hired other adjunct faculty to cover their previous courses. 

    “This has reduced the employment cost to the university for the same, or expanded courses, to be taught,” the arbitrator said. 

    Portland State initially refused to reinstate the faculty members, arguing that the arbitrator’s decision exceeded her authority, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Portland State employees had been pushing the university to comply with the order, with over 260 signing a petition for the laid-off faculty members’ reinstatement as of this week. 

    Recently, Portland State’s trustee board recently approved a plan to reduce spending by $35 million over the next two years through changes to academic programs, faculty composition and administrative structures.

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  • Portland State Ordered to Reinstate Some Laid-Off Faculty

    Portland State Ordered to Reinstate Some Laid-Off Faculty

    An independent arbitrator ordered Portland State University to reinstate 10 faculty members after determining the university violated its collective bargaining agreement with the Portland State University American Association of University Professors, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.  

    The faculty senate in April voted no confidence in the administration’s “Bridge to the Future” plan to address an $18 million budget deficit, and the vote “underscores the fact that the university made its layoff decisions before it had sufficient evidence to support them. That is a violation of the collective bargaining agreement,” the arbitrator wrote in her decision. 

    PSU-AAUP filed a labor grievance after the university laid off 17 non-tenure-track professors at the end of the 2024–25 academic year as part of its plan to close the deficit before the end of the spring term. The remaining seven employees declined to grieve their layoffs. 

    “[The decision] forces the university to respect the concept of shared governance,” union president Bill Knight told OPB. “It’s a reminder to the university that they can’t simply make arbitrary administrative decisions without involving the faculty.”

    The union contract requires university officials to follow a specific, lengthy process to lay off faculty members for economic reasons—as opposed to eliminating courses or programs—which the arbitrator determined they did not do. Portland State is considering an appeal.

    The budget cuts were successful in closing the deficit, OPB reported. Recent financial documents show the university saved more than $12.3 million—about 88 full-time faculty positions—in its academic affairs division. But more personnel cuts are likely. In September, the Portland State University Board of Trustees approved a plan to address a $35 million shortfall over two years.

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  • How Portland Public Schools can afford to offer high-impact tutoring

    How Portland Public Schools can afford to offer high-impact tutoring

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    SEATTLE — In 2024, nearly half — 48% — of Oregon’s 4th graders scored below basic in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

    Not only is that 7 percentage points worse than the national average, but 48% represented a significant jump from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, when 36% of Oregon’s 4th graders tested below basic for reading. 

    The state’s latest reading scores are “disgraceful” and “unacceptable,” said Darcy Soto, director of learning acceleration at Portland Public Schools.

    But unlike for the state at large, the Portland district has seen an increase — albeit a slight one of 1% — in reading scores since the pandemic, said Karla Hudson, program administrator for the district’s learning acceleration team. Still, Portland’s progress has been slow and incremental, she said, and less than 60% of the district’s students are proficient in reading.

    “We have a lot of work to do,” Hudson said, which is why the 43,500-student district has zeroed in on providing high-impact tutoring.

    Joined by Stanford University’s Nancy Waymack, Soto and Hudson shared what Portland has learned from its efforts during a July 12 session at UNITED, the National Conference on School Leadership.

    High-impact tutoring is a data-driven service that is embedded into the school day and uses consistent, well-supported tutors, said Waymack, director of research, partnerships and policy for Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator. The tutors use high-quality instructional materials and hold sessions at least three times a week in small groups of no more than four students, she said. 

    While teachers can be successful tutors, Waymack said, so too can community members like college students and retirees. Regardless, it’s important that students be able to build a relationship with their tutors, she said. 

    Data also plays a valuable role in tracking student progress throughout the tutoring, Waymack said. When tutoring occurs during school hours or shortly before or after class time, she said, research shows students are far more likely to attend sessions. 

    Years in the making

    Portland began its early literacy tutoring program through a small after-school pilot initiative in 2021-22 at a few elementary schools for students in grades 3-5, said Soto. The pilot started to show “some really great outcomes,” she said, allowing the district to expand the program from 6 to 20 schools by the 2022-23 school year.

    During those first two years, teachers were trained on the curriculum and paid for extended hours to tutor after school and. While that approach did improve students’ reading skills, Soto said, “it was very expensive” given teacher pay and the small student group size. This made the pilot difficult to scale to other schools.

    As the tutoring program continued into the 2023-24 school year, the district began shifting to a more cost-effective model — especially as federal pandemic relief funds were sunsetting, Soto said. 

    By the 2024-25 school year, Soto said, the district used some of its last remaining Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to partner with the Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University to develop a free K-3 tutoring curriculum aligned with structured literacy instruction. 

    After successfully piloting the new curriculum in summer 2024, the district launched a $1.2 million program across 50 of its 58 elementary schools to serve over 1,200 students in 2024-25, Soto said. The program hired 152 tutors — mostly paraprofessionals — and was embedded during school hours during 30-minute blocks that didn’t interfere with core instruction. 

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