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Legislative Update
Whitney Miller-Nichols, CLAS Director of Governmental Relations
Budgets are a Policy Document
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 winter meeting. The CLAS advocacy team engages in all steps of the ETF budgeting process so that the ETF reflects 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.”
The State Budget Cycle
State budget season began when ALSDE staff reviewed the agency’s draft FY2026 ETF Budget Appropriation Requests with the State Board of Education (SBOE) at their August retreat in Anniston. ALSDE staff revised their proposed budgets based on SBOE feedback and presented the revisions at the September SBOE work session. The board then approved the revised ETF appropriations request at their October meeting to comply with a state law requiring all agencies to submit their budgets to the state’s Executive Budget Office (EBO) by November 1 every year. You can view the full FY2026 budget request here.
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.
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 4, 2025, so the budgets will be public by Friday, February 7. Look for a breakdown of her address and her proposed ETF budget from CLAS 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 2025, the Education Trust Fund budget will start in Sen. Arthur Orr’s Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee while the General Fund will start in Rep. Rex Reynolds’s House Ways and Means General Fund Committee.
With passage of the CHOOSE Act in the 2024 session, we can expect at least $100M to be appropriated to the program from the Education Trust Fund each year. In 2024, $50M was appropriated in the FY2024 Supplemental Appropriation and $50M was appropriated in the FY2025 ETF Budget. All indications are that the budget chairs will appropriate in a similar fashion in the 2025 session.
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 lineitem veto, the chambers must then reconsider that item only while the rest of the budget is enacted.
ALSDE FY2026 Budget Requests
ALSDE’s FY2026 budget request includes:
$52M for the Struggling Readers Beyond Grade 3 program
$50M for a School Safety line item
Funding to provide an assistant principal for every school with 250-479 students
Funding for school administrator stipends in accordance with the Principal Act
Funding for the Alabama Principal Leadership Development System
Additional math coaches as required by the Numeracy Act
Additional funding for reading coaches required by the Literacy Act
All told, ALSDE’s FY2026 request is a $471M increase over FY2025 appropriations. That is $90M more than the state Legislative Fiscal Office estimates the Legislature will make available for public K-12 funding. The SBOE was adamant that legislative funding for Struggling Readers Beyond Grade 3 and School Security is essential in the 2025 session. The Legislature would have to reduce line item growth for other entities in order to meet the SBOE’s full $471M request.
Projected FY2025 Supplemental Appropriations
When the Legislature established the ETF Secondary Spending Limit (SSL) with Act 2023-390, it codified the percentage by which ETF appropriations can increase over the previous fiscal year’s appropriation. The SSL began at 6.5% and will decrease incrementally to 5.75% by the FY2027 budget cycle. While intended to help protect against proration, the SSL is also creating an artificial cap on funding growth that is diverting multiple hundreds of millions of dollars a year into various legislative “savings accounts” like the Educational Opportunities Reserve Fund instead of funding education. Dollars remaining in the ETF after the cascade of accounts receive their required deposits are then available for supplemental appropriation bills.
The Legislative Fiscal Office is projecting around $520M available for an FY2025 supplemental appropriation bill, and the Advancement & Technology Fund balance will be at almost $875M. School systems and higher ed have historically received the majority of funds in a supplemental appropriation bill, but other state interests have been included in more recent years, such as $25M for the new State House and a $50M deposit in the CHOOSE Act fund in 2024. In the 2023 session, almost half of the $2.78B supplemental appropriation bill went to non-education entities. The Legislature is under no obligation to make either an A&T Fund or ETF Supplemental appropriation in any year.
Next Steps for School Leaders
I encourage you to review the SBOE’s FY2026 ETF budget request and let your system’s legislators know which line items are of particular importance for your students. Use this tool to find their contact information. Introduce yourself if they don’t already know you and let them know what school and system you represent. And don’t forget to 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. Check out the flyer to see which date your affiliate is scheduled to be here 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 in the State House will make a powerful impression on your legislators.
As always, email me at whitney@clasleaders.org if you have questions.
