TO: Portland Public Schools Board et. al.

"the Portland Public Schools shortfall next year, ... projected ... to $51 million. The following year ... the shortfall could grow to a total of $98 million."
( http://www.portlandonline.com/oni?c=29385&a=73600 )

Before we get to the health care part, consider this:
"...HAP [Housing Authority of Portland] and the school district continue to meet in an effort to build a much needed elementary school...[at Columbia Villa]
(New Columbia News, Issue 12, Winter)

So the question arises, with a $98,000,000 deficit looming over the next two years and a general decline in enrollment throughout the Portland Public Schools why are paid employees of PPS spending time meeting with HAP about building a school that was originally proposed by HAP and for which there doesn't seem to be a snowball's chance in Hell of finding the money to build it?

Now on to the health care portion of our program
"PPS has already weathered many lean years, and has taken action to cut costs in many ways already, such as containing district health care spending."
( http://www.portlandonline.com/oni?c=29385&a=73600 )

Average annual health insurance cost per PPS employee: $9,066+? (PPS)* to $11,160 (Oregonian)
( http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/110518951384020.xml )

The Portland Public Schools, almost certainly, provides a more generous and costly health care plan than any other local government or school district in the state of Oregon. It has been the most contentious issue during contract negotiations for many, many years. So you might imagine that when presented with the Oregon Community Health Care Bill*, which has the potential to save the school district $18,000,000 per year as well as provide affordable health care to all Oregonians, you'd think the members of the school board would be aggressively supportive. Unfortunately, that is not the case. As a result, there will be consequences despite the interest of one board member who told me it was a good idea.

School Board Plans - My Response
"The local option property tax levy, worth $33.5 million, expires at the end of this school year. The School Board is weighing the option of putting the local option on the May ballot."

"the district will push for the Legislature to increase state support over the Governor's recommended level."
( http://www.portlandonline.com/oni?c=29385&a=73600 )

My wife and I met in 1969 while teaching at East Orange High School. We moved to Oregon in 1971. Since that time we have voted for every bond, levy and tax increase that involved schools, libraries, parks, etc. However, that decades old pattern is about to change dramatically. Personal necessity has brought affordable health care to the top of our list of priorities. We will no longer vote to maintain or increase any levy, bond or tax for any public entity which does not fully support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill* or a similar bill which provides affordable health care for all Oregonians and can reduce government/public education health care costs by twenty percent.

I will encourage the governor and the legislature to reject any requests from the Portland Public Schools, or any school district for that matter, to increase funding beyond the level established in the current budget. The legislature must put its energies and resources into the highest priority, namely, providing affordable health care for all Oregonians.

As a political activist for almost thirty years with a statewide readership of about five thousand for my Oregon Health Watchers commentary I intend to use my experience and resources to inform, educate and hopefully persuade my audience that our community, the three million of us that live under the same umbrella of laws on the same piece of land we call Oregon, must work out a system to provide affordable health care for all of us. Rural, urban, suburban, Independents, Republicans and Democrats, everyone must be included.

Public employees must be part of this process. Public employees are not entitled to nor should they expect health care benefits greater than those of any voter or taxpayer that contributes to public employee health insurance premiums. Public employees must understand that their health care gain has been a health care loss to many hundreds of thousands of Oregonians and cannot be allowed to continue. The cost of health care to individual Oregonians, our Oregon governments and Oregon's public educational institutions is out of control. That must stop.

We Oregonians have figured out how to practice a better form of democracy with vote-by-mail. We Oregonians have figured out how to deal with those suffering pain at life's end by compassionate and humane death with dignity legislation. We can and we must do the same with health care by making it affordable to all Oregonians.

Richard Ellmyer
Portland, Oregon
* http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html