The 2024 legislative session opens today, Monday, Feb. 5. With tensions mounting before legislators even entered the building this week, education issues will mostly be on the back burner.
The burning question this session is how much the repercussions of a state Supreme Court decision last week will limit the Legislature’s ability to conduct its business. The court upheld a constitutional amendment barring lawmakers with more than 10 unexcused absences in a session from running for re-election.
That means 10 Republican state senators have been barred from running when their terms end, and some of them are questioning what motivation they have to show up for this session.
OSBA Legislative Services Director Lori Sattenspiel said Republican senators say they plan to stay as long as the session remains bipartisan. The senators were all present for Monday morning’s opening ceremonies.
As always, there won’t be enough money to cover the various service priorities, and many new legislators will be learning the ropes. Democrats could be split around fixes to Measure 110, which decriminalized most drug possession charges, and it’s unclear how that dynamic could affect other issues.
OSBA’s Legislative Services team will be following the session’s twists and turns. The Legislative Highlights newsletter will offer a weekly look at the most important issues and events.
Since Oregon voters passed Measure 71 in 2010, the Legislature has met in a short session in even-numbered years. The short session is limited to 35 calendar days, compared with the 160 days of the regular session in odd-numbered years.
The short session was created as an opportunity to make small changes that couldn’t wait for the Legislature to meet every two years. Increasingly, though, legislators have been using the time to tackle more complex issues.
Housing and homelessness are the top focus for both parties and Gov. Tina Kotek, with safety and health-related issues following close behind. Education-related issues will mostly fall into the tinkering category but with some nods toward setting parameters around the State School Fund in the regular session next year.
One of those opening salvos is tucked into Senate Bill 1552, an omnibus bill containing more than a dozen education technical tweaks. The bill includes a directive for a study of Oregon education funding with an eye toward updating the process as well as modernizing the Quality Education Model. The QEM tells the Legislature how much it should be spending on Oregon education, but state funding has never come close to reaching that level.
The omnibus bill would also create an Oregon Department of Education Youth Advisory Council. Recent years have seen a wave of efforts to give students more voice, including an increased presence on school boards.
More than a dozen school-specific bills touch on areas such as transparency, staffing, State School Fund formulas, summer learning funding, special education and learning materials. But the compressed short-session time frame leaves little room for hearings to explore bills or meetings to build consensus. Many bills will fall by the wayside with little notice.
If the Republican senators with little to lose become uncooperative, though, the Senate may not have the quorum necessary to move bills. Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, a former Lake Oswego School Board member, and House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, could struggle to get anything done, even education bills that often have bipartisan support.
OSBA’s new lobbyist, Efren Zamudio, will be gauging legislators’ intentions on teacher salaries, school funding and a host of other issues during the coming weeks in the Capitol.
“I’m looking forward to keeping education issues front and center as we build toward the long session in 2025,” he said.
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
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