Portland Public Schools And Its Teachers Reach Negotiating Impasse

Portland Public Schools board member Trudy Sargent just sent out this email to report that the school district has told a state mediator that its negotiations with the teachers union have reached an impasse.

The 3,200-member Portland Association of Teachers has been working without a new contract for more than 19 months, and obviously has been unhappy over that state of affairs. Negotiations entered state-supervised mediation on Aug. 25.

Notification of an impasse in the negotiatons triggers a requirement that both sides publish full final offers within seven days, and then there's a minimum 30-day cooling-off period after those final offers are published.

A minimum of a 30-day cooling-off period follows the publication of final offers.