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At an age when most Portland Public Schools students are checking the mailbox for college acceptance letters, Jorge Sanchez Bautista came within 1,000 votes of winning elected office.
On election night, Virginia La Forte, 54, a brand strategist and longtime parent advocate, held a healthy lead for the School Board seat representing Zone 5. But as late ballots arrived, Sanchez Bautista, 18, a McDaniel High School student and community activist, narrowed the gap. At press deadline, La Forte led by 814 votes—enough to secure the seat, given how few ballots remained to be counted, but by a margin of only eight-tenths of a percent.
Sanchez Bautista’s showing might seem surprising. But he had the backing of the Portland Association of Teachers.
Angela Bonilla, president of the teachers’ union, says Sanchez Bautista impressed about 40 educators who took part in the union’s endorsement process because of his experience mobilizing students and community members who aren’t usually heard from. “There’s a misconception that age means experience,” she says.
There are certainly observers who don’t believe he would’ve gotten so close without PAT. “The teachers’ union is always influential, and they have the ability to tap large sums of money to influence an election. They demonstrated that in their engagement this time around in Zone 5,” says departing School Board member Julia Brim-Edwards, who endorsed La Forte. “[The union] essentially made a candidate with very little to no experience in terms of governance or engagement other than as a student in Portland schools a viable candidate.”
The May 20 results show the steady power and unyielding influence PAT exerts in local School Board elections. Sanchez Bautista was the only candidate of the four the union backed who lost—and by a fingernail—while the $1.83 billion PPS bond, criticized for sky-high construction costs and its vague contents, passed with flying colors. The board member who most loudly criticized the bond, Herman Greene, is gone—ousted by Rashelle Chase-Miller, a union-backed challenger.
The union’s victories are all the more notable since this was the first election since the teacher strike in fall 2023, which bitterly divided parents. Last week’s results signal that any lingering frustrations with PAT’s role in the strike are gone—or, at least, inconsequential.
To be sure, there are other commonalities among the winning candidates. Brim-Edwards points out that they are all moms who “could point to a track record of working for schools and our students.” As chair of the bond’s political action committee, she adds the measure got over the hump because of three key factors: It wasn’t a tax hike, it allocated dollars for elementary and middle school improvements, and the School Board made a last-minute commitment to seismic retrofits. “The teachers’ union’s financial support was important because it allowed us to communicate [that] to voters,” Brim-Edwards says.
Still, it’s clear the union’s endorsement aided some decisive victories as it campaigned to “flip” the School Board. In Zones 1 and 6, Christy Splitt and Stephanie Engelsman won their races decisively, with more than 80% of the vote each. (PAT contributed $3,366 to Splitt and $12,302 to Engelsman.)
“You get that shorthand with [the PAT] endorsement, where people can look and know this person stands with teachers, stands with schools,” Splitt says. “I’m in it for the kids, for the educational outcomes, but I’m also in it because…I want to also see our schools thrive for the people that work there.”
In Zone 4, Chase-Miller, a literacy advocate and program director at SMART Reading, handily defeated incumbent Greene with close to 60% of the vote. (PAT did not consider Greene or La Forte for endorsements; Bonilla says Greene did not attend the endorsement interview and La Forte did not reach out proactively, though that is a matter of dispute.)
The strike was on union leaders’ minds as they funded campaigns. PAT spent close to $14,000 to help Chase-Miller unseat Greene. In 2023, PAT president Angela Bonilla told The Oregonian that Greene was one of three School Board members whose efforts blocked the union from reaching some of its goals. Bonilla says the strike was, for many teachers, a wake-up call to become more involved. “It just became so clear that these folks did not understand their role and were not up for the moment,” she says.
Christian Gaston, a former aide to Gov. Kate Brown who now works as a political consultant, says the teachers’ union harnessed the grassroots support it built during the strike and used it to appeal to voters frustrated with the school district.
“I think what they benefited most from in this election was the ability to say, ‘Let’s keep the bond program moving, but let’s change the leadership on the board,’” Gaston says. “I think that was a pretty attractive message for voters. It’s pretty clear that voters are just looking for some fresh ideas.”
Bonilla tells WW the election is a signal that voters trust the union and its members to advocate for schools. This was the first School Board election in which the union allowed any member who attended its endorsement interviews to recommend candidates for endorsement by PAT’s eight-member political action committee. She says the new setup means PAT’s endorsements reflect a democratic process.
“Folks care about what the people who are within our schools say about what our schools need,” Bonilla says. “It’s a testament to the hard work that our educators did…to knock on doors. I think folks believed us, they did the research. We tried to present what [our endorsed candidates] have done and here’s why we think they’re the great champions our schools need.”