UO taps arts and sciences leader to replace 'world's worst schmoozer'

UO’s board named Scott Coltrane to the role after accepting the sudden resignation of Michael Gottfredson Thursday. Coltrane is known for his studies of fathers and families."He investigates why and how men are involved (or uninvolved) in housework and child care and how this influences their partners, their children and their families,” according to his UO staff biography. In the meantime, questions are arising over both Gottfredson’s hiring and departure. The Salem Statesman-Journal reported that he’ll receive $940,000 in severance pay. As the paper pointed out, fundraising fell during Gottfredson’s second year. He also lost supporters within the faculty ranks, said one professor. "He was just tortured by the most basic part of his job where he had to communicate with people," economics professor Bill Harbaugh told the Statesman-Journal."The main job of a university president these days is to raise money ... Gottfredson was the world's worst schmoozer."
www.bizjournals.com/portland/morning_call/2014/08/....html
#orcot #PERS #orpol #orgop #multgop #ducks #beavers #mcmenamins #mcmenamin4OR #oregoneducation


https://chumly.com/n/27c53e9

Michael Gottfredson will get $940K severance as U of O President

And people wonder why their child's tuition is so high? Nearly a $1M in compensation to "mutually part ways"? $360K a year as a tenured instructor? Higher education continues to be out of reach for many families. Folks have asked me what the point was of posting the Portland Public Schools Superintendents 28% Salary Increase for a total compensation of over $300,000 per year. Not to mention Carole Smith's Golden Parachute. I would say the same reason I am reposting this article. These school administrators are not being rewarded from the profits of a company they built. They are being rewarded with Our Tax Dollars that should be going to the children, their classrooms, and teachers. Think of these administrators next time your asked to pass another school bond for repair or for "the children".
www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/08/m_go...river
#orcot #PERS #oregoneducation #oregonhighereducation #Ducks #Beavers #orpol #multgop #mcmenamin4or


https://chumly.com/n/27c4eb4

Portland Superintendent Carole Smith's New salary of $257,000 stack up in Oregon.

The news of a pay raise for Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith has generated a lot of discussion. Portland's school board is getting ready to give Smith, who has been at the helm of Oregon's largest district since 2007, a big raise. One proposal pegged the increase as high as 33 percent, though board members insist the proposal has not been finalized. For context, a $257,000 salary is the equivalent of Smith receiving a 3.85 percent raise every year since she began seven years ago. The chart only includes salary, not additional annuities that are fairly common among superintendents. Smith currently earns a $1,500 monthly annuity, and a proposal by board leadership wanted to up that to $2,500 a month. What do you think of the proposal? Should other school board members approve such an amount, or lobby for a smaller raise?
www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/07/how_...river

Oklahoma Supreme Court upholds Common Core repeal

Missouri isn't the only state backing out of Common Core, as the Oklahoma Supreme Court upholds the state legislature's decision to remove the state from the federally funded program. This is another victory for parental rights.
www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/15/okla-supreme-c...epeal

Shemia Fagan Ducks Vote To Hold Public Employees Who Are Sex Offenders Accountable!!

In one of the most startling and cowardly moves last regular session, Shemia Fagan hid-out to avoid taking a vote that protects children from sexual abuse by public employees. When the bill was pulled to the floor of the House, Fagan was nowhere to be found. She arrived fashionably late just after the vote and her Democratic leadership covered it up by marking her"excused for house business.” She had no committees or work groups at the time that would have trumped her responsibilities on the House Floor. Unbelievably, a victim of sexual abuse has a two-year window to bring a civil suit when their abuser is a public employee (represented by unions that fund Shemia Fagan’s political campaigns). This bill would have closed the loophole that the Department of Justice testified would affect 20 victims per year.
shemiafagan.org/?p=89

Oregon state employees to receive early cost-of-living increases this year!!

SALEM — Oregon state employees are getting their cost-of-living pay increases a little early this year, based on the way benefits are calculated under the contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75 contract. Union spokesman Don Loving told the Statesman Journal that the state has agreed to give all state workers a 2 percent raise, likely starting in September rather than December.
www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ss....html

The Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission is considering a proposal called"Pay-It-Forward.”

