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Legislative Session Recap
Legislative Update
Whitney Miller-Nichols, Director of Governmental Relations, CLAS
Alabama’s 2024 legislative session kicked off February 6 and adjourned sine die Thursday, May 9, ending with 11 days left in their constitutionally allowed 105 days.
The Legislature began the session at a breakneck pace, burning through half of their 30 legislative days in just five 3-day legislative weeks. The aggressive schedule led to lean committee calendars as leadership focused on their marquee legislation: the CHOOSE Act education savings account bill; the Parents Right to Know curriculum transparency bill; and the divisive concepts bill.
The Legislature took two weeklong breaks in March, the first labeled as a constituent work period and the second as the traditional spring break. They returned in late March with their collective nose to the grindstone, passing dozens of bills from each chamber over three 2-day legislative weeks.
Rumors in Montgomery had the Legislature adjourning by Mother’s Day, and that proved true. Both chambers had a productive final week of the session as they worked through long calendars Tuesday and Wednesday. However, the last Thursday of the session focused on bill concurrences between the two chambers, rather than a final burst of bill passages.
ETF Budget Update
The House and Senate concurred on a compromise FY2025 Education Trust Fund budget on Thursday, May 9, the last day of the session. The compromise budget had just one change from the Senate’s final version and that in turn had few changes from the House’s final version of the budget
The final version of the budget includes:
Funding to provide assistant principal units for elementary schools with 300+ ADM (0.5 unit) and middle schools with 300+ ADM (1.0 unit). The schools earning these units are those classified as elementary/middle school by ALSDE for the 202324 school year.
A 2% across the board pay raise for education employees, plus an additional bump to the Class B starting teacher pay. That bump for novice Class B teachers puts Alabama’s starting teacher pay as the highest among our neighbor states.
Stipends for special education teachers again this year.
Principal and assistant principal stipends per the 2023 School Principal Leadership and Mentoring Act.
Additional reading and math coaches for elementary schools under the terms of the Literacy and Numeracy Acts.
$14.9M in funding to establish a workers’ compensation program for education employees will be rolled into the Other Current Expense portion of the Foundation Program since that enabling legislation died in the House.
This budget includes new flexibility to the $5.4M Auxiliary Teacher Grant Program to allow those funds to be used to support EL students in schools with an EL population over 10%.
See each version of the Education Trust Fund and General Fund budgets on the Legislative Fiscal Office’s Budget Page, which also has links to spreadsheets for prior year budgets.
The Legislature made a $1B appropriation from the A&T Fund of the ETF this year, the first since 2022’s $283M appropriation. Each school system’s allocation is listed in the bill. The uses allowed with the Advancement and Technology Fund set out in Section 29-9-4, the Code of Alabama, 1975 are:
Repairs or deferred maintenance of facilities for public education purposes
Classroom instructional support pursuant to Code of Alabama, Sections 16-13-231(b) (2) c and 1613-231.3
Insuring facilities
Transportation pursuant to Code of Alabama, Section 16-13-233
Purchase of education technology and equipment, or both
School security measures as a component of a systemwide security plan
Capital outlay
This year’s ETF supplemental appropriation divided $651.2M among K-12 public education, higher education, CHOOSE Act education savings accounts (more below), and programs not traditionally categorized as education, such as the Department of Agriculture and Industries and the Legislative Services Agency. K-12 education received 30.48% of the total amount appropriated in the bill. See a breakdown of the bill and its versions here. The bill also splits the balance of the discontinued Distressed Institutions of Higher Education Revolving Loan Program Fund between the Lt. Governor’s K-12 Capital Grant Program Fund ($15M) and the House Community Service Grants Fund ($14.9M). The loan program was dissolved by HB439 (Baker).
K-12 items in the FY2024 Supplemental Appropriation:
2. State Board of Education, Local Boards of Education $94,974,918
$13,839,874 ASIMS (AL Student Information Management System)
$15,000,000 New school bus purchases based on the current age and mileage of existing buses - State Supt recommended & Gov approved
$10,000,000 Career Tech O&M (equipment, consumables, and supplies)
$25,000,000 Core-adoption textbooks
$22,229,387 Funding for current school nurse matrix
$8,155,657 Unanticipated Foundation Program shortfalls
$750,000 Principal Act stipends for CTE director-principals
3. State Department of Education $63,625,000
$400,000 Birmingham Education Foundation
$15,000,000 Summer reading camps
$17,000,000 College & Career Readiness grants - postsecondary opportunity awareness
$4,000,000 Teacher’s Liability Trust Fund
$5,000,000 Struggling Readers Beyond Grade 3
$2,500,000 EdFarm
$9,000,000 Charter School Capital Facility Grants
$2,000,000 Plasma Games Curriculum
$6,650,000 American Village Capital Projects
$700,000 Woolley Institute for Spoken Language - N. AL facility
$500,000 ALET software monitoring pilot with 6 school systems ($6K to ALET)
$500,000 Small Magic School Readiness (Birmingham Talks)
$300,000 First Grade Readiness Pilot Program
$75,000 Youth Entrepreneurial CEO Program
6. Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences $15,000,000
8. Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind $3,464,931
9. Marine Environmental Science Consortium (Dauphin Island Sea Lab) $4,000,000
26. Lt Governor’s K-12 Capital Grant Fund $15,000,000
33. Space Science Exhibit Commission $500,000
34. Alabama School of Fine Arts $650,000
35. Alabama School of Cyber Technology & Engineering $650,000
36. Alabama School of Mathematics and Science $650,000
Education Savings Account Update
The Legislature passed the CHOOSE Act March 6, just over a month after the session convened. CLAS worked extensively with Governor Ivey’s legislative staff and both the House and Senate budget chairs to limit the scope of and funding for Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). The CHOOSE Act Fund cannot carry forward more than $500M, and any overage must revert to the ETF. Every ESA recipient must participate in annual testing for academic accountability and can opt to participate in the state testing program (ACAP/ACT). Education service providers have some financial accountability measures they must comply with, and ESA recipients will utilize a vendor platform to purchase eligible items other than tuition or school fees.
