Energy Trust of Oregon offers cash incentives to school districts planning to incorporate energy efficiency into their new construction and major renovation projects. These offerings include financial support for early design assistance and energy modeling, as well as equipment installation incentives.

For projects in schematic design or earlier—the phase when the project team begins to develop the mechanical systems, lighting and basic programming for spaces—Energy Trust offers an incentive of $2,500 to hold an early design meeting. Considering energy efficiency at the beginning of a school’s design process ensures energy performance gets – and stays – on the drawing board throughout the project. At an early design meeting, the project team discusses how energy will be used in the building, identifies potential methods for saving energy and cutting costs and sets sustainability goals for the project. Energy Trust staff can attend the events and provide tools to help the team explore all of the potential energy-efficiency solutions and then identify those best suited to the project.

Energy Trust also covers a minimum of 50 percent of the costs of obtaining a whole-building energy model, which forecasts a building’s energy use. With an energy model in hand, a school’s design team can project energy savings and estimate the potential incentive amount for the project. Energy Trust also has options for projects not planning to do energy modeling, including cash incentives for standard energy-efficient equipment and easy-to-use calculators for determining potential incentives available for lighting and HVAC systems.

Energy Trust does more for schools than offer incentives to cut design and construction costs. Outreach representatives and technical experts provide input and guidance to help ensure that schools continue to save energy year after year. To maximize these benefits, however, school districts should contact Energy Trust as early in the design process as possible to discover the full range of opportunities for schools aiming for high-performance.

For more information, contact Elin Shepard, outreach manager for Energy Trust New Buildings, at (503) 314-9021 or eshepard@peci.org. Elin will attend the Annual COSA Professional Development Conference and Expo in Seaside in June and looks forward to meeting you there.

by Chuck Bennett, Director of Government Relations

The Legislature is nearly finished with its first phase (the vast majority of the hundreds of bills related to education have been through the first cull in either the House or Senate) and it’s fairly clear which bills or issues will dominate the rest of the Session.

SCHOOL FUNDING
The biggest issue, the size of the State School Fund, has been resolved in two parts with a total $5.7 billion biennial budget passing both chambers this week. It’s divided into two parts with $5.6 billion running through the formula to all districts and ESDs. The $100 million remainder is coming out of the Education Stability Fund and is available only to school districts and mainly for teacher and school day restorations. Legislators are proud of the fact they got the state’s biggest single budget out this early but behind the scenes, there is a flurry of activity to increase the fund again after the final May forecast if is up sufficiently to justify it. At this point the target is to increase the SSF to around $5.8 billion before the Session ends and if the economy continues to improve over the next year to allocate at least another $57 million in the next Session. It’s all based on the state’s economic recovery.

EDUCATION REFORM
In the area of education reform, COSA has worked closely with the Chalkboard Project and Stand for Children in the OASE Vision and Policy Task Force to so far successfully advance a bill aimed at developing more standardized systems for teacher and administrator evaluation. We were able to work with OEA and get their support for the bill as well. The broad visioning statement developed by the group served as a blueprint for goals covered in all of the Governor’s legislation and education system reorganization efforts including appointment of a State Superintendent of Public Instruction, a P-20 education policy panel, and early childhood education program coordination. At the same time COSA worked with other education groups to limit the number of proposals that either dramatically increased costs for school districts or resulted in a poorly conceived policy direction without adequate funding such as proposals to institute many of the “education reforms” developed in Florida and other states. 

ESDs
The future of the state’s ESD system has been a topic throughout the Session with an initial proposal to defund them included in the Governor’s budget. A number of bills have moved regarding ESDs with a variety of proposed changes in them. None of the bills, yet, have found the kind of support it will take to make it through the Session. The only bill that has moved is SB 250 and it was referred to the Ways and Means Committee where it is being fundamentally changed.

At this point here are the basic concepts being debated and some possible resolutions making the rounds:

• Funding for ESDs from the SSF pegged somewhere between the current 4.75% of the total fund down to 4.25%. The funds generated in this cut to ESDs will either go back to school districts or be used for specific programs or both.
• An “opt out” provision for school districts. This concept is fluid at this point and ranges from a few districts statewide, districts inside certain ESDs or for all districts in all ESDs.
• An ODE-based “Office of Regional Services” to oversee ESDs and work on a plan to improve delivery of regional services.
• Requirement that district superintendents serve either on the board of the ESD or on its budget committee.
• Proposed changes in ESD auditing requirements generally aimed at annual audits registered with ODE.

