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This is part 2 of a two-part series covering the Portland teachers’ strike.
Here is a link to Part 1.
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Summary of post
This post explores the Portland teachers’ strike and whether the updated contract addresses the needs of students with intensive behavioral health and mental health needs.
The strike ends
After a month of picketing, late-night bargaining sessions, and school closures, the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) and district leaders finally reached common ground formalized with two signatures from Portland’s Superintendent, Guadalupe Guerrero & PAT’s President, Angela Bonilla.
A few days later Portland’s Board of Education approved a three-year contract to the relief of many families & caregivers who had waited since Halloween for a resolution to bring students back into classrooms.
Students were able to return to their classrooms on Monday, November 27th.
At my son’s elementary school, the entrance was covered with handwritten signs and chalked messages on the pavement left by parents and kids showing support for their teachers.
The Portland teachers’ strike offered a stark, unvarnished look at a large, public school district and what it takes to retain and support 4,000 educators serving 45,000 students across 86 schools.
The strike revealed the sordid side of local and state politics as finger-pointing, media campaigns, and assaults on PPS Board members’ and union members’ personal property or reputations took place before the dust finally settled.
The chorus of thousands of striking teachers also raised troubling questions about the fragile and depleted state of public school financing in Oregon with declining student enrollment and rising inflation not making things any easier for school leaders and state legislators.
Portland’s union leaders were inspired to move ahead with the strike, in part, by the actions of other districts (Evergreen School District, Los Angeles & Oakland Unified) each of whom inked favorable labor deals. PAT leaders also took note of nursing and auto workers’ unions who successfully had their demands met through recent strikes.
Hey, what about us?
Absent from much of the media coverage of the Portland teachers’ strike were the needs of STUDENTS whose agenda was largely left out of headlines focused on teachers’ salaries, class size reductions, planning time, and working conditions.
Although picket line chants and posters advocated for better services and more resources for students, it was not clear what the direct or downstream benefits of this prolonged strike were for students — especially those experiencing significant mental health needs.
As a parent raising a child with complex needs, I felt caught between a rock and a hard place, not quite sure what students stood to gain from the strike, especially in the wake of the pandemic which had clear and lasting impacts on them.
Ah…the teachers’ contact
The contract was officially ratified by teachers on Tuesday, November 28th.
Between all of the edits across 17 articles, the contract looks like the first draft of one of my college term papers with language crossed out, bold-faced, and highlighted in green or red throughout.
However, you can see the areas where language was adjusted, deleted, or added in an attempt to align different perceptions of what’s happening (or needs to) inside and outside of Portland’s classrooms each day.
Bowling alone
When I took my 11-year-old son to a bowling alley a few times over the strike, I not-so-warmly imagined district leaders, attorneys, mediators, and PAT bargaining team members debating over keywords, phrases, titles, or numbers in this contract as days and then weeks ticked by.
For many of the families I know with students receiving Special Education services, the strike was a major blow, limiting access to vital educational services. In our case, our son, due to his disability, is an emerging reader and writer who was significantly impacted by the school closures related to COVID-19.
Introducing Article 9
Article 9 offers a window into how district and union leaders (and educators) in Portland are thinking about issues around safety (teachers & students), discipline, and behavioral support.
In the contract, Article 9 focuses on many pressing & sensitive issues around “Student Support, Discipline & Safety” that can affect students.
As one example, a letter (dated Oct 12, 2022) from district leaders made a plea to parents and caregivers advocating for significant changes to Article 9. It is titled, Increase PPS Students’ Sense of Belonging and Safety: Addressing the Negative Impacts of Article 9 that Disproportionately Affect Black, Latino, and Students of Color.
Note: In a 2016 bargaining session, Article 9 proposed creating a Rapid Response Team in response to rising concerns about staff and student safety (current proposal here)
Flashback…one year ago
About a year ago, I was working for Portland Public Schools as a Program Administrator overseeing the Rapid Response Team. In my role, I observed the adverse effects of pandemic-related closures on core systems of school support, I talked with many educators who felt distressed (and stretched), and I witnessed the complex and acute needs of students in Portland’s neighborhood schools. I also faced the daunting task of addressing the complex needs of students emerging from the pandemic after missing years of in-person education.
What is the Rapid Response Team?
RRT has grown and shrunk in size in its short life (today full-time 4 positions).
By design, RRT is an interdisciplinary, district-serving team (i.e., not based in a school) that consists of an administrator (my role), a Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA), a Qualified Mental Health Professional, and two Student Advocates. It’s a unique program serving a smorgasbord of student issues that impact educators and classrooms.
The Rapid Response Team (RRT) is also a form of support that PAT and district leaders seem to agree can benefit educators. and students by offering crisis and stabilization assistance.
How does RRT work?
