Fall Regional Meetings offer broad look at new laws

OSBA’s annual Fall Regional Meetings conclude Wednesday, Oct. 30, with presentations in Medford and The Dalles.

Including those meetings, your OSBA team presented 21 times across Oregon to more than 700 board members and administrators with school districts, charter schools, education service districts and community colleges as well as education staff and community members. We have traveled about 5,000 miles, slept dozens of nights in hotels, and spent untold hours driving around Oregon at night wondering, “Is that a deer on the side of the road?”

At every meeting we have been received warmly by OSBA members, who took an extra night away from home to hear about the 2019 legislative session and how to help their students.

The meetings focused heavily on presenting legislative information. OSBA staff began with a synopsis of the legislative State School Fund allocation and other school funding for the 2019-21 biennium.

The Student Success Act was the highlight of the meetings. The act has various pieces to implement, so a great deal of the presentation was spent on:

• The bill’s specifics, including how the revenue portions are expected to function, the possible school investment areas, and the bill’s emphasis on equity, achievement, and student mental and behavioral well-being.
• The bill’s requirements to receive grants, including a timeline.
• How education service districts are implementing their technical assistance role for school districts.
• OSBA Board Development’s work on collaborative governance and the impact it has on student achievement.

The meetings also included discussion of other 2019 legislation of interest to schools, including a Public Employees Retirement System cost-containment bill (Senate Bill 1049), health care double-coverage and opt-out legislation (House Bill 2266), and policy bills related to schools and education. If you want more information about these bills or other meeting content, the full set of meeting materials is available on our website.

In past years, the agenda has included time for table work and interactive surveys. We collected this information and used it in our lobbying efforts. If you participated in these activities in past years, thank you! Because you took the time to pass that information along, we were able to tell legislators definitively what school board, ESD and community college board members wanted from the Legislature: How to be funded, how to be held accountable and what was good for students across Oregon.

And all along the way we were welcomed into local communities to share a meal and conversation. Fall Regional Meetings are always a highlight for OSBA staff. We had a great time on the road this year, and hope to see you at the OSBA 73rd Annual Convention in Portland in a few weeks.

- Richard Donovan
Legislative Services specialist

The OSBA Fall Regional Meeting in the La Grande Middle School Commons on Oct. 16 was one of 21 visits OSBA staff will have made in October to schools, conference rooms and public meeting spots around the state. (Photo by Alex Pulaski, OSBA)