The short Oregon legislative session is often described as a sprint. Education advocates will barely have time to catch their breath after Thursday night’s finish before they are training for the 2025 marathon session.
Bills brought forth in 2024, even if they didn’t pass, are laying the course for the State School Fund debate coming in 2025.
“Funding and accountability will be the two biggest issues going into the 2025 session,” said OSBA Legislative Services Director Lori Sattenspiel. “When students are left behind, something isn’t working. We have to ensure our funding models produce adequate school resources to lift up all students.”
Senate Bill 1552, one of the last bills to pass Thursday, promises a potentially system-changing conversation about how Oregon can best serve its children.
SB 1552, an omnibus bill, raises “timely issues that will prepare this body for the 2025 session,” Sen. Michael Dembrow told a committee Wednesday. Tucked among its 41 pages are the seeds of a revolution.
Section 12 directs the Legislative Policy and Research Office to study the “state’s system of financing public education” and the Quality Education Model, the biennial attempt to quantify just what Oregon should be doing to provide good schools.
Legislators aren’t happy with the way Oregon calculates its school funding needs.
The Department of Administrative Services works with the Legislative Fiscal Office to estimate how much it would cost for schools to continue providing the same staff and services during the next budget cycle. That estimate is always hundreds of millions of dollars less than an estimate from education leaders and school business officials using current contracts and expenses. A long and sometimes bruising debate ensues.
SB 1552 calls for establishing a costs baseline and options for “a uniform and equitable” financing system. Education advocates across the spectrum are preparing to make the case for state spending that matches current needs.
Several committees, advocacy associations and informal groups will be running along parallel tracks this year, with Gov. Tina Kotek spearheading one charge. In the wake of the Portland Public Schools teachers strike, Kotek promised to work with the Legislature to establish minimum teacher salaries and review funding for schools.
Kotek also promised to create more transparency around school budgets. OSBA Acting Executive Director Emielle Nischik is part of the advisory committee that has been tasked with “reimagining Oregon’s education accountability framework” to shape legislative proposals for 2025, according to the invite. The group began meeting in February.
In a related lane, the legislative Task Force on Statewide Educator Salaries paused during the short session, but it will heat up again between sessions. A statewide salary schedule could reduce competition between districts but also infringe on local decision-making. OSBA has been talking with school board members about the proposals, and Sattenspiel is on the task force.
The Quality Education Model is another hornets nest being kicked over.
Since 2000, the Quality Education Commission has been tasked with identifying the best models for schools and how much they would cost.
The model frustrates legislators. The Legislature has never come close to funding the QEM. The 2022 model said Oregon needed a 2023-25 State School Fund of $11.9 billion to provide a high-quality public education system. The Legislature allocated $10.2 billion.
The commission itself, which will put out its latest report this summer, says its methods of evaluating costs are outdated and has asked the Legislature to invest in modernizing the model.
“We don’t think it is broken, but it is getting long in the tooth and needs some improvement,” said John Rexford, commission chair. For example, he said, it needs to do a better job of accounting for the differences in rural, urban and suburban schools and differences in high school sizes.
Rexford, however, is adamant the model represents the basics for providing a high-quality education. He said that if the model were aspirational, it would include expanded education programs such as richer career and technical education classes.
Rexford said he hopes the coming school funding discussions include the students, families and staff who will be most affected.
SB 1552 also calls for a review of the costs of special education and a review of possible alternative funding formulas. Bills such as House Bill 4079 and HB 4068, which both stalled in committee, highlight the State School Fund’s failures to equitably distribute funds targeted to individual districts’ needs.
Students with disabilities cost more to educate, and the State School Fund formula provides extra funding for those students. Testimony for HB 4079 and 4068 pointed out that the formula, which hasn’t changed much in decades, isn’t meeting districts’ current needs.
HB 4068 would have increased access to the High Cost Disabilities Account, which provides money for districts with disproportionately high special education costs.
HB 4079 would have removed the arbitrary 11% of enrollment cap on the amount districts receive for students with disabilities when about 15% of U.S. students have disabilities, according to the federal Department of Education. HB 4079 also would have created additional weight in the formula for homeless students.
Such formula changes would affect hundreds of millions in school funding.
“We are really appreciative of those bills because they are a good catalyst for the conversation about funding as we head into the next session,” said Morgan Allen, the deputy director of policy and advocacy for the Coalition of Oregon School Administrators. “How do we calculate a more accurate representation of the true cost of compensating our staff and being able to provide services for our students?”
Allen said one of COSA’s top priorities for the next session would be for schools to receive funding for every student identified with special needs or a disability.
OSBA’s leadership supports targeted spending efforts for underserved students but wants to ensure that money isn’t taken from other deserving students.
“Any changes to the formula without added funding would create winners and losers and potentially harm students,” wrote OSBA Legislative Services Specialist Efren Zamudio in HB 4079 testimony.
Between sessions, advocates for all kinds of constituencies will be approaching legislators for funding. OSBA is one of the few advocacy entities tasked with always keeping the whole education picture in mind.
The 2019 Student Success Act created a new tax, the corporate activities tax, to generate approximately $1 billion a year for education. The money is intended as added education spending to raise student achievement, especially for young people from historically underserved communities, but the Legislature has sometimes treated it as a ready funding source for pet projects.
OSBA, which was instrumental in creating the act, is also one of the act’s chief defenders. Every session produces bills to reduce the tax, but those usually go nowhere. More troubling are the bills that take bites out of the act’s funds.
HB 4084, which passed Wednesday, acknowledges the extra education challenges for foster children. Using act money, the bill will create a pilot program in three schools that will provide an “education advocate” support for foster children. It also required the Oregon Department of Education to create a statewide plan for foster children.
HB 4082, which passed Tuesday, sliced off $30 million from the act for summer learning programs. The Oregon Department of Education, OSBA and school districts are now starting the mad scramble to get that money to schools in time for summer. Already it’s becoming apparent that money will fall short and needy students will be left out. The bill, though, also calls for creating more equitable and sustainable summer learning funding, which will be another avenue of between-session discussions.
HB 5701, the end-of-session clean-up budget bill that passed Thursday, allocates more than $50 million from the Early Learning Account in act for multiple programs. The allocations include $22 million for Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education programs.
The extra EI/ECSE funding was among education advocates’ top goals for this session. The programs’ 2023-25 funding from a mix of federal, state and act money wasn’t enough for growing caseloads, according to advocates. The additional funding will come closer to meeting the true need.
In each case, OSBA supports the mission but maintains General Fund appropriations should be covering schools’ basic mission.
Just because a bill is stopped this session doesn’t mean the idea goes away. HB 4161 would have increased the number of students who could attend a virtual charter school not sponsored by their district, allowed open enrollment to other schools and created education savings accounts for students to use public funds for nondistrict schools.
HB 4161 went nowhere, but the effort to undercut public education funding in general will continue in three initiative petitions filed for the November election that would do the same things.
In the coming months, education advocates will need to continue to explain to legislators and the public that these kinds of changes would harm Oregon’s schools.
OSBA’s Legislative Policy Committee is a key part of that outreach effort. The committee, which will meet April 20, helps set OSBA’s priorities for the next session. Its members also act as regional education experts to answer local questions and carry their communities’ concerns to Salem.
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
[email protected]