Any educator who needs extra support for a student can contact RRT staff for consultation by calling or emailing the team. Next, RRT staff offer on or off-site coaching & action-planning to help support students perceived by educators as unsafe or exceeding the capacity of a building’s Student Intervention Team (SIT) to address alone.
Typically, RRT staff accompany a school team for 3-5 weeks until the school’s team believes they have stabilized the behavior(s) of concern.
Day in the life of RRT
I worked with one school team to support a student to simply enter their classroom safely for 1 hour a day of instruction (fully clothed and with shoes on). RRT team members worked for 3 weeks with this school, often in the parking lot, brainstorming tactics with the teacher, principal, and counselor to help a first-grade student access their education. Despite our joint efforts, the student rarely made it to school and when his mother moved him out of the district, RRT closed the case. The student’s needs also required hours of staff time and coordination between district and build teams.
I also recall cases in which cell phone images were sent to us from educators of torn-up classrooms or damage to school materials caused by students biting, kicking, or launching objects at adults or their peers.
At times, RRT staff saw a need to modify or coach educators. Educators varied in their openness to receive and implement feedback. As the image below reveals, students with BIG behaviors could trigger room clears or tie up administrative time to address. These behaviors often shook up educators or made them feel helpless or unsupported in their classrooms.
Outside of Special Education
All of the students RRT served were not yet identified for Special Education services (per a district agreement), although some were in the process of being evaluated for Special Education services by district personnel per the request of a school’s team or a parent/caregiver.
Note: It is not the case that disruptive behaviors warrant or are best served by enlisting Special Education services or evaluations. Interestingly, research shows that schools with established tiered behavioral systems can have stronger partnerships between general and special education personnel.1
Who was referred to RRT?
There were patterns in RRT data about the types of students referred for intensive or Tier 3 support. Here are a few trends:
About half the students referred to RRT during my time in the district were Black & Latinx boys.
Many students were referred from K-2 classrooms for elopement (leaving the classroom unsupervised) & physical aggression.
Students often came from lower-income schools across the district.
RRT also served several higher-income schools in the district where extra staffing to support students outside of classrooms (e.g., social workers, and counselors) was often lower due to district funding formulas.
Increasing staffing to address student mental health
As I mentioned in Part 1, Article 9 of the new teachers’ contract proposes tripling to add 12 full-time staff to RRT by the 2024-25 school year.
Will tripling the size of the RRT/Tier 3 make a difference for students needing more intensive behavioral or mental health support?
Below, I’ll explore this question in a few ways by reflecting on lessons I learned from consulting on RRT cases and from drawing on related research.
Are the kids alright?
Dr. Mark Weist and a group of leading researchers published a sobering report2 that reinforces what many educators likely already know — we need to be thinking much more expansively about the mental health needs of students.
The report shows the percentage of students needing intensive support (i.e., Tier 2 & 3) in schools is much higher than the 5% previously estimated. They found approximately 20% of students attending schools need intensive school-based mental health support. They arrived at this figure by collecting data from hospitals, schools, and other youth-serving organizations. Here are examples of the data they drew from:
29 studies from around the world have concluded that the prevalence of childhood anxiety and depression doubled from pre-pandemic estimates3
Yearly prevalence of any mental health disorder (e.g., anxiety, depression, disruptive behavior disorders) rose from 11.0% in 2012 to 14.8% in 2018. This represents a 34.5% escalation over 6 years.4
The sharpest increases occurred for anxiety and depression, particularly among girls and adolescents
An analysis from the University of Washington showed that for youth will more intensive needs 22% were served by school-based health services.5
How do schools deliver support to 1000s of kids?
Portland, like many school districts nationally, has adopted a multi-tiered approach to supporting its students and educators. If you are not familiar with multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), the idea was borrowed and evolved from community health settings and has been implemented in schools over the past 30+ years.
Positive Behavioral Supports and Interventions (PBIS; a multi-tiered behavioral framework) has been implemented by as many as 1 in 5 schools (or approximately 29,000 schools) in the US and is part of the approach Portland Public Schools has also adopted (see lots of language on tiered supports in article 9) to address the mental health needs of students.
Developers of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) have suggested that in a well-functioning tiered prevention system, 80% of students would likely benefit from Tier 1 supports alone (i.e., universal prevention), with approximately 15% of students requiring additional Tier 2 support (selective prevention), and 5% of students requiring intensive Tier 3 intervention.6
“Right-sizing” school-based mental health support
Even if we estimated that 5% of Portland’s students need intensive or Tier 3 behavioral or mental health support, a district team of 12-15 mental health specialists would be hard-pressed to adequately serve these students’ needs…(approximately 2,100)
When you consider that 20% (8,600) of students may need to access intensive support, it makes sense why many schools have focused on bolstering universal supports (Tier 1) to reduce the number of students who may need Tier 2 or 3 level support. It also makes a case for bolstering building-base support vs. adding more district-level staff.
