State Education Budget Passes First Hurdle
When you see a committee room desk littered with a lot of paper, you know it’s going to be a long day.
Committee members debated the Education Trust Fund budget for almost 3 hours Wednesday.
The budget that finally passed does add a few things, like more teachers for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders.
“Workforce development got a significant increase and k-12, we were able to increase the dollars in the foundation for the school children. As I said earlier, when I look at the unemployment numbers where we are that came out this week and we’re 3rd from the bottom, we need to be focusing on our k-12 system and our workforce development,” said Sen. Arthur Orr.
Orr heads up the budget committee and says while there were a few extra dollars to spread around, this was a pretty lean year.
That’s partially because the state expanded a law to provide scholarships for not only disable veterans, but their families as well even if they currently live out of state.
“We had 90 million dollars to spend. The higher ed component was 23, 24 million dollars in the range of the traditional split. And the veterans scholarship program went up about 24 million dollars, so that ate through just about any increase that you would see,” said Orr.
One difference from the governor’s proposed budget is a 15 million dollar increase for Pre-K as opposed to 20.
Allison Muhlendorf, executive director of the Alabama School Readiness Alliance, says she’s happy to see Pre-K front and center.
“What I heard from Senator Orr was that his committee members came to him and this is a priority, and given the many other demands on the budget in a lean budget year, it’s clear they did prioritize First Class Pre-K,” said Muhlendorf.
