We are in the lull before the next storm.
The April 9 deadline to move bills out of policy committees marks roughly the halfway-point of the 2025 legislative session. It also cut the number of bills OSBA is tracking approximately in half from more than 800.
The past two weeks have been a frenzy of packed committee agendas as legislators and advocates rushed to hear bills, make necessary amendments and move bills down the line before the deadline cut them off.
In an abrupt change of pace, as of Friday morning, the House and Senate education committees had not posted any hearings for next week. But the next storms are brewing on the horizon, or more likely in the Joint Ways and Means Committee.
Bills that require funding must go through Ways and Means, the Legislature’s budget writers. If a bill makes it out of a joint committee to the chamber floor, it can go straight to the other chamber’s floor for a vote, so Ways and Means could be the last policy-tweaking stop for some of these bills. We are monitoring some important bills in Ways and Means, including:
- House Bill 2009/Senate Bill 141 – Gov. Tina Kotek’s twin school accountability measures.
- HB 3040 – Support for early literacy efforts.
- HB 3014 – Establishes the School District Equity Facility Fund.
- HB 3360 – Uses corporate kicker for funding school construction projects.
- HB 3149 A – Extends additional funding to school districts affected by the 2020 wildfires for another year
- SB 541 A – Requires computer science education in schools.
Some bills are headed to the chamber floors for a vote before being sent to a policy committee in the opposite chamber. Bills rarely go to the floor unless the chamber leader knows they will pass, but passage in one chamber doesn’t guarantee success in the second.
Bills we are monitoring awaiting a vote include:
- HB 3365 – Requires climate change instruction in all core curriculum.
- HB 2251A – A bell-to-bell ban on cell phones in schools.
- HB 2453 – Modifies equity advisory committees to report to the school district superintendent.
- SB 1109 A – Changes the recording of public meetings law to apply only to meetings of the board of directors.
Education advocates never like to speak ill of “dead” bills lest they come back to haunt us. But there are a few bills watched by members that look like they might be done for this session, including:
- SB 1126 – Requires 30 minutes of recess every day in K-5.
- SB 978 – Requires school districts to provide an annual breakdown of legal expenditures.
- SB 401 – Increases the funding weight in the State School Fund formula for children in poverty.
- HB 2359 – Requires high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
Although we are dealing with fewer bills now, the intensity increases. The remaining bills have won some legislative support, and legislators are more reluctant to amend them because changes to the bill means it will have to return to its first chamber for approval.
Less than 12 weeks to go.
– Adrienne Anderson
OSBA Government Relations Counsel