The law establishes the CHOOSE Act Fund and requires the Legislature to appropriate at least $100M annually to the fund to provide ESAs to individuals in Alabama via a refundable tax credit. Each ESA will be prefunded with $7,000. ESAs will be available for the first time in the 2025-26 school year. The Legislature appropriated $51M via the FY2024 supplemental appropriation for CHOOSE Act ESAs.
Taxes Update
The state sales tax rate on groceries will stay at 3% for another year since the Education Trust Fund did not grow enough last year to trigger the automatic rate decrease.
Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth highlighted a property tax cap as one of his legislative priorities for this session. In response, the House passed HB73 (Pettus) to cap the annual property tax increase at 7%. This higher rate was amended on the House floor as a compromise from the introduced version of 3% for residential property. This bill was sent to Gov. Kay Ivey for signature on May 8.
The statewide Simplified Sellers Use Tax rate of 8% gives online retailers an unfair advantage over local brick-and-mortar retailers. To help those retailers boost their local sales tax base, Rep. Joe Lovvorn and Rep. Chris England promoted a legislative package that paired a new sales tax holiday with an updated SSUT rate. The rate equalization would have matched the online sales tax to the statewide average 9.33% sales tax rate and divided the new revenue between local boards of education and local government entities. The revenue boost each school system would have received directly from the updated SSUT rate would have been greater than the loss to the ETF with the proposed tax holiday. This bill package failed.
Schools Leaders Update
The FY2025 ETF budget includes additional assistant principal funding. Elementary schools with 300+ ADM will earn 0.5 AP unit and middle schools with 300+ ADM will earn 1.0 AP unit. The schools earning these units are those classified as elementary/middle school by ALSDE for the 202324 school year. This is great news! CLAS will continue to advocate for a state-funded assistant principal unit for every school with 250 or more students, but this announcement is a significant victory in that quest.
The final ETF budget sent to Gov. Ivey for signature includes full funding for the School Principal Leadership and Mentoring Act:
• $27M for principal and assistant principal stipends for those who participate in the professional development program, available at the end of the 2024-25 school year
• $3.5M to pay principal mentors partnered with firsttime principals hired after July 1, 2025
• The Legislature also added $750K to the FY2024 supplemental appropriation for CTE director-principals to participate in the Principal Act professional development program.
ALSDE has a 2-hour professional development course to explain the ins and outs of the Principal Act and the Alabama Principal Leadership Development System (APLDS). Search PowerSchool PD for Course #316126 Principal Act Overview.
Workforce Development Concerns Update
In late March a bipartisan coalition of legislative leaders released the Working for Alabama legislative package focused on workforce development in the state. Legislative leaders compare Working for Alabama with last year’s business-focused legislative package, The Game Plan.
The most significant pieces of the package for educators are:
• HB346 (Almond) establishes the Alabama Workforce Housing Tax Credit Act to provide a tax credit for the development of workforce housing projects identified as eligible by the Alabama Department of Commerce.
• HB358 (Daniels) establishes a childcare tax credit system.
• SB253 (Chesteen), the Alabama Workforce Career Pathways Act, creates a new Workforce Pathways diploma that requires only two math credits and two science credits for graduation. The new diploma option would also incorporate additional CTE courses.
The governor, lieutenant governor, and leaders in both chambers have for months discussed the need to increase labor force participation in our state. Much effort has been made over the last year to find out why people are opting out of the workforce, and for policymakers to come up with solutions that will help folks enter or return to the workforce. Each bill in the “Working for Alabama” package is intended to tackle an aspect of the solution – preparing workers, subsidizing childcare, making it possible for people to live closer to where they work, and facilitating communities’ ability to incentivize employers to open shop. The Working for Alabama package was signed into law the final week of the legislative session.
Gambling Update
The legislature ended the 2024 session without the Senate approving the compromise version of the House’s Comprehensive Gaming Package (HB151, HB152) developed by conference committee in April. The House voted to approve the compromise package the last week of April, but the Senate was unable to muster the votes needed to approve HB151, a constitutional amendment. The bills were carried over April 30 and died when the Senate adjourned sine die May 9.
After the Legislative Session
The legislative offseason is a great time to build or strengthen your relationship with your system’s legislators. If you’re not sure who they are, use this tool to find them with the address of the schools in your system. You are the best person to provide your legislators with valuable boots-on-the-ground insights into your system’s strengths and needs!
Please reach out if you have questions about state laws and policies related to education. Email me at whitney@clasleaders.org or call me at 205-602-7465. I’m here as a resource for you!
