Representative Neuron told the Senate Committee on Education that House Bill 2,511 would require the Oregon Department of Education to collect a comprehensive workforce dataset covering all individuals employed by school districts and education service districts, not just licensed teachers and administrators.

"House Bill 2,511 requires the Oregon Department of Education to collect certain information on all individuals employed by school districts or education service districts — not just licensed teachers and administrators," Representative Neuron said. She described the change as filling gaps in existing data used for the current-service-level (CSL) budget calculation and said the Statewide Salaries Task Force recommended the change to improve budgeting accuracy.

Committee members asked whether the data would include personal information and whether it would be publicly accessible. Representative Neuron said the proposal would not collect ‘‘personal on an invasive level’’ and that the goal was to capture salaries and benefits data in a standardized way for classified staff, similar to licensed staff reporting. Nicole Peterson, legislative coordinator for the Oregon Department of Education, told the committee the department can add the requests into the existing staff position file and that doing so would not require additional resources. "Yes, indeed, we would be able to build this request into what currently exists and wouldn't take additional resources to do that," Peterson said.

Members raised concerns that mandatory reporting could be perceived as an unfunded mandate for districts and asked about the public availability of the data and the state’s IT capacity. Staff and ODE responded that the data collection already exists for licensed staff, that ODE receives classified data from some districts, and that the proposal would make classified reporting mandatory to achieve a more complete picture of compensation statewide. Peterson said the data are not currently published for general public download from the ODE website but that ODE shares data with users who need it.

No motion or vote occurred at the April 21 hearing; the committee closed the public hearing on House Bill 2,511 and proceeded to the next agenda item.