The bottom line on ESDs is that there are many moving parts in the works and it’s not clear yet that any of them have enough votes in both chambers to become law. At this point it is not clear whether any bill related to ESDs will pass the Legislature.
Big financial issues besides the level of state funding face districts and two of them attracted the interest of legislators – PERS and OEBB. Changes to either benefit system drew immediate opposition from the state’s public employee unions and failed to garner strong support from the Governor – a traditional prerequisite for this kind of change. We were able to help get hearings on the issues but at this point in the Session there is no indication there will be big changes brought to either chamber. Despite this, there are signs that a bill setting up a more independent review of OEBB costs and benefit packages related to non-OEBB served districts may get a third-party review rather than the current reliance on OEBB to do its own evaluation of comparative costs. Changes in PERS remain very problematic and will most likely end with a bill to charge taxes to out-of-state recipients.

MANDATE RELIEF
Legislation limiting mandates on school districts have received hearings and some are moving forward. It appears now there will be a complete review of the state’s current school report card system aimed at legislation next February (yes they meet again in February and will from now on). There also is a bill moving along that will limit the school improvement plan filing requirements.

by Chuck Bennett, Director of Government Relations

It happens every two years. Well, at least it used to – now it’s an annual occurrence. The Legislature comes to town and begins the process that will lead to a state budget and some new state laws.

Given that 70 percent of local school funding comes from the state, this is a very big deal to us. And, as sure as daylight savings time will be here in a few weeks, there will be new laws aimed at “improving” education in Oregon.

On the first day of the Session, nearly four weeks ago, legislators introduced 1,600 bills and then they went home. One of the questions every lobbyist asks themselves is whether to immediately post all of the bills. Let’s be honest with each other – some of these bills are fairly radical and nearly all of them will fail during the several months of hearings ahead.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

ESDs

“ESDs shall…” – then add just about anything you can think of that will change the way they do business. This issue has gotten so hot that even the Governor got involved and suggested in his budget that the state’s ESDs won’t get any money from the State School Fund.

I’m going to be very frank on this one. Legislators don’t understand what ESDs do but they do read newspapers and the news over the past couple of years has not been good. Negative news stories mean angry voters which combine to prompt corrective legislation from lawmakers.

Reading the bills coupled with rehashes of the news stories that got everyone excited and then add comments from current lawmakers and you’d naturally come to the conclusion that ESDs are about to be put out of business. That’s not going to happen. The proposal to cut all state ESD funding, for example, is extremely unlikely to happen.

But, don’t think there won’t be new laws governing ESDs. There will be. Most likely they will call for increased auditing, changes in governance structure, more flexibility for local districts to purchase services from other than their local ESD and a year-long project to develop business plans for ESDs to be presented to the next session of the Legislature.

Small School Correction

Another concern I’ve heard about is the suggested likelihood that the Small School Correction won’t be renewed. Yes it will and it will with help from COSA, which has traditionally been the sponsor of the legislation.

School Funding

Some people have expressed concern that school funding will be as low as $5.3 billion. Let me be clear about this: No, it won’t. It will be at least $5.557 billion for the biennium, and is likely to end up somewhere north of $5.7 billion. “North” is definitely where I’m putting my money.

Finally, I mentioned posting all the bills.  You can expect us to post a categorized and germane set of bills on the COSA website in the next few days.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please call or e-mail.  Or post a comment below.

by Craig Hawkins, Communications Director

The OASE Vision and Policy Task Force has developed a one-page document to share its vision about how we need to update Oregon’s education system so that students graduates with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve their dreams in our rapidly-changing world.

This visioning piece calls for:

• Rigorous academic standards for all students from pre-school through graduate school.
• Effective teaching (which, of course, requires effective leadership).
• High expectations for all students.

It also provides a roadmap for how we will achieve these goals, including:

• Strong leadership and effective governance.
• Stable and adequate funding.
• Parents and communities as partners.

The task force is comprised of 18 superintendents, plus representatives from Chalkboard Project, Stand for Children and the Oregon Business Association.  It has been meeting since last summer and, along with the one-page vision document, has accomplished the following:

• Developed a promising relationship with Gov. John Kitzhaber, including playing an instrumental role in Nancy Golden’s appointment as the governor’s education advisor.  The task force has twice met with Gov. Kitzhaber; Nancy continues to regularly attend task force meetings.
• Commissioned an Education First study on statewide accountability systems and issued this report: Promising Practices in Accountability.  The report, which was made possible with the support of Chalkboard, provides information about the status of Oregon’s current accountability system, as well as recommendations for improving the system.
• Worked on legislation aimed at establishing a task force that will develop performance standards for Oregon teachers and administrators.  Senate Bill 290 requires that recommended performance standards be developed by the end of this year, and adopted by 2013.

The OASE Vision and Policy Task Force is continuing to meet weekly, and will continue to advocate for the collective education improvement vision of Oregon superintendents.  Visit the OASE Vision and Policy Task force webpage for more information, including a PowerPoint presentation, "Oregon's Future Starts Here," that outlines the task force's vision.

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