7 wins for the Children’s Agenda
~$3.8M funded
~$-65M lost funding
68 meetings with legislators
58 testimonies for Children’s Agenda Bills
23 Action Alert
Emails Sent
Championed 23 Legislative Concepts
23
Legislative Concepts Championed
7 Wins
out of
23
Concepts
+$3.8M
Funding
Invested
for Children
-$65M
Funding
Lost
for Children
68
Legislator Meetings
58
Testimonies Submitted
23
Action Alerts sent
The 2025 Legislative Session has come to a close. With the support of our 135+ partner organizations statewide, we advocated for crucial legislation. The 23 legislative concepts championed in the 2025 Children’s Agenda expanded into 42 individual bills across 5 issue domains, addressing the interconnected challenges facing Oregon’s children and families.
However, this session was hard. We advocated fervently within the uncertain federal landscape, managing to secure several substantial wins for children and families across Oregon. Yet overall, legislators failed to prioritize prevention and upstream intervention with the resources available to us. The result was several important bills dying on their way through the legislature and hefty cuts made to already struggling programs accompanying increased workloads—in short, fewer resources for children and families in Oregon.
Where Things Fell Short
Along with our amazing coalition, we had difficult conversations with legislators about the realities facing Oregonians: rising rents, stagnating wages, decreasing access to childcare and healthcare, and no relief in sight. Instead of investing in upstream solutions, the legislature made choices with costly consequences:
- The failure to fully fund Emergency Rent Assistance will lead to increased houselessness.
- The failure to pass School Meals for All, Food for All, or the Child and Adult Care Food Program means that our most vulnerable children and families will continue to go hungry.
- The cuts to the Department of Early Learning and Care mean less access to childcare and early learning programs, and less economic participation from parents with young children.
There are many more legislative losses and underfunding choices that will result in worse outcomes for our children.
Important Victories
Despite the losses of this session, we are proud to report important victories for Oregon’s kids this session:
- The passage of SB 692 (part of Senator Reynolds’ Momnibus package) increases access to doulas in Oregon, who are shown to improve maternal and infant health outcomes.
- SB 599 passed, protecting all Oregonians from housing discrimination based on immigration status, ensuring safe and stable homes for migrant families!
- Beyond these incredible victories we also secured wins preventing discriminatory book bans, limiting pesticide exposure for students, increasing access to acupuncture, and streamlining zoning processes for child care facilities.
We will continue to fight for all of Oregon’s children to thrive. Despite our overall disappointment with the results of this session, we will continue to push alongside our partners and community members for policy and investments that enable all children and families in Oregon to thrive.
Thank you to everyone that helped make the wins this session possible!
2025 Children's Agenda Recap
Priority Wins
Bill Number:
What this Means:
Keeps Oregon families with babies housed by pausing evictions for 90 days as they’re waiting for emergency housing support—a critical protection starting September 2025. It puts infants under 1 year first in line for housing assistance and requires the state to track child homelessness, addressing Oregon’s crisis of unsheltered kids. With the nation’s highest infant eviction risk, these changes give vulnerable families breathing room while connecting them to lifesaving help and stability.
What this Means:
Addresses Oregon’s maternal health disparities by expanding insurance coverage for doulas and lactation support, proven to improve outcomes, especially for women of color facing systemic barriers. It invests $1M to grow a culturally-responsive doula workforce, creates community-based perinatal care programs, and sets standards for lactation professionals. From pregnancy through postpartum, families can access culturally-grounded and monitored care.
Bill Number:
What this Means:
Protects immigrant families from housing discrimination by banning landlords from asking about or using immigration status to deny rentals—or threatening to report tenants. With unstable housing harming children’s long-term health, these safeguards ensure all families can access safe homes, regardless of citizenship.
Other Wins
Bill Number:
What this Means:
Addresses Oregon’s child care crisis by allowing centers to open in more residential zones and co-locate with community institutions, e.g. schools, libraries, places of worship, and more. By cutting red tape blocking new providers, it helps create care options where families actually live and gather. With the state’s severe shortage, these changes make child care more accessible, affordable, and rooted in communities that need it most.
Bill Number:
What this Means:
This law expands access to the Five Needle Protocol, a proven treatment developed in the 1970s that reduces stress and withdrawal symptoms, by allowing trained community members to provide it without requiring full acupuncture licenses. The Oregon Medical Board will maintain a registry of qualified practitioners, making this holistic care more available in Black, Indigenous, and communities of color that face healthcare disparities and need trauma-informed treatment options the most.
Bill Number:
What this Means:
Safeguards students’ access to diverse books by banning discriminatory removal of school library materials, protecting stories by and about LGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color that are increasingly targeted nationwide. Establishes fair review processes for book challenges while ensuring Oregon classrooms reflect students’ lived experiences. The Department of Education will provide support to schools defending students’ freedom to read, learn, and see themselves represented.
Bill Number:
What this Means:
This law strengthens protections for Oregon students by requiring schools to update their pest control plans every five years, pushing for safer ‘prevention-first’ approaches on playgrounds, fields, and congregation areas. Ensures families can access these plans online and promotes low-impact pesticides; critically-needed updates to keep kids safe from toxic chemicals while learning and playing.
Thank you to all our Children's Agenda Partners
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