"Pay-It-Forward” Is a Step Back: By Joel Grey of The Cascade Policy Institute. The Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission is considering a proposal called"Pay-It-Forward.” This pilot program would give free tuition at a state university to one thousand high school graduates each year, beginning in 2016. In exchange for free tuition, students would cede 3-5% of their paychecks over a twenty-year period. Although the program is intended to become self-sustaining, it would cost between $6.5 and $20 million each year for the first twenty years until that happened. This is an example of a government proposal that is not well thought out. Yale tried a similar experiment in the 1970s and eventually forgave much of the debt years later. Many students overpaid for their education, while 20% defaulted. Oregon shouldn’t repeat Yale’s mistake.
oregoncatalyst.com/27796-payitforward-step.html?ut...alyst)

Study Portland teachers among most absent in nation

The study found that Portland had 62% of teachers who were frequently absent. On average, Portland teachers miss 14 days each school year, according to the research. That did not count serious, long-term illnesses or pregnancies but it did include training days. According to the study, Portland has more than 600 teachers classified as "chronically absent" or missing more than 18 days of school each year.
www.kgw.com/news/Study-Many-Portland-teacher-absen....html

Chief clerk of Oregon House, Ramona Line, resigns over PERS lobbying

The longtime chief clerk of the Oregon House has been bounced from her post over her lobbying for a 2007 bill amendment that may have benefited her financially. The resignation comes as The Oregonian had launched an investigation into the 2007 bill and Line's role. The amendment Line lobbied for allowed a very limited group of PERS members to repurchase past service credit and retirement account balances they had previously liquidated with money rolled over from the state's deferred compensation plan. The repurchase gave Line full credit for her retirement, plus interest while she continued working. She was among a small number of PERS members who qualified under the amendment.
www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/05/chie...river

KATU Obtained a Report from Oregon Listing State Workers' Salaries Compared to those in the Private Sector.

Thank You Jeff Krupf and Oregon Capital Watch for bringing this to Steve Dunn at KATU.
The state is using an average salary for groups of employees. So imagine an employee is making $10,000 a month in total compensation in the private sector, and say the state worker is making a market ratio of 140 percent. That means the state worker would make $14,000 in total compensation a month for doing basically the same job as someone in the private sector. "When I served in the Legislature, I never knew this report existed," Kropf said. "Nobody in that building sees this report. Only the governor sees it, the Department of Administrative Services, and the unions because this is use for collective bargaining."
www.katu.com/politics/Report-Many-state-workers-to....html

More than one-third of Top 50 PERS recipients are retired educators!!

Most of those are retired college professors, primarily from fields such as math, science and engineering. But four of Oregon's Top 25 PERS pensions go to retirees who worked in K-12 education, including retired Lake Oswego Superintendent Bill Korach, former Portland Public Schools human resources director Steve Goldschmidt and retired Beaverton Superintendent Jerry Colonna. You can see the whole list, obtained by Oregonian investigative reporter Ted Sickinger, in a searchable database by The Oregonian and OregonLive.
www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/04/mor....html

Why Don't Public Schools Give Parents What They Want?

"No principal or teacher will get a raise for attracting more students to his or her school. A successful manager in a private business gets a raise, or gets hired away for a bigger salary. A successful entrepreneur expands his or her store or opens a branch. Can one imagine a public school choice system allowing a successful principal to open another school across town and run both of them?" Educational Savings Accounts A innovative concept that is capturing the attention of young parents and new policy makers. Going beyond the voucher or tax credit idea for school choice, ESA’s introduce market concepts that help parents become active shoppers for educational services, thus improving their quality while reducing costs.
www.cato.org/blog/why-dont-public-schools-give-par...uffer

Department of Human Services caseworker arrested on DUII while responding to incident!!

Your Tax Dollars Hard At Work. Say It's Not So? Hillsboro police say they arrested a state Department of Human Services on-call caseworker on a drunken driving accusation while the woman reportedly was responding to an abuse incident to help Hillsboro officers on New Year’s Eve. Alysse Renee Carlson, 26, of Beaverton, was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence of intoxicants, said Lt. Mike Rouches, a Hillsboro police spokesman. A breath test at the Washington County Jail showed Carlson’s blood-alcohol level was .25 percent, which is more than three times the legal limit, Rouches said.
www.oregonlive.com/hillsboro/index.ssf/2014/01/hil...itter

Oregon schools pack in most students per teacher in history!!

