Bailey Thompson | News Editor

Rising early, joining together and donning red shirts, Oregon educators in Portland, Salem, Eugene, Medford, Bend and Klamath Falls made a statement on May 8, 2019. With thousands of teachers, students and community members going out into their neighborhoods throughout the state, their message was clear: pass the Student Success Act.

“The Student Success Act is a bill that is designed to start making up for the disinvestment in education that began in the early nineties with Measure 5. It would reduce class sizes, it would provide mental health care, it would provide pre-k funding — it would really do a lot to change our schools and to start to get them back to where they belong,” said Ben Gorman, English teacher at Central High School. “It’s not the end of the road … but this is a real excellent start for our students and what they need.”

On the day of the walkout, a large number of Central School District teachers got up early to stand outside CHS, then go to a larger event in Salem and finally come back to CHS at the end of the day. Community members honked continually in support for those holding signs.

As of May 8, this piece of legislation had passed through the Oregon House of Representatives; however, on May 13, it passed through the Oregon Senate, as well.

When speaking about the motivation for this school walk-out, Gorman shared the sentiment that had led many teachers to protest.

“So often teachers are just so exhausted by a very difficult job, and they say to themselves, ‘I need to focus on my own kids, and I can’t focus on politics of how to support my kids,’” said Gorman. “But we’ve gotten to the point where teachers are saying, ‘Enough is enough. I can’t possibly do this.’”

After educators had protested in a similar way on President’s Day without any reaction from the legislature, Central Education Association President and math teacher Laura Waight described the shift that took place.

“The conversation began to transition to ‘how do we get the legislators’ attention?’ And the only way: shut it down,” said Waight. “Shut it down and show them that we’re willing to take an unpaid day to show them how serious we are.”

While some people may be opposed to the Student Success Act for fear of their taxes raising, Gorman shared why this fear is unfounded.

“One of the things you’ll hear is ‘this is going to be a tax increase on the people in our state,’ and that’s just false. In fact, if it passes, this will be a tax cut for your average Oregonian,” said Gorman.

“What the Student Success Act has done, which is historic in Oregon, is to ask corporations that make a million dollars or more in the state of Oregon for a small tax on that money,” added Waight. “The same corporations which were against something like this (with bills in the past) are now for it — Nike, Powell’s, HP, and some other big Oregon companies are now saying, ‘please tax us because we see the result of having underfunded schools.’”

In the end, both Waight and Gorman asserted that support for students is something that should be a universal goal — not something considered partisan — even if you believe it should be done another way, as approximately 25% of teachers in the district do.

“We can’t say that standing on the street corner or going to Salem is going to change anything, but what we do know for sure is that if we continue not to do anything, then nothing will change,” said Waight. “We have to change the game.”

The final step before the Student Success Act is passed is for it to be signed by Governor Brown.

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

Photos by Bailey Thompson