With the session winding down, final budget decisions are being made.  Here are some of the highlights of the education budget ranging from early learning to higher education. These increases show Oregon's commitment to investing in our future through education.

Keeping track of bills on our "bill board"

Early Learning and K-12: Early Learning budget increases $52.5 million.  One specific example is home visits, which are proven to reduce child abuse and improve parenting skills.  
Due to the early passage of a base level minimum for K-12 education funding, and a revenue forecast showing an increase, we added $105 million more to reach a total K-12 budget of $7.36 billion.

Career training: An additional $35 million has been targeted toward Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) Innovation Grants, STEM Hubs, CTE (Career Technical Education) Revitalization Grants, and Invest in a Career Pathway Fund that will provide incentives to school districts to develop programs that will increase the number of students who earn industry-recognized credentials.

Higher ed: Community colleges receive $500 million -- $95 million more, or 21% over what it would have been to simply continue their current program into the next biennium. In other words, this is a boost, and allows for improvement. Public universities got a big boost, also, $700 million - almost 30% over current service level. The Oregon Opportunity Grant for college students was increased by over 20%, adding an additional $23.6 million over the current service level.

Islanders and health care. 

Greeting Marshall Islanders and Japanese Minister after a hearing.

Music therapy: yes, it's real, and it works.  Music therapists requested legislative approval to require licensing for their profession, enabling students who graduate from Oregon's lauded music therapy programs to practice in Oregon and receive appropriate reimbursement for their work.  I was happy to support HB 2796 through the Ways and Means committees and vote for it in the House.  Music therapy has a number of documented benefits, including enhancing the effectiveness of pain medication and aiding children with severe behavioral issues.  Music therapy can improve the lives of individuals and their families, and save money by avoiding more expensive services, such as hours of medical professional time, expensive pain medication, and one-on-one assistants in the classroom to manage behavior. I asked for, and received, a report documenting real life examples as well as studies in other states.

K-12 students:
The Legislature has passed bills protecting privacy for K-12 students: Oregon Student Information Protection Act (OSIPA): SB 187 prohibits educational sites and services from using student information for anything other than educational purposes, such as selling the information for marketing and advertising.  It also requires these educational sites and services to implement security measures and delete student information upon request.  This means that educational sites cannot be collecting information on students in order to target them with pop-up or banner ads on their sites.  This legislation is designed to protect the privacy of Oregonians, in the wake of fast-evolving technology, social media, and commercial activity.

Portable electronic devices
"My life is in my phone."  People today keep an immense amount of personal information on their cell phones, like contacts with names, phone numbers and addresses, passwords, banking and shopping information, notes, etc. Currently law enforcement officers can search the contents of a phone during arrests or cell phone seizures.  Senate Bill 641 aims to protect this personal information by prohibiting the duplication of data from a portable electronic device without a warrant or consent, and makes it clear that data obtained without a warrant or consent is inadmissible in court and cannot be used to establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

Note: As of this writing, there are still a few dozen bills waiting for action in one or both chambers.

Our bill board last month: bills passing

Gauging success.  It's not easy to figure out an accurate and impartial way of evaluating legislative effectiveness.  Some may say it is how well a legislator works across the aisle with the other party. Others may look up statistics for how many bills that they introduced actually made it through the legislative process to become law. There's often an interest in the second method, so I'm going to describe why it's not that simple. Consider the following examples of bill filing statistics of current legislators:

Legislator A introduced 5 bills, 2 of which have passed (40%).  Legislator B introduced 56 bills, 26 of which have passed (38%).  Using the "success rate" method of evaluating a legislator, Legislator A was more effective, but B passed more legislation overall, 26 bills versus only 2.

Some bills are simple; for example, resolutions and memorials expressing an opinion of the legislature to communicate to the federal government, or to honor an Oregonian for their contribution to the community. At the other end of the spectrum are complex topics with vocal advocates and/or opponents, which take months or even years of work. 

I'm providing a link here to the list of bills for which I was the chief sponsor.  Chief sponsor usually means primary advocate, generally taking responsibility for authoring the bill, advocating, speaking to the bill, negotiating amendments, and more. Legislators may add their name to many other bills as a co-sponsor, to show support.  Sometimes it's just a matter of timing: whether the legislator is in the office at the time someone comes by to ask.  I signed on to 46 additional bills this session.   Not being listed as a co-sponsor is not necessarily significant; there are of course hundreds of bills that any one of us votes "yes" on that we haven't added our name as co-sponsor.

My bills that took the most work: Criminal background check streamlining, started in 2011; Local courts, started discussing in 2013; Public contracts accountability, started in March 2014; Healthcare provider incentives review and reform, started in spring 2014.

A couple of bills ran into trouble in the Senate after passing the House and we scurried to meet with interested parties to hear their concerns and negotiate reasonable amendments:  Student debit cards, and Public contract accountability (House vote: 58 Ayes, 2 Excused). 

The record for most introduced bills by a single legislator this session is 89, only 11 of which have been signed into law (12%). Per a sampling of legislators of both parties, the average success rate was around 33%. I was the chief sponsor of 31 bills, 14 of which have already been signed into law (45%), and we're hoping that three remaining bills pass in the final days.