Oregon's student-teacher ratios, long some of the highest in the nation, rose to dramatic new highs of about 22 students per teacher in 2012-13, the state reported last week. Check out the exact numbers in my chart below.
The national average for 2011-12, the most recent figure available, was 16 students per teacher, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That suggests that Oregon teachers, on average, shoulder about 35 percent more students than the typical U.S. teacher.
www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/12/ore....html

Have tuition hikes priced Oregonians out of higher Education?

The wave of new students who enrolled at Oregon's seven public universities when the economy soured is coming to an end. The state's public universities released data last week that show less than a 2 percent gain in enrollment, below the 3-to-5 percent gains in the four years after the economic crash. According to Oregon University System data, the cost of 15 credit hours increased by an average of 73 percent at the state's seven public universities between the 2005-2006 to the 2013-2014 academic year. At Portland State University, tuition rose 74 percent during that time period to $2,205; at the University of Oregon, tuition rose 90 percent to $2,760; and at Oregon State University (Corvallis campus only), tuition rose 64 percent to $2,292.
www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2013/11/19/enrol....html

Tax Means Public Employees’ Benefits Board (PEBB) changes likely!

State workers’ health insurance is likely to undergo substantial changes in coming years or the state is going to owe millions of dollars in federal taxes, according to Public Employees’ Benefits Board analysts. The Affordable Care Act imposes a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans that are too"rich,” which means the premiums are more expensive than a set level. It can cost no more than $850 per month to insure an individual and no more than $2,291 per month for a family plan under the law, and it doesn’t matter how the employer and employee split those costs. It’s the total that counts. Employers whose plans are above those levels must pay the tax or find a way to avoid it, which often means cutting benefits.
www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20131120/NEWS/311...eck=1

Oregon receives an F- on Public Reporting of State Education Dept School Funding

Oregon’s Department of Education provides more than ten years of Actual Operating vs. Capital Expenditures Per Student reports. The reports contain operating per pupil expenditure data, but fail to provide total per pupil expenditures. Oregon is missing the most recent year of per pupil expenditures. Oregon’s Statewide Annual Report Card includes a table that allows citizens to compare changes in per pupil expenditures over time, though the figures are limited to three years at the state level and they are not adjusted for inflation.
"Oregon does not provide average salary data at the district level nor any average employee benefits".
www.cato.org/cracking-books/oregon

Oregon school performance ratings

The state created a five-tier rating system designed to give slightly more than half of schools one of the top two ratings.
Level 5 schools: These 114 schools performed in the top 10 percent statewide.
Level 4 schools: This is the broadest performance category, covering 557 schools that ranked from the 90th percentile down to the 44th%
Level 3 schools: These 356 schools performed below average to well below average.
Level 2 schools: These 113 schools performed in the bottom 15 percent statewide. The federal government considers these schools in serious need of improvement.
Level 1 schools: These 54 schools rank in the worst 5 percent, and the feds consider them in dire need of improvement. They have low test scores, low student growth, poor achievement by low-income students or, for high schools, atrocious graduation rates.
www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/10/ore...photo

Fast Times At Portlnd Public High Schools!!

This week's Willamette Week reports that: Portland Public Schools created an eight -period class day; "limited most students to seven class periods spread over two days" and that now fewer than half of high school students attend class for a full day. This sounds almost too crazy to be true. More importantly, it sounds to me like a fact that might finally wake up Portlanders to the truth that their Democratic leadership has destroyed the schools. Does anyone have children in Portland public high schools who can comment on this? by James Buchal.
www.wweek.com/portland/article-21455-fast_times_at....html

Gov. Kitzhaber undermining rights of parents!!

Governor Kitzhaber has put himself in charge of Oregon’s Education System and Oregon’s healthcare network: the Oregon Health Authority. As a result of this double take-over, there is a Triple Threat to our children and their families. That threat includes the Network of School Based Health Centers (SBHCs); the grades K-12 Comprehensive Sexuality Education Standards that the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) promotes; and the Annual Adolescent Sexuality Conference in Seaside (ASC). And what makes this Triple Threat even more unreasonable is that the governor is using our money to pay for it!
oregoncatalyst.com/25291-gov-kitzhaber-undermining....html