Oregon’s spring legislative session was a big one for schools across the state.
Education — and specifically, school funding and academic outcomes — was at the heart of the political discussions.
Gov. Tina Kotek on Thursday hosted an event in Eugene to commemorate the signing of four largely bipartisan bills passed this session, which she says will bring much-needed money, clarity and consistency to local schools.
She stressed the success and lack of drama this session around education.
“From the very first hearing on one of my bills to the very end of session, everybody was like, ‘We got to do what we can for public education to match up our expectations with our funding,’” Kotek told OPB. “And I feel like we achieved that.
“I hope people get that takeaway: that we are more united than ever to make sure we have better outcomes for our students.”
A look at the bills
Since the Portland Public Schools strike in 2023, Kotek has pushed for the state to look at how the main pot of money for Oregon’s public schools — the State School Fund — is calculated. She said Oregon leaders also had to talk about the accountability that comes with the money, as well as how to make things administratively easier for school districts.
A major win for Kotek this year was passing Senate Bill 141, which aims to establish a statewide accountability system for all 197 Oregon public school districts. Of the four bills, this one had the most resistance from Republicans, passing largely on party lines.
Kotek said the bill’s passing means a clear set of expectations for all districts.
“Everybody wants better outcomes,” she said. “When districts have to identify their growth targets on the key issues that we’re going to be tracking, parents will understand what the goals are, and when everybody understands what the North Star is, it helps everyone be more successful.”
The State Board of Education will start developing growth targets this year, but Kotek said families and educators can expect to see changes on the ground level, more so in the 2026-27 school year, as the targets are implemented.
House Bill 2140 is meant to secure more predictable funding for public education through the state’s two-year funding cycle.
“For many, many years, there had been this debate: ‘Well, we have this big number that comes out every two years, but how much are we going to get in the first year? How much are we getting in the second year?’” Kotek explained.
Under the new bill, 49% of funding will come in the first year; 51% will arrive for the second school year. This, Kotek said, will help administrators by providing a bump in funding in the second year to address things like inflation. This is paired with the record $11.36 billion investment in the State School Fund for the 2025-27 biennium.
Kotek said she doesn’t expect this to solve all budget challenges districts are facing, but it takes a lot of the guesswork out for them. It also solves a long-standing debate in the legislature.
“Can we just settle this, so we can stop fighting about this? Like, this is the right way to do it. Now, we’re putting it in statute,” Kotek said.
House Bill 3037 is focused on cutting red tape by simplifying grant applications for smaller school districts. Kotek said this builds on her overall goals to reduce administrative burdens for districts and the Oregon Department of Education.
“It’s important for the districts to have simplification, so again, they can focus on other things besides doing paperwork,” she said, adding that this is a particular problem for small school districts that have fewer staff members to tackle everything from grant writing to community relations.
And House Bill 3040 builds on the state’s 2023 Early Literacy Success Initiative.
The bill is focused on professional development and coaching for educators to help them teach the research-backed reading curriculum the state is pushing. That’s in addition to an extra $13 million allocated to the initiative this year in the state education department’s budget.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to the educators. Do they feel prepared? Do they have the skills they need to make sure kids are reading at grade level?” Kotek asked. “Every student can be successful. That’s the bottom line. And we have to support our educators to make that happen.”
Bethel superintendent shares his take
Kraig Sproles started as superintendent of the Bethel School District in Eugene five years ago — right at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The focus for Oregon schools at that time was a lot of what we called ‘care and connection,’” he said. “It was trying to support the emotional, mental well-being of our students and our families as we emerge from the pandemic. And I do think that was a really, really important goal, to kind of knit our community back together.”
But over the next few years, leaders like Sproles found that in Oregon, where physical schools remained closed for much longer, huge gaps in learning appeared, particularly, he said, in literacy.
He likened it to the summer slide, when students lose much of what they learned over the school year if they don’t keep up work over the summer. In this case, he would describe it as the “pandemic slide.”
“We saw reading levels, where only like 20 to 30% of our students were reading on grade level when we came back from the pandemic,” he said.
But in 2023, Sproles said educators in the roughly 5,000-student district embraced the state’s Early Literacy Initiative approach. Fast forward to last summer, Bethel had made major strides, but they still had students with gaps.
Bethel received state money to help address that gap through a seven-week summer program, and the district partnered with the University of Oregon to measure the success of those summer efforts over time.
They tested the students in November and saw slight increases. Then, they tested the students again in January, when they saw much greater growth. So much so, that, according to a district press release last year, nearly one in four participating students no longer required intensive literacy support.
“The long-term impact of a summer learning program isn’t necessarily felt in September, it’s felt five months later in January,” Sproles said. “Our theory was that it allowed students to … enter their next grade level as more confident students and more confident readers.”
Bethel ran a similar program this summer at Prairie Mountain K-8 School, where the governor’s ceremonial event was held on Thursday.
Transparency and consistency are especially important for educators like Sproles right now, given the whiplash of federal changes, threats and cuts that have come down the line in recent months.
Bethel School District closed its Clear Lake Elementary School due to enrollment declines and planned to reopen it as a “resiliency center” for families in need. That was going to be made possible thanks to federal funding — money that was later revoked.
Sproles said the district opened the community center this summer anyway, patching together other funding streams. It has a Boys & Girls Club program, as well as culturally specific programming. They’re adding early childhood classrooms funded by Oregon’s Preschool Promise. The center is already serving hundreds of kids.
“I don’t want our families and our students to feel the ups and downs of anxiety related to the federal cuts and all the uncertainty that’s happening right now,” Sproles said.
“I want those kindergarteners whose very first day is going to start in about a month [to know that] we’re going to love the heck out of them, and we’re going to love the heck out of their families for the next 13 years,” he said. “I want them to know that we’re going to show up for them regardless. We’re going to show up for them.”
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
