Angry Parents Weigh In on Portland's Teachers Strike, Which Has SHUT DOWN All the Schools

Portland, Ore., school teachers are on week three of a strike that has not garnered them all that much support from the parents at home. The school district helped the striking teachers union cause by pre-announcing that, instead of hiring temps, it would help the union hold the children hostage by announcing that all schools would close. They're doing it for the children, you understand.

Portland is the largest school district in the state with between 44,000 and 49,000 students. The district says both and isn't sure because of the ever-declining population since its disastrous COVID-19 performance.

While many parents have joined teachers on the picket line and are part of "the struggle," their fervor, even in woke Portland, isn't shared.

One Portland parent started a Change.org petition to re-open the school while bargaining continues. Eric Happel's petition has 372 signatures. He says that "students cannot wait any longer ... [and] are still struggling to catch up to where they were academically prior to pandemic school closures, and recent reports show chronic absenteeism at alarmingly high and growing rates." Sports have been canceled, and art and music performances may be shelved altogether.

The same union that was the last in the nation to go back to in-classroom learning after COVID now heads this disaster in the making. Being last hasn't been an impediment to Oregon teachers keeping their jobs. Nobody's getting fired for poor performance.

School during COVID was so disastrous that Democrats who are paid off by the powerful teachers union passed a law to dumb down graduation standards, which are so dumb that they give the word dumb a bad name. How bad is educational performance in Oregon? Awful — it's just above Arkansas — and getting worse. The Democrats just extended the lower standards for another five years.

One parent wrote to the alternative weekly Willamette Week, complaining about the paper's one-sided strike coverage and wondering where this magic money to pay more to the teachers is coming from:

I’m sorry but your article was not at all balanced.
While most would agree that we all would like more teachers, better facilities, and for those teachers to be better paid, those goals cannot be viewed in a vacuum. We need to look at the situation in the proper context.
Portland residents pay the highest taxes in the entire country; unless you happen to live in Manhattan and make over $23 million a year. Meanwhile, parents who have the highest tax obligations in the country were faced with a school district that was the last in the entire country to go back to in-person learning. Every ounce of research has shown this was disastrous for children, particularly those from lower-income households.
Now the same teachers who refused to go back to in-person learning have sent children home in the middle of the school year.
Portland Public Schools is one of the best-funded school districts on a per-student basis in the entire country. Meanwhile, education results have been incredibly poor when measured by nonpartisan watchdogs.
There is plenty of blame to go around; however, acting as if teachers haven’t played a significant part in this situation is intellectually dishonest.
Justin S.

These teachers are woke types whose picketing more resembles Antifa than grown-ups.

Look at this exchange from this Twitter/X user who went to cover the picketing but was met with a professional interrupter and cowbell clanger to drown out questions and general incivility (on both sides).

WEEK 3: Portland students continue to miss class due to the teacher's strike. This clip sums up the lack of accountability from everyone involved including the teachers themselves.

They ignore the real issues plaguing the district and, when asked about the real issues, they… pic.twitter.com/jZrWOEsnz3
— David Medina 🦫🇺🇸 (@davidmedinaofa) November 15, 2023

Speaking of which, students, like good revolutionaries, have thrown their support to their teachers who want more money, smaller classes, less responsibility, and fewer days in the classroom.

One week into the teacher strike and Portland Public Schools parents have some choice words.https://t.co/5wmpY6ATO0
— Willamette Week (@wweek) November 8, 2023

Organizing protests is what Portland teachers do best.

Last week, the first week of the work strike, they organized parties and what they called a Strike-a-Palooza to have fun while they did nothing and got strike pay.

The party continues for @pdxteachers PAT teachers on strike!! Day 11 brings you - "Strike-a-Palooza!"

Why did they wait so long for the first strike!?! This is a month of non-stop parties funded by the union!!!!

All while Portland students languish. pic.twitter.com/ygsDQhFG4Z
— Kim McGair (@kmcgair) November 16, 2023

Parents who work at home, such as reporter Shane Kavanaugh, are giving their kids life skills lessons.

I suppose that on the plus-side of Portland’s protracted teacher strike, our third-grader is getting pretty good at frying eggs — over easy AND medium — for him & his younger brother. pic.twitter.com/uNO45EMIUO
— Shane Dixon Kavanaugh (@shanedkavanaugh) November 15, 2023

Teachers claim the district has a magic $200 million sitting around to give them a raise. The district says it doesn't.

Portland teachers strike continues amid $200 million gap in contract negotiations

The two sides have a gap of more than $200 million in their proposals, despite making some progress on compensation, class sizes, and planning time.https://t.co/642HV6hNUO
— LaborUnionNews.com (@WorkPlaceRpt) November 15, 2023

Thursday was the day that union members began losing their paid-for insurance and must now pay for COBRA extension.

As I've maintained before, public school teachers' unions are a continuing criminal enterprise against children.