MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Alabama State Superintendent Eric Mackey on Thursday updated state Board of Education members on the 2026 legislative session as it entered its final day.
He said lawmakers delivered major wins for schools this year through a record $10.5 billion Education Trust Fund budget, strong supplemental support and several new laws aimed at career technical education and expanding the teacher pipeline.
Mackey called it the best legislative year for education he has seen in 24 years of watching sessions, saying lawmakers delivered “really good budgets,” and passed several helpful bills.
PEEHIP and pay raise
Mackey told board members lawmakers put an additional $180 million into PEEHIP, the Public Education Employees’ Health Insurance Plan, short of the $210 million recommended by Gov. Kay Ivey but still enough to prevent insurance costs from eating up this year’s 2% pay raise.
Mackey serves on the PEEHIP board and said the program remains under pressure and is expected to face another shortfall next year because of increasing costs coupled with increased use of medical procedures and prescriptions, the rising cost of specialty drugs and declining federal reimbursements.
Transportation, career and technical education and school safety
Mackey said lawmakers fully funded school bus operations for next year, including fuel, tires and salaries, which he said was the first time the state has done so.
But in contrast, he said the state’s share of bus replacement costs, known as fleet renewal, has dropped to less than half because bus prices have risen faster than funding, a problem he said will likely continue into future years.
Mackey was pleased that lawmakers fully funded several key K-12 priorities, including increasing support for Literacy and Numeracy Act initiatives.
As part of the $420 million supplemental appropriation for the current year, schools received $10 million for career tech equipment and $25 million for school safety, more than double the previous year’s amount, Mackey said.
Some board requests did not make it into the supplemental budget, including additional reading support funding for struggling readers beyond the third grade.
This year’s Education Advancement and Technology Fund distribution will send about $570 million to K-12 schools, he said, pointing out that the department does not keep that money, instead it distributes it directly to local school systems.
For the first time, districts also will be allowed to use that money to pay off debt, a flexibility change Mackey said that superintendents had pushed for, so systems can use one-time dollars to reduce long-term interest costs.
Lawmakers showed strong support for career and technical education, earmarking $150 million for career tech center modernization grants. Combined with last year’s allocation, that brings the two-year total to $250 million for the grant program.
Mackey said lawmakers also made incremental increases in several RAISE Act weights, which determine how much additional funding schools receive for certain student groups. The weights for students in poverty, Tier 1 special education and gifted students each increased by 0.5 points. For the current school year, the formula directed more than $164 million in additional funding to student needs.
But Mackey said the state’s unusually high growth years are likely over. He said he isn’t worried about budgets – which are restricted to 5.75% growth year over year – but that the supplemental and technology allocations schools have seen in recent years will likely be less in the future.
He told board members that he has cautioned district officials not to use supplemental allocations to pay for operational necessities that should be included in the regular budget.
Screen time
Regarding screen time, Mackey said lawmakers did pass a bill, House Bill 78, limiting screen time for 4- and 5-year-olds in pre-K and kindergarten. The department will now need to write rules to implement it and will work with the Department of Early Childhood to do so. Mackey said those rules could be ready for the board to consider at its July work session.
A broader screen time bill, House Bill 584, that began as a measure affecting elementary grades but later expanded through 12th grade, passed the House but stalled in the Senate. Mackey said he expects the issue to return next year.
He said the department plans to form a screen time task force this summer that will include at least one board member, educators and experts in fields such as neurology and vision science.
The goal is to develop recommendations before next year’s legislative session, whether that means suggesting state limits, best-practice guidance or some balance of state and local control.
New teacher pathways for veterans, career technical education
Mackey also walked board members through several newly-enacted laws aimed at alleviating teacher shortages.
Senate Bill 149 creates a pathway for military veterans to become teachers before finishing a college degree. Veterans with some college, four years of military service and an honorable discharge would receive a temporary certificate valid for five years and would have to complete a teaching degree during that time. Mackey said this could be especially helpful in rural school systems.
House Bill 517 creates a pathway for people with at least three years’ experience in trades such as welding, HVAC, electrical work and pipefitting to become career technical education teachers.
Mackey said those instructors still will need training in pedagogy and adolescent development, and the department could provide online coursework in partnership with community colleges.
The bill further allows businesses to loan employees to high schools as career tech instructors while keeping them on company payrolls. In those cases, the company would cover salary, benefits and liability insurance and would receive a tax credit tied to those costs.
House Bill 520 provides an expedited certification process for career tech teachers from other states to teach in Alabama.
During the meeting prior to the work session, Mackey introduced a rewrite of the state’s teacher certification rules – the culmination of eight years of work – which includes a newly-created lifetime teaching certificate for retired teachers with at least 25 years of service.
Mackey said the certificate will allow retired teachers who might have otherwise allowed their certificate to lapse to fill in during maternity leaves or other part-time duties without having to go through the entire certification process again.
CHOOSE Act and enrollment
Mackey also discussed the CHOOSE Act’s impact on school enrollment and budgeting. Earlier in the week, Ivey announced that 49,000 students had applied for education savings accounts, up from the prior year’s application numbers.
Public schools lost about 5,300 students this year, he said, which was the largest one-year drop in state history.
Of those, about 1,300 students likely used CHOOSE Act ESAs, while the rest reflected a broader demographic decline.
He said the department is projecting another drop of about 5,000 students next year, but that number could be higher, as about 9,000 of the new applicants were described as public school students.
The board meets again on May 14 in Montgomery.
A full video of the board’s work session is below.