Governor Puts Foot Down On Education Budget

The dollars that will fund Alabama’s schools are still up in the air for next year.

 

House committee members heard from everyone from State Superintendent Tommy Bice to ASU President Gwendolyn Boyd in a public hearing.

 

Committee members said the hard thing with the education budget is everyone deserves the money. But of all the voices at the hearing, the loudest one wasn’t even there.

 

The governor proposed a two percent pay raise for teachers and fully funding educators health insurance. When his budget hit the senate, both of those were stripped out. Now he wants lawmakers to know that he won’t let those ideas go.

 

“A lot of times we feel that we are not recognized, we get the short end of the stick and we’re passed over a lot of times. Every other profession, they’re acknowledged, compensated, but we continue to fall at the bottom of the list when it comes to incentives and pay raises,” said McMillian.

 

But Representative Bill Poole, who chairs the house committee in charge of the education budget, says there’s still a long way to go to a finished budget.

 

“Well, the priorities are to get a limited amount of dollars, we can’t meet all of the budget requests. We literally don’t have the dollars. The budget requests exponentially exceed the dollars. So what we have to do is prioritize every dollar we spend and get it into areas that will have the greatest impact,” said Rep. Poole.