BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama lawmakers did a lot of new things for K-12 and higher education during the 2025 legislative session, but they also left several high-profile proposals on the table. From culture-war bills to day-to-day changes, many measures fell short of final passage.
With one legislative day remaining, more than a dozen education-related bills are still in play. But for the proposals below, this session is effectively over.
A bill requiring all school boards to create a policy on how they would allow students to leave campus for religious instruction was a top priority for Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth but it ultimately failed to pass.
The House version didn’t advance out of committee, and while the Senate version passed the full chamber, it failed to advance in a different House committee to which it was hastily reassigned. Ainsworth has promised to bring the bill back “again and again and again” until it becomes law.
A 2019 law already allows school boards to have a policy if there’s enough interest, but Senate Bill 278 would have required them to create a policy.
Separate bills that would have required schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments also stalled. The House version passed that chamber but was never taken up by a Senate committee. A Senate version cleared its initial committee but never made it to the floor.
A House bill that would have allowed chaplains to counsel public school employees who requested their services passed the House overwhelmingly with a 91 to 4 vote, but never made it onto the Senate Education Policy Committee’s agenda.
Another House bill to prohibit colleges from disciplining teachers or students for refusing to use a person’s preferred pronouns when they differ from the individual’s legal name or biological sex never reached the House floor.
In an acknowledgement of the number of culture war bills his committee had to consider, Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, chair of the Senate Education Policy Committee, used his closing remarks on April 30 to signal a shift in priorities for next year.
“As chair of this committee, I’m going to do a better job next year of making sure that what we bring before this committee for policy in education better improves the educational quality of the children of the state of Alabama,” Chesteen said.
A bill to overhaul Alabama’s sex education curriculum ran out of time in the final hours of a legislative day after a lengthy Democratic filibuster. According to reporting by the Alabama Reflector, the bill, sponsored by Sen. Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, was debated until just before midnight, leaving no time for a vote.
At the time, there were four days left in the session, meaning all Senate bills would require unanimous consent to advance – a high bar.
Other school-related bills failed quietly.
A proposed constitutional amendment that would have required all K-12 schools to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning never reached the House floor. A 2019 law already mandates daily recitation.
House Bill 231 required local school boards to vote on whether to allow daily, voluntary Bible readings and prayer. It also included a financial penalty: Districts that failed to hold the vote could have faced a loss of 25% of their state funding.
House Bill 298 aimed to change how English Learner (EL) students are counted for athletic classification. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Brock Colvin, R-Albertville, passed the House but never made it into a Senate committee. Colvin said the change would have made high school sports more equitable by preventing schools with large EL populations – who often don’t participate in athletics – from being pushed into higher classifications.