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Last week on the House Floor I asked my legislative colleagues to reconsider the proposed K-12 budget for the 2015-2017 biennium, part of a 7% proportional decrease in total education spending as a share of the State of Oregon budget of just over a decade ago. |
Tuesday morning, Legislative leadership moved forward with the proposed budget, offering a slight increase of $20 million for a $7.255 billion K-12 budget. The budget now moves to the full Ways and Means Committee and will be on the House and Senate Floors next week. The Oregonian reports that "School advocates...insist they need at least $7.5 billion to keep from cutting services." Districts around the state are telling me and all other legislators that this budget will cut school days, add kids to the classroom, cut teachers, and further reduce services.
Last Thursday, I used this floor letter with information from the Legislative Fiscal Office to highlight what appears to be a decreasing commitment to education over the past decade. Just 10 years ago, Oregon funded K-12 education at nearly 45% of the budget. Today we are just above 39%, while available revenues increased 70% (over $7.5 billion) and taxes were increased multiple times.
In the 2003-2005 budget, education funding represented 58.7% of a budget of nearly $11 billion, and K-12 education represented 44.7%. In the 2013-2015 budget, education funding represented just 51.6% of a $16.753 billion general fund budget, and K-12 only 39.7% of the budget. And in the Co-Chairs' proposed 2015-2017 budget – which represents a 10.5% overall budget increase of nearly $1.8 billion more in revenue than last biennium – education funding still stands below 52% of the total state General Fund/Lottery Fund budget, with K-12 funding lagging at 39.2%. Thus, in just over 10 years, Oregon's commitment to K-12 education has gone from 44.7% of the budget to 39.2%, while our total budget General Fund/Lottery Fund Budget has increased by nearly 70% in real dollars.
  Credit: Dan Lucas
 In response to the reality of an additional $1.8 billion in revenue to spend this biennium (a 10.5% increase), Budget Co-Chair Rep. Peter Buckley called for even more taxes, encouraging the House to “boldly raise revenue.” However, the above charts demonstrate that Oregon has been raising revenue nearly steadily for the past ten years, without commensurately increasing our commitment to education funding.
Throughout this and last week, my colleagues have been advocating for a stronger commitment to education spending and will continue to push for a budget that adequately funds schools and provides a quality education for Oregon students.
While I commend legislative leadership for moving forward with a K-12 education budget early in the session - giving schools certainty in their budgeting - I cannot support cutting school days, increasing class sizes, and further reducing Oregon's competitiveness when we are already so far behind most other states.
To share your views on the education budget, I encourage you to personally call or write your Representative and Senator. You can find their contact information by clicking this link. Thank you for reading.
Sincerely,
State Representative John Davis
House District 26: Wilsonville, Sherwood, King City,
Hillsboro, Beaverton, Aloha, Tigard, & Bull Mountain
Email: Rep.JohnDavis@state.or.us
Website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/Davis
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE, H-483, Salem, Oregon 97301
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