What is happening?

     On May 22, the  Tigard-Tualatin Board meeting continued through a demonstration for the Tigard-Tualatin Education Association (TTEA), calling to “Save the 19”, referring to the 19 declared positions lost due to the Reduction in Force. The Kalapuya Learning Center was full of staff from the district, wearing red shirts and holding various signs opposing the Reduction in Force. Although the demonstration had moved outside shortly before Superintendent Reike-Smith’s remarks, the conversation that followed provided much-needed clarification of the process of the reduction. Here’s a summary of what we have learned and gathered about the whole situation.

Where did the 19 come from? 

     TTSD made the RIF decision due to projected funds from enrolled students, as well as projected funding from the State budget. The initial senate projection for the state school fund was 9.9 billion dollars, which was 0.3 billion dollars short of desired levels. This caused panic and led to massive RIFs across the state in major school districts such as Beaverton School District, Portland Public School District and the Tigard-Tualatin School District. 

     TTSD made the decision to make up the deficit in funding by returning to “pre-pandemic classroom sizes”, which would evaluate classroom sizings and “right-size” class rosters, increasing the number of students per classroom. According to Public School Review, Oregon currently has a 19:1 ratio between students and staff members. The average classroom sizes in TTSD have been historically lower than neighboring districts in the state. In a board meeting, Rieke-Smith shared what this meant.

     “Based on the number of the students we are serving, [we look at the number] staff members we need to serve the students in [a] variety of areas from K-12, 6-8, and 9-12. Once you have that number you adjust the staffing based on the number of students […] instead when the number came out to 9.9, we realized we needed to not only adjust the number of individuals that we had, but we had to return to pre-pandemic levels,” said Rieke-Smith. 

     In the Tigard Tualatin Educators Association (TTEA) contract and the Oregon School Employee Association (OSEA) contract, there is an article that dictates the timeline of a RIF to match enrollment. The contract language states that staff in danger of losing their jobs, have to be notified 60 days before the deadline. The district had chosen the deadline of June 30 in order to give teachers the summer to relocate and find other jobs, however that had led to the deadline for notifying RIFed staff on April 28. However teachers can be given their positions back to them after April 30 if circumstances change. Human Resources Director Debbie Ebert elaborated on the process during the May 22 Board meeting.

     “In the state law there is a 60 day rule around RIFs, so we have to pick a date when we reduce our workforce. We picked June 30 […] the 60 day rule is often frustrating in a RIF process because we knew that other resignations and retirements would come in that 60 day window, and they’re still trickling in. But there’s nothing we can do about the 60 days. So we had to let people know by April 28,” shared Ebert.

     As far as how the decisions were made about who is going to be reduced, many factors played into it.These included full time employee (FTE)  allocation, examining contract language, and seniority. Tigard High principal, Brian Bailey, explained this in an interview with The Paw.