Battle Over Education Budget Continues
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The first thing you’ll see about the new house budget is full funding for ASU. They added back the 10 million dollars cut from the university in the senate’s budget.
They’ve also added an extra 30 million dollars for textbooks and other classroom materials.Â
And Montgomery Public Schools’ Donald Dotson says they need that money, because they haven’t bought new textbooks for all of K through 12 in about seven years.
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“Last year our allocation was around 900 thousand dollars. We actually spent over one million dollars in fill ins. Fill ins are basically lost or damaged textbooks you have to replace that are out of adoption before you can go into new adopted textbooks,” said Dotson, Assistant Superintendent of Operations.Â
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And Wares Ferry Elementary Principal Ed Drozdowski is excited about the possibility of more classroom materials to help the children learn.Â
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“Well you’re looking at getting supplementary stuff, hands on materials, which is always a great things for kids to have because that’s the way kids really learn today.They get into it with their hands, work together, sharing, doing different things and all those kinds of materials really help,” said Drozdowski.
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One thing you’ll notice that’s missing is the governor’s two percent pay raise and full funding for teacher’s health insurance. Representative Bill Poole heads the house committee and says it just wasn’t possible.
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“Unfortunately I don’t think we have those dollars in our budget. And so I think you see a very responsible, a very efficient, and a very appropriate house budget. I’m very proud of it,” said Poole.
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But Governor Bentley says he still stands by his original budget.Â
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“Legislators can either vote with me and support our teachers across the state, or they can vote against what I said and vote against the teachers across the state. That’s their decision,” said the governor.Â
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