Universal or Tier 1 behavioral support can look like students regularly receiving lessons on social-emotional curriculum, positively acknowledging students, facilitating restorative morning circles, or implementing character-building programs. It can also look like ensuring every student is connected to at least one adult. Some school districts have implemented universal behavioral screening processes to identify concerns and intervene with students earlier in the academic year.
The challenge schools face
Yet, many schools continue to struggle to implement and sustain robust universal systems. Furthermore, available data (collected before COVID-19) suggest adequate implementation of Tier 2 & 3 systems drops off significantly for many districts using the PBIS framework.7 Tier 2 supports can be hard to organize in schools and less accessible than teachers would like for students (e.g., counseling groups, mentoring, daily check-in for students).8
As a result, students don’t experience a “tiered-continuum of support”, instead they go from Tier 1 support (i.e., classroom instruction, taught school-wide expectations, receiving acknowledgments) to Tier 3 level support (e.g., behavior plans), or worse, are disciplined when a school team can’t manage to meet their individual needs.9
When school-wide behavior systems atrophy or are not regularly assessed, it can be much harder to know if the mental health support offered to students is working in the short or long term.
In other words, without adequate Tier 1 and 2 level supports in place in schools, Tier 3 supports can quickly become the de facto intervention for educators who may not have other viable options to draw upon.
I found a lot of variability in how schools in Portland understood and delivered tiered support, especially at more advanced levels (i.e., Tier 3). This is a common issue, especially for larger, urban districts where teacher turnover can be higher and where you are likely to find multiple initiatives and departments vying for educators’ limited training time.
Race & student support
Portland Public has invested significant resources and time to address racial inequity by working with BIPOC community partners, offering ongoing professional development, revising discipline codes, and renaming buildings to address past grievances inflicted upon BIPOC communities.
RRT was designed to serve all students. Yet, RRT program data clearly shows many of the students referred for extra support are disproportionately black or Latino boys from K-2 grade. As the district looks to expand the capacity of teams like RRT or other crisis-based services across PPS, I hope that PAT and district leaders will carefully monitor the extent to which adding “support” could inadvertently harm BIPOC students by leading to inappropriate referrals for Special Education Services, or worse, use of exclusionary discipline.
So, what lesson did I learn from working with RRT?
The are 3 areas I have reflected on from my time working in PPS and from reviewing updates to Article 9.
1. Aligning supports at Tiers 2 & 3
Alignment is an ingredient that I’ve seen both help and hinder teachers in PPS and elsewhere to effectively serve students with intensive needs. Alignment (e.g., cross-teaming) is not easily achieved in practice, especially in districts where relationships between the “central office” staff and educators can feel stained or distant (think Michael Scott coaching warehouse staff on how to operate a forklift).
For me, a not-so-insignificant problem was overcoming a widely held perception (earned or not) that staff working in district or management roles are “out of touch” or lacked a nuanced understanding needed to understand and help address issues school staff are facing (Even though many of the individuals working in central office roles are lifelong educators with many years logged in classrooms).
Another part of aligning intensive support for students requires regularly assessing the status of school-based teams and adequately supporting staff overseeing student interventions (e.g., teachers, counselors, admin, and district staff). I relied on the reports and acumen of school-based staff (e.g., social workers, counselors, and teachers) to help identify where additional resources could be best deployed.
Ongoing efforts to coordinate and align district and build-based behavioral supports have been a challenge for larger districts like Portland, but some initiatives were also jettisoned due to the pandemic school closures or were impacted by sub and staffing shortages that continue today.
The good news is that the knowledge and systems to build and assess multi-tiered supports exist in Portland, but just need sustained and focused attention by district leaders to let the infrastructure take root.
Article 9 includes a lot of language related to having PPS school staff conduct at least annual assessments of building-level multi-tiered systems of support using research-validated tools.
2. Understanding the behavioral & developmental needs of younger learners (K-2)
As described above, a majority of the referrals to RRT came from K-2 classrooms. Many younger students referred to RRT were impacted by trauma, lacked foundational educational skills, or acted out significantly with their peers or educators. When I think of school mental health or see what gets highlighted in the media, I don’t think about kindergarteners. However, it was clear that younger learners and the teachers who support them in Portland’s early elementary classrooms needed significant behavioral and mental health support.
I was fortunate to work with RRT team members and have access to community partners who could engage with families and caregivers for cases referred to RRT. Portland has also taken important steps to build up universal pre-schools that will likely help address or identify the needs of early learners in the long term. I also found it valuable to consult frequently with kindergarten transition teams, county mental health providers, and early childhood specialists who were skilled at finding developmentally appropriate supports for younger students with lagging academic and social skills.
3. Balancing Support with Accountability
Among the most critical elements for delivering effective behavioral support for students with more intensive needs is balancing support with accountability.
