PORTLAND, Ore. — Teachers in Portland, Oregon, temporarily closed a major bridge Tuesday morning as they marched in a strike that began about three weeks ago.
Members of the Portland Association of Teachers union and their supporters stopped in the middle of the Burnside Bridge for about 15 minutes, KGW reported. According to the news channel, the bridge was clear at 9 a.m. and cars were crossing it.
Photos the union posted on its Facebook page showed teachers sitting on the bridge, donning blue clothes and holding up banners calling for better pay and teaching conditions. The union had called on supporters to meet at its headquarters, about half a mile from the bridge, at 7:30 a.m. before starting the march at 8 a.m.
Portland teachers have been on strike since Nov. 1, closing schools in Oregon’s largest district, which has about 45,000 students. Students missed eleven days of classes because of the strike.
In marathon bargaining sessions that sometimes lasted all night, the teachers union and the district negotiated pay, class sizes and planning time for teachers.
The union initially proposed class size caps, but with the district pushing back on how much that would cost, it is now calling for higher wages for teachers whose classes exceed certain thresholds.
In recent days, questions about parent involvement in proposed committees to oversee class sizes have become a major sticking point.
The union has proposed allowing parents to serve on committees that would decide whether students can be added to a class that already meets the size threshold. The district said this would violate student privacy and that such decisions should be made by teachers, principals and school administrators.
On Monday morning, the union said school board members had rejected a tentative agreement. At a news conference, board members disputed the claim but said they felt a deal was “very, very close.”
The two sides appear to have made some progress in salary negotiations. In its latest proposal Monday, the district proposed cost-of-living adjustments that would increase teacher salaries by about 13% over three years, bringing it closer to the roughly 20% pay increase over three years the union initially sought had asked for.