From August 26th of 2024 to January 13th of 2025, Tigard Tualatin School District (TTSD) teachers were working without a contract.
Working without a contract means that the teacher’s previous contract has lapsed and that they are still in negotiations on the current contract. For the time being, they are working with their old contract. For many teachers, this can be frustrating.
“The fact that there are people out there saying we’re worth ‘this’ and we’re not worth ‘that’, [basically] fighting over what we should be compensated with,” psychology teacher Fredrick Holtz says. “It’s just frustrating to think about the idea that anyone would disagree about what we should be paid.”
Negotiations exceeded the past contract this time around because the district and Tigard Tualatin Education Association (TTEA) were in disagreements for an increase in pay for teacher’s salaries. While the district had originally budgeted for a 1% increase, TTEA wanted no less than a 4% increase.
“We look at inflation rates [when discussing the contract],” TTEA President Scott Herron states. “We never really have to ask the question ‘do you want a raise?’”
On December 17th of 2024, both the district and TTEA were able to tentatively agree on the teachers salaries being increased by 4%. The TTSD board officially voted in the contract on January 13th of 2025. While this process felt long, in previous years negotiations have exceeded 12 months.
“Every year that I’ve been here, we constantly have been working without a contract,” eighth grade teacher Rachel Placencia-Burns says.
The current contract will last until June 2026. For now, teachers are happy with the current contract, but are weary of what it will hold for the future. According to Herron, in past negotiation years, there have been rifs following the teachers’ change in contract.
“They had 17 layoffs [last time] and they brought all but three back,” Herron states. “So that tells me that the rifing was a result of getting back.”
When talking to the TTSD CFO Jessica Ceay, she confirmed that there would be realignments in staff in the upcoming school year.
“We do know that we will have to realign staffing next year,” “That’s just because staffing has grown by about 30% over five years, but student count has been going down.”