Outside of the umbrella of Special Education, students with intensive needs in general education settings do not receive the legal protections afforded to their peers identified with disabilities who are covered by federal law. Unlike a student on an Individual Education Plan (IEP), general educators are not required by law to implement safety or behavior support plans for students in general education settings.
In other words, the effectiveness of a general education student’s Behavior Support Plan (a common Tier 3 intervention - see graph above) depends on the efficacy, training, and follow-through of a school’s Student Intervention Team (if a school has one up and running) or its leadership team. As I mentioned above, in a larger district like Portland, there can be a lot of variability across schools about how, when, and why Tier 3 supports are implemented.
Article 9 includes detailed language around developing classroom expectations and procedures specifying Tier 1, 2, and 3 supports (9.4.1) & added trauma-informed (vs. individual standards) that are more restorative and less punitive for students (9.4.3).
With more demanding or extreme student behaviors balancing support with accountability can quickly become a moving target for educators already managing other student needs along with their primary role — teaching. However, I found Tier 3 support is best facilitated by building-based staff who know the students best vs. a district team like RRT
So, back to the question…
Will increasing the size of the RRT/Tier 3 team make a difference for students with more intensive needs?
The answer for me is a big MAYBE for the reasons I hope are clearer after reading this post.
To review…
Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of children’s behavior and mental health issues. It’s no longer the case that only 5% of students warrant more intensive levels of assistance in schools — now it’s closer to 20% according to many estimates. However, many school systems are still operating off the 5% estimate.
Crisis-based or stabilization supports in school systems such as RRT will be much more effective and equitable when embedded as part of a graduated continuum of tiered supports (vs. a stand-alone or siloed program). Building-based staff such as school counselors, social workers, and school psychologists need to be leading interventions because they know the students best.
Without a robust system of 1, 2 & 3 support in place, educators will jump from Tier 1 (universal) to Tier 3 (individualized) skipping a lot of steps in between to assess and understand what students need. Also, students and educators can lose out when schools don’t implement less intensive/costly group-based Tier 1 & 2 supports (e.g., counseling groups, check-in check-out, restorative chats, acknowledgment systems).
Without ongoing data collection, consistent teaming, robust evidence of tiered supports, and implementation of culturally responsive approaches —- adding more staff to RRT could lead to inadvertently widening racial disparities the district is trying to eliminate. The RRT shows that young BIPOC students are disproportionately referred for intensive support
The data RRT staff collects to move upstream toward the root of the problem. For example, the data younger learners are often referred to RRT, highlighting a need to engage parents and caregivers in the RRT consultation process.
Many of the cases that RRT supports take a toll on the educators who witness a majority of these difficult behaviors every day. It is hard to witness extreme or highly disruptive student behaviors, especially from younger learners who may be putting themselves or others in unsafe situations. There is a strong correlation between teacher stress and retention that highlights a need to double down on wellness and SEL approaches for adults working in schools.10
While I understand the efforts to increase teacher compensation and planning time, I’m not sure how meeting these demands will meet the needs of students needing behavioral and mental health support. I also don’t see how tripling the size of RRT (4→12 staff) will do much until more schools can establish coherent, consistent, and sustainable systems of behavioral and mental support.
“This contract is a watershed moment for Portland students, families, and educators. Educators have secured improvements on all our key issues... Educators walked picket lines alongside families, students, and allies — and because of that, our schools are getting the added investment they need.”
Angela Bonilla, Portland Teachers Association President
I’m skeptical whether this is a “watershed moment” or a watered-down contract for Portland’s students.
Many unanswered questions remain for me about whether students, especially those with more intensive behavioral needs, “secured improvements” from this long and painful strike.
While the contract includes important updates to Article 9 and other articles aimed at improving policies and practices affecting students, I believe closing schools again for one month only further eroded parents’ and caregivers’ trust and confidence in schools and educators.
I hope moving forward, the district and PAT leaders realize that crisis-based programs such as RRT will only serve to plug holes until schools can implement more comprehensive systems of behavioral support to identify and support students before more costly and time-intensive Tier 3 services are required.
Debrief - What’s your take?
I’d love to hear what you are thinking after reading posts 1 or 2 on Portland’s strike and the new teacher contract.
How does this post relate to your experiences with the schools or districts in your area as a student, educator, parent, or administrator?
What questions or ideas do you have about how to best serve students with more intensive mental health or behavioral needs in schools?
If you are an educator in Portland Public Schools - how did this post resonate with your experiences in your role?
Please share what’s on your mind (in the comments) or email me at eoinbastable@gmail.com
Links:
Portland Teachers’ Contact (2023)
Memorandum of Agreement Mental Health Team between PAT and PPS
Opinion
Substack: Medical Motherhood, Shasta Kearns Moore
Taking Stock of the Portland Teachers’ Strike, Andy Jacobs