Portland State’s budget and tuition are decided on by its Board of Trustees. The PSU community faces a choice: a board that will continue on its current course of three years of regular tuition increases and painful layoffs of teaching faculty and student supports while the numbers of highly paid administrators just keep growing or appoint trustees who will champion best practices for quality, accessible public higher education and deep investment in PSU.

We have a choice:

Economist Mary King has been a community leader, is a former PSU faculty member, Chair of the Economics Department, and President of the union for fulltime faculty and academic professionals including student advisors. She’s a puzzle-piece perfect fit for Portland State’s Board of Trustees: a respected voice to help Board members better understand PSU and public higher ed, push for a student-centered budget, encourage the Board to build funding for PSU and strengthen PSU's critical role as a local engine of economic mobility for the most ethnically and economically diverse student body in the state.

Or more layoffs, understaffing, and tuition increases:

The current Board of Trustees Finance and Administration chair Sheryl Manning has been a strong advocate of draconian budget cuts, which have led to the unnecessary and counterproductive layoffs of 17 of our faculty colleagues. In choosing to “cut to the bone” while $185M sits in reserves, PSU administrators are defying standards and research around best supporting the educational outcomes of BIPOC students. Our teaching conditions are students’ learning conditions. Manning’s current term on the Board ends on June 30th.

Email Governor Kotek and ask her not to reappoint Sheryl Manning to the PSU Board. Instead, appoint Mary King who has a higher education background and will champion our working conditions and students’ learning conditions, not cut PSU “to the bone.”