The Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) walked out on strike yesterday, closing eighty-one schools. The 4,500-member union is demanding more counselors, more planning time for teachers, more support for special education students, smaller class sizes, and increased salaries and cost-of-living adjustments.

The union’s demands “are a paradigm shift for the state of Oregon,” said ninth-grade teacher Sarah Mykkanen. “We aren’t just reacting to something negative, we are demanding a whole new view of what schools do, of how schools give students what they need.”

The union represents classroom teachers in the Portland Public Schools. While the district’s teachers have authorized strikes in the past, they’ve never walked out, though they’ve worked for as long as two years without a contract. Members I spoke to say they’d felt demoralized and defeated.