Get the Daily News Digest in your inbox each morning. Sign Up

House committee to move record education spending bills today

The House education budget committee is expected today to take the first legislative votes on current year and fiscal 2025 spending plans totaling almost $11 billion.

Allocations include more one-time funds for K-12 schools and colleges and universities, $20 million for a health care-training focused high school in Demopolis and $20 million toward the new State House under construction in Montgomery.

Committee chairman Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, Thursday morning discussed some of the changes to Gov. Kay Ivey’s proposed $9.3 billion 2025 education budget and $651.2 million supplemental bill. Copies of the proposed substitutes weren’t publicly available, but Garrett said they would be Tuesday.

House Bill 147 is the proposed Advancement and Technology Fund, one-time appropriations allocated to public schools and colleges based on their enrollments. A total of $1.75 billion is available. Lawmakers don’t have to allocate funds each year and didn’t in 2023. Ivey recommended spending $700 million this year.

“We are proposing to take that number to $1 billion,” Garrett said.

The money can be spent on a limited list of expenses including capital projects, security improvements and technology upgrades.

The reason for that increase, Garrett later said, is because $100 million for school security was taken out of Ivey’s House Bill 144, the proposed 2024 supplemental spending bill. The committee also cut $30 million for device replacement, Garrett said.

Committee-added items in the supplemental include: $51 million to start the recently approved school choice law that will allow some families to receive tax credits when attending private schools; $7 million for charter school capital improvement grants and funding for some 200 assistance principals in middle and high schools that have at least 300 students. Additional money for those new principals is also in the 2025 education budget.

There’s also $5 million to support struggling readers beyond third grade. The Alabama Literacy Act has in recent years focused funding and attention on early readers through third grade.

And $20 million for a residential public high school in Demopolis focused on health care sciences. The high school was a proposal by Ivey last year and she put $30 million in the supplemental for it.

“There is some discussion about the scope and the size and also there is the idea that there are other rural health care needs that we could address through the Alabama Community College System,” Garrett said.

While Ivey suggested $174 million for state universities, Garrett said the committee was increasing that number.

Community colleges would receive $99.5 million, Garrett said, along with a separate $40 million capital fund.

Similarly, there’s a $20 million K-12 capital fund.

$20 million for expenses related to the new State House currently under construction.
About House Bill 145, the $9.3 billion education budget, Garrett said few changes were made from what Ivey proposed.

The committee plans to cut $25 million in rural broadband grants, he said.

“At this point, we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars from other sources,” Garrett said about broadband funding.

The budget has $10.8 million for the previously mentioned assistant principals and $5 million for a new “innovative ideas” grant program at public schools. Garrett said an example might be a year-round school.

The committee plans to cut $750,000 from the Alabama Public Library Services and redirect it to other reading programs.

Also on Tuesday’s agenda will be House Bill 146, the proposed 2% raise for education personnel and support staff.

Get the Daily News Digest in your inbox each morning.

Name(Required)
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Web Development By Infomedia