Attorney Margaret Olney ensured that Portland Public School District would not be able to unilaterally increase high school teacher workloads without paying a penalty. The District unilaterally changed their workload from one based on a “5 of 7” schedule. The contract between the Portland Association of Teachers and the District required the District to maintain workload at levels “generally comparable” to those previously in existence (with a few limited exceptions). The arbitrator found that the unilateral implementation increased teacher/student loads by approximately 20%, an “excessive” amount that cannot be attributed solely to staffing cuts. In addition, teachers had to spend significant time developing new lesson plans adapted to the block schedule.
The arbitrator ordered the District to pay approximately $1.5 million to affected teachers as compensation for the increased workload. The arbitrator ruled that the District could return to the 5 of 7 schedule or, if it chose to stay at the 6 of 8 schedule, engage with the Association about how to devise a schedule that does not violate the contract.
The District decided to keep the 6 of 8 schedule. Unfortunately, it failed to honor the arbitrator’s order with high school teaching loads still being excessive. Therefore, PAT was forced to go back to the Arbitrator in two separate hearings in order to enforce the remedy. The Arbitrator agreed with PAT and required the District to pay “overload” pay to teachers with loads exceeding 180 and also capped the “average student loads,” with compensation for exceeding those average loads. For the 2013-2014 school year, the District paid over $1.5 million dollars in overload pay.
