Salem students are worried about escalating student mental health needs, large class sizes and whether their teachers have enough time to prepare for class.
Those were among the issues South Salem High School students raised in a student-led forum Wednesday evening which organizers Sofia Castellanos and Noah Mayer said was intended to counter school district talking points as district leaders negotiate with the teacher union for a new contract.
The hour-long event was held in the school commons and drew a small but dedicated group of high school students alongside several dozen teachers, many of them from South.
The pair presented information about issues teachers are bargaining over, which include pay but also measures to reduce injuries caused by students, teacher prep time and extra pay for larger class sizes. They then took audience questions before breaking into small groups for discussion.
Teacher union and district leaders are in mediation Thursday, with another session scheduled Jan. 31.
Teacher union leaders provided data and talking points for the presentation and answered some questions from the audience, but union president Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg said the event was entirely the students’ idea.
Castellanos said she was moved listening to educators speak at a school board meeting Tuesday night. One second-grade teacher described how she was often unable to teach at all because she was managing students who were yelling, threatening suicide or otherwise in crisis.
Castellanos said while she hasn’t seen violence in classrooms directly at South, she’s concerned for her younger sister, who’s in elementary school.
“I just don’t want that for her,” she said.
Mayer’s parents have been teachers for 22 years, including eight in the district. He said they often help out newer teachers with basic expenses over the summer because their pay doesn’t stretch through the months when school’s off.
“This is the first summer where my parents weren’t worried that we wouldn’t have enough money to get through August,” he said.
Both also spoke about how district decisions in recent years have created more work for teachers while leading to worse experiences for students. One such decision was “embedded honors,” a pandemic-era shift to combine honors and non-honors students into the same class.
District leaders said their goal was to address racial disparities in the number of students pursuing college-level classes in high school by encouraging more students from diverse backgrounds to pursue honors coursework.
But Castellanos and Meyer said the result has been frustration for everyone.
“This has been really bad for us, for our friends, for everybody involved. For us, that meant taking classes with students who wouldn’t take an honors class, and then our teachers trying to teach two separate things at once, but they really couldn’t. Because you have such a range of students that you’re working with,” he said.
South is an International Baccalaureate school, a program where students take higher-level standardized courses and can earn a special diploma.
“We felt very unprepared when we started our IB classes this fall,” Mayer said.
The teacher union has proposed requiring honors or accelerated courses to be scheduled separately from regular classes in negotiations. The district has not presented a counteroffer to that proposal.
A handful of students in the audience posed questions, many focused on how they could better understand the district’s budgeting process or show support for teachers.
School board director Ashley Carson Cottingham, who represents the part of south Salem including the high school, said at the forum that the long-term solution for the issues facing the district is more funding so district leaders and teachers aren’t at odds trying to meet greater student needs with resources that aren’t keeping up.
The school board will ultimately vote on the contract district leaders negotiate with teachers, as well as a budget for the 2024-25 school year which still needs tens of millions cut to balance district spending with expected revenue.
“We need more funding in public education, period,” she said. “Yes, we have tough decisions and I’m not trying to skirt that, but we do not get enough money from the state legislature to do all the things society expects our public schools to do.”
At small table groups, students and teachers discussed what they learned and the concerns they had.
One teacher said she may set aside an hour in the morning to prepare for class, only to get called into a meeting about a student’s individualized education plan, which then means she can’t prep her lessons.
Jillian Davison, a south Salem junior, said she’s seen the impact of a lack of preparation time on both the student and teacher side. Her mom teaches at Sprague and when school’s in session, Davison said it’s hard to spend time together because her mom is often working into the evening.
She told teachers at the table she understands the reasons why they can’t always be well-prepared for class, but said it’s something students notice.
“It’s a little disappointing because you want the best for your education,” she said.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
