Legislative Update

From Bills to Budgets: Countdown to the 2024 Legislative Session

Whitney Miller-Nichols, CLAS Director of Governmental Relations

The primary state advocacy focus for CLAS is always the Education Trust Fund (ETF) budget since this budget determines the state allocation for each school system and school. As a school leader, you know that a budget is also a policy document that should reflect the priorities of the governing body. Our advocacy efforts during the legislative session are guided by the legislative priorities approved by the CLAS board at its December meeting. The CLAS advocacy team engages in all steps of the ETF budgeting process so that the ETF may reflect our members’ priorities, too. And your participation in advocacy efforts during the legislative session reinforces the groundwork laid by the CLAS advocacy team during the “off season.”

Setting Financial Priorities

State budget season kicked off when ALSDE staff reviewed the agency’s draft FY2025 ETF Budget Appropriation Requests with the State Board of Education (SBOE) at their August retreat. Staff revised their proposed budgets based on SBOE feedback and presented the revisions at the September SBOE work session. The board must always approve the ALSDE ETF appropriations request no later than their October meeting since state law requires all agencies to submit their budgets to the state’s Executive Budget Office (EBO) by November 1 every year.

The EBO will then prepare the Governor’s two budget proposals (one for the ETF and one for the General Fund), adjusting each agency’s requests to reflect the Governor’s priorities for the coming fiscal year. You may remember that the Governor’s Recommended FY2024 ETF Budget made significant adjustments to the ALSDE budget requests.

The Governor signals many of her priorities in the annual State of the State address, delivered to a joint session of the Legislature when they convene for the new legislative session. She has three days to transmit her budgets to the Legislature once they have convened. This year the Legislature comes together on Tuesday, February 6, 2024, so the budgets will be public by Friday, February 9. Look for a breakdown of her address and the ETF budget soon after.

The Legislature holds joint budget hearings to give agency heads the opportunity to explain their budget requests to legislators, since there can be variation between what the agency has requested and what has been included in the Governor’s Recommended Budgets.

The two chambers alternate which originates each budget that year; in 2024, the ETF budget will start in Rep. Danny Garrett’s House Ways & Means Education Committee while the General Fund will start in Sen. Greg Albritton’s Senate Finance & Taxation General Fund Committee. In the 2023 legislative session the ETF budget stayed largely the same from the Governor’s desk through the legislative process; there was much more debate about the $2.8 billion ETF Supplemental Appropriation.

State law requires that before both budgets have been sent to the Governor for signature, any legislative action must be accompanied by a Budget Isolation Resolution (BIR). This is an additional vote on every bill up for consideration on the floor; failure to pass a BIR means a bill fails for the session. However, once the budgets have been transmitted to the Governor, a BIR vote is no longer required, and bills can therefore move through the legislative process much more quickly.

The Governor has the power to line item veto any line in the two budgets. This is a rarely exercised power, but it is one more opportunity for advocacy. If she returns a line-item veto, the chambers must then reconsider that item only while the rest of the budget is enacted.

ALSDE’s FY2025 budget requests include:

Funding to provide an assistant principal for every school with 250 or more students

• Funding for school administrator stipends in accordance with SB300, the School Principal Leadership and Mentoring Act

• Funding for the Principal Mentor Program for new principals

• Lowering Grades 4-6 Divisors to support intensive instructional needs from the Literacy and Numeracy Acts

• Additional math coaches as required by the Numeracy Act

• Additional funding for reading coaches required by the Literacy Act

• Expanding ARI to support struggling readers past grade 3

• Additional ARI funding to pay for summer reading camps, training, and materials

• Funding to provide a school nurse for every school

• More funding for College & Career Readiness Grants to fund College & Career Ready Indicators now required by law for graduation

All told, ALSDE’s FY2025 requests are a $540 million increase over FY2024 appropriations. Legislators have said for the last two years that schools must brace themselves for the coming “fiscal cliff,” and that we should not ask the Legislature to pay for personnel hires made with COVID dollars once that funding ends. However, many systems used temporary federal funds to pay for positions and obligations the Legislature has mandated, such as reading coaches, math coaches, and summer instructional camps. Others the state ought to fund –adequate school administrators, nurses for every school, career coaches – but so far has not. We need your voice to be one more in the chorus explaining to legislators why these requests are needed in Alabama schools.

Preparation Starts Now

Over the next several months, reach out to your school’s state legislators (find his/her name here). Introduce yourself if they don’t already know you and let them know what school and system you represent. Check in with them every few weeks over the next few months, sharing the successes and shortcomings of your school. You are the expert of your domain, and your legislators need to know you are a trusted resource they can call when they have education questions. And when legislators know that a real need is present in their schools, and that those budget requests aren’t just an abstract dollar amount, they can confidently stand up and fight for the funding to meet those needs.

We have scheduled Advocacy Days for each affiliate to engage with legislators here in Montgomery. Each day we’ll have members come in two waves, morning and afternoon, overlapping in the middle for lunch. When you get to the office, we’ll brief you on what you need to know and equip you with talking points to take to the State House. We’ll sit in on education committee meetings and walk the halls so that you can talk with your school’s legislators here. Then we’ll reconvene at the office to debrief what you and your legislators talked about. These meetings are also an opportunity for the affiliates to weigh in with the CLAS advocacy team on how pending legislation may impact their schools. Check out the sidebar to see which dates your affiliate is scheduled to be here and go ahead and mark them on your calendar. As a former classroom teacher, I know how hard it can be to get out of the building, but your presence here will make a powerful impression on your legislators.

As always, email me at whitney@clasleaders.org if you have questions.