The Senate Education Committee met Tuesday to look at the state education system with respect to COVID19 and the upcoming 2020-21 school year. Craig Hawkins, director of the Coalition of Oregon School Aministrators was one of the presenters.

At one point, the committee chair, Senator Hass (D-Beaverton) asked Hawkins, "Given the obvious shortfalls, here, how do you think the Student Success Act should be reconfigured this first year? Should it even start? Should it go with 60%, should money go into the school fund? If it does start underfunded would you reallocate those [allocations] in any different ways? Would you drop one of those or just keep the percentages the same although with lower numbers?"

Hawkins replied, "We are now looking at that. Under the governor's authority, it only allows across the board even reductions so we can not prioritize one program over another. If the legislature comes back into session, it can look at those various adjustments. I believe our districts will be very challenged if they cannot maintain that $9 billion dollar state school fund amount".

Senator Hass asked a follow up question "If the legislature then does have -- assume there is a special session -- assume the next forecast does not show that revenues are back up, would you then advocate to put all of the student success act funds into the state school support fund?"

Hawkins responded, "Frankley I do not know I am there yet with planning that far into the future. I'll work closely with the governor's office and the legislature to help design what it could look like."

Senator Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego), who is also a school board member and chair of the Lake Oswego School district, then asked "I know from the school board perspective, that part of the legal budget process that school districts just recently went through, they are planning for the worst case scenario as it related to the allotment cuts and many are suspending the SIA anticipated revenues coming in". What at a district level folks are planning on in these different scenarios.

Jim Green with Oregon School Boards Association answered, "What we have directed school districts to do -- obviously without the legislature coming into a special session -- without the governor awarding an allotment, we aksed our school districts to budget at their current level and continue forward, but also look at the potential reductions the governor has in her allotment process not knowing what the legislature's policy decisions might be around that, obviously, knowing there could be reductions in their budgets. They are required under state law to have budgets adopted, so it is a process by which we may have districts entering into supplemental budget processes.

The Student Success Act, HB3427, was passed in the 2019 session and funded by the Corporate Activities Tax. The legislation and those advocating for the bill were very clear that the CAT was additional school program funding and not to be used to backfill school budgets, leaving more money in the State general fund. Now those same lawmakers are backpedaling.

Schools will in some way shape or form start back up in September and somehow they need to be paid for, though the COVID-19 outbrak created some savings based on school not being in session. Some observers have pointed out that there will be large scale reductions in several areas of state spending. Schools, who get much of their funding through property taxes, have been largely insulated from revenue reductions, at least as compared to other state funded causes. Additionally, they've pointed out that schools ought to take at least part of a hit in general fund money, which comes from income taxes and in Student Investment Account spending, which comes from the newly passed CAT tax, which is expected to generate less revenue than hoped for.

It will be interesting to see how the public school system, with it's seemingly insatiable appetite for money, weathers the decline in revenue, and whether they try to use CAT tax money to backfill their budget.


--Staff Reports

Post Date: 2020-06-03 21:36:25

Last Update: 2020-06-03 21:36:33