It’s been a whirlwind week at the Capitol, with our OSBA team working in a variety of policy committees. We always prefer to be bringing solutions to the table, but the reality of advocacy is that often our efforts are turned toward reacting to various proposals.
One of our commitments to members, as part of the “funding” element of our proactive 2025 agenda, is to hold the line wherever possible on further unfunded mandates and cost drivers for schools.
On Monday, we raised concerns in the Senate Education Committee about Senate Bill 933 and SB 934, which aim to expand access to talented and gifted programs. Those programs are great for students, but evaluating and serving more students costs money and that has to come from somewhere.
On Tuesday in the House Behavioral Health and Health Care Committee, we addressed House Bill 3212, which deals with pharmacy benefit managers and prescription drugs and would increase health care costs for school districts.
On Thursday, the Senate Labor and Business Committee heard SB 916, which would allow striking employees to collect unemployment insurance. This bill is not specific to schools, but it would hit public bodies particularly hard. Public employers typically reimburse the state dollar-for-dollar for any unemployment benefits paid out. Lori Sattenspiel was signed up to testify on behalf of OSBA, but the committee ran out of time. She will likely testify Tuesday, Feb. 11, when the hearing is expected to re-open.
On some of these issues, such as SB 916, the negative impact to district budgets is clear, and our opposition is not surprising to anyone. On others, such as the well-intended bills to expand access to TAG, it can be challenging to be the voice of dissent.
I had to give difficult testimony this week to stay true to our commitment to speak out against financially unsupported education requirements that undercut current service level-guided funding:
“As we show up year over year and discuss the education budget, we often receive questions from [legislators], incredulous as to how we can possibly be saying that schools don’t have enough funding, especially as we’ve seen record investment in recent years.
“It’s because very well-intended bills without sufficient, or in some cases even any, dollars attached move through the Legislature. Districts then find ways to absorb those costs into their budgets, making cuts in various areas or leaving positions unfilled to find savings, and we roll up the CSL from there, and then we do the same thing the following biennium. …
“If the Legislature is going to move legislation without adequate resources, then eventually we need to have a conversation about how those costs become accounted for in our CSL calculation.”
– Stacy Michaelson
OSBA director of government relations and communications
