What We Believe
The Oregon Education Association believes that a free, high-quality public education is a right of every student in Oregon, and that public education serves as the backbone of our state in ensuring the health of our democracy, development of our economy, and strength of our communities.
To bring that belief to life, OEA champions a wide range of legislative policies to improve public education for every student in our state.
Oregon's Legislature
What is a "Short" Session?
For most of Oregon's history the state's legislature convened every two years, holding legislative sessions of 160 days or more during odd-numbered years. Beginning in 2012, the legislature began to meet annually with the new legislative session created for even-numbered years being scheduled for 35 days or less.
Regular sessions are used to pass major pieces of legislation and to craft and pass the state's two-year budget. Short sessions, like this year's, are meant as a time for lawmakers to come back together and make technical changes to the legislation that was passed the previous year, and to make necessary budget adjustments to specific state agencies, departments, and programs.
During a short sessions, lawmakers have significantly less money to spend than during a long session with the same number of competing priorities. Because of this reality, our short session priorities are often adjustments to existing laws and advocacy aimed at laying the ground work for our work during next year's regular session.
Learn more about OEA's legislative priorities for this year's legislative session, and our long-term priorities, below.
2024 Legislative Agenda
Technical Fixes & Financial Investments
Universal School Meals:
New federal funds mean Oregon has an opportunity to greatly expand access to meals at K-12 public schools, allowing more Oregon school districts to participate and providing more students with access to nutritious meals so they can focus on learning.
Part-Time Faculty Health Care Technical Fixes:
Language in last session's bill cited "teaching work" to determine program eligibility rather than simply citing "work." This has inadvertently excluded faculty who do non-teaching work, like librarians, from accessing the program.
Summer Programming:
Ensuring continued state investments for summer school programs, and creating a task force focused on long-term sustainability for summer programming in Oregon.
Student Emergency Needs Funding:
Creating a grant program to provide funding for Basic Needs Navigators, who can assist students and families in accessing state and federal resources.
Oregon Opportunities Grant Programming:
Ensuring that any changes to distribution methods for the Oregon Opportunities Grant program must be approved by the Higher Education Coordinating Commission.
Fair Shot Coalition Priorities:
OEA is a member of the Fair Shot Coalition, a group of community partners dedicated to improving the lives of all Oregonians. This year, the coalition's priorities include Housing and Rental Assistance, Childcare, School-Based Health Centers, and Student Emergency Needs Funding.
Long-Term Priorities
School Finance Omnibus
The legislature, the Governor's Office, OEA, and other education partners are focused on improving the financing for public education in Oregon. This could include updates to Oregon's school funding models, improved transparency in public education budgeting, and other improvements to our current system of public education financing.
Special Education Funding
OEA supports lifting the cap on SPED weighting in Oregon's formula for determining school funding. This change would help address Oregon's current crisis in special education, helping give districts the resources they need to providing students receiving special education services with the support they need to thrive.
Part-Time Faculty Pay Equity
With many of Oregon's part-time faculty members receiving as little as $0.36 on the dollar when compared to their full-time counterparts, OEA believes that pay equity is critical for fair employment practices in higher education.
