2025 Oregon Legislative Session Highlights
On Friday, June 27, Oregon’s elected leaders concluded the 2025 Legislative Session.
More than 3,000 bills were filed, and more than 500 of those were considered to have potential impact on students and schools.
Major issue areas prioritized by Governor Kotek and legislators included public education, housing and homelessness, mental and behavioral health, and transportation - all while also trying to navigate a variety of challenges and unknowns at the state, federal, and global levels.
Of course, one of the most anticipated items in each long session is the biennial budget. This time around, education advocates were heartened by the Governor’s work in the summer of 2024 to recalculate Current Service Level (CSL) to more accurately reflect school districts’ expenses (HB 2140). This recalculation added $515 million to the CSL, allowing the Governor and others to push for a State School Fund allocation of $11.36 Billion as opposed to the $10.8 Billion figure that otherwise would have been on the table.
Fortunately, $11.36 Billion is ultimately what was allocated to the State School Fund (SB 5516) for the 2025-27 biennium. Other key allocations include $1.109 Billion for the Student Investment Account* (SB 5515), $338.1 million for High School Success ($977 per high school student, SB 5515), $93.8 million for Early Literacy School District Grants (SB 5515), and $70 million for Summer Learning Grants (HB 5047). *While the SIA allocation will allow many of our investments to continue, we believe there may be cuts to grants HSD receives for supporting focal groups like students who identify as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Latina/o/x, and Black, African, and African American.
Unfortunately, efforts to increase spending on special education fell short this session, despite strong advocacy for raising the 11% cap and providing 100% reimbursements for High Cost Disability. We will need to continue advocating for future legislation and resource allocation to account for the true cost of providing free and appropriate education to students with special needs.
Another significant bill passage was the one for PERS Unfunded Liability Relief (SB 849). This bill directed the Public Employees Retirement Board to apply all monies in the School Districts Unfunded Liability Fund as of February 28, 2025, against all school district employers’ individual 2025-27 contribution rates, in equal amounts. Each employer who is part of the School Districts pool had their net contribution rates for the 2025-27 biennium reduced by 1.68% of payroll from the rates published in October 2024. Because each percentage point in PERS employer rates costs HSD approximately $1 million, this represents approximately $1.6 million in savings for HSD over the 2025-27 biennium.
Still, because of non-covered PERS employer rate increases and costs associated with unfunded mandates, as well as increases to utilities, liability insurance, and other costs of doing business, HSD has made staffing and programmatic decisions to effect a $20 million reduction versus what would have represented a status quo budget between 2024-25 and 2025-26.
Additional information about bills passed during the 2025 Legislative Session can be found on the Oregon Legislative Information website.
Additional information about Oregon’s 2025-27 Budget will be available on the Legislative Fiscal Office’s website once it is finalized.