 by Craig Hawkins, Executive Director
The last few months have been incredibly busy – not to mention exciting and challenging – on the Oregon's education policy and advocacy fronts.
We will have a number of opportunities to discuss the most pressing issues – including school funding and the upcoming legislative session, the Oregon Education Investment Board (OEIB) and achievement compacts, Oregon’s ESEA Flexibility Waiver application, and more – during our OASE/OACOA Winter Conference at Salishan this week.
We will kick things off at 3:00 Thursday afternoon with an OASE Off-The-Record meeting featuring a legislative session preview from Sen. Ted Ferrioli and Rep. Peter Buckley. At that meeting, we will also delve into OEIB and achievement compacts, as well as the NCLB waiver. These topics will be discussed again on Friday at a handful of breakout sessions – including a 1:00 p.m. breakout about the February legislative session (presented by Chuck Bennett), and a 2:15 p.m. breakout about the OEIB and achievement compacts (presented by OEIB Board members Yvonne Curtis and Mark Mulvihill).
Whether you will be attending the Winter Conference or not, though, we thought you might appreciate a brief update about each of these issues.
School Funding and the Legislative Session
After talking with legislative leaders, the legislative revenue office and others, it seems fairly certain that what we are currently expecting ($5.725 billion for K-12 in 2012-13) is likely to be what we will get for the rest of the biennium. The general consensus seems to be that the Feb. 8 state revenue forecast may be down slightly, but not enough to approach the state's remaining $169 million ending fund balance. Coupled with what appears to be an overall legislative resolve to do no more harm to schools, this means that K-12 funding is likely to remain unchanged for the biennium. In general, given the current consensus among economists that the U.S. will avoid another recession, and overall improvement in national employment numbers, Oregon’s outlook appears marginally better than it did a few months ago.
That said, we are asking each district to provide us with a one-page narrative about your budget situation for next year. We will use the narratives to help legislators maintain their resolve to protect schools from further cuts and, if the opportunity arises, to advocate for providing schools with some or all of the additional $56 million for 2012-13 legislators were hoping to allocate to K-12 if revenue forecasts allow.
In addition to the ... | 
by Chuck Bennett, Director of Governmental Relations
