Capital Pulse February 4, 2022

The Rundown

The Alabama Legislature reconvened the regular session on Tuesday, February 1, just days after statewide media began reporting that Senator Del Marsh intended to file a piece of legislation that he himself referred to as the “mother of all school choice bills.”

Marsh filed the bill, SB140, deemed the “Parent’s Choice Act”, on Tuesday. The bill would create the Parent's Choice Program which would allow parents to withdraw their child from a public school and receive a payment from the state deposited into an education savings account to pay for private school tuition, virtual education programs, private tutoring, or other educational services approved by the created board. The bill could divert a minimum of $537 million a year from the Education Trust Fund (ETF). Wednesday, Rep. Charlotte Meadows filed HB245, the House companion bill to SB140. CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS NOW to warn them about this legislation!

AEA testified against the bill in the Senate Education Policy Committee Tuesday, stating that although we have had unprecedented growth in the ETF, the level of funding that would be diverted by this bill isn’t sustainable and would devastate the ETF. This bill would take more than half a billion dollars every year out of public education with no accountability. SB140 was amended in committee to require private school and homeschool students to participate in state testing if they enroll in the program. Although there was much opposition voiced in the committee hearing from multiple groups – with not one person speaking in support – SB140 was passed out of the Committee and is now in position to be brought to the Senate floor. AEA is continuing to lobby Senators to vote against this legislation.

Last year, a modification to Tier II retirement of the Teachers' Retirement System was made allowing members who were under Tier II to begin to accrue their sick leave days annually and utilize them towards their service time. This year, Rep. Alan Baker filed a new bill, HB134, that would further modify the Tier II retirement benefits by providing 30-year service retirement and increase Tier II members' contribution rate from 6.2% to 6.5%. HB134 passed out of the House Thursday and now moves to the Senate.

Thus far, 463 legislative bills have been introduced by the Legislature. AEA staff continues to read each word of every bill and monitors them daily to ensure they will positively affect public education.

Watch These Bills

The bills listed below were introduced this week and are being tracked by AEA. For

a complete list of the legislation AEA is currently tracking, check past issues of The Pulse for the weekly list of tracked legislation.

HB214, by Rep. Barbara Drummond, would provide a one-time retiree lump-sum bonus in the amount of $2,000 for education retirees or their beneficiaries.

HB229, the Virtual Board Meeting bill by Rep. Ben Robbins and its companion SB147 by Sen. Arthur Orr, would allow members participating by electronic means to be seen as present for all purposes so long as a certain number of members are physically present, and would remove a prohibition on participation in executive sessions by members through electronic means. This bill would also provide that members of the public be allowed to participate in a meeting held by electronic means.

HB220, by Rep. Terri Collins, would postpone the third-grade retention portion of the Alabama Literacy Act until the 2022-2023 school year; modifies and provides further definitions for the membership and duties of the Literacy Task Force, the responsibilities and functioning of the Alabama Committee on Grade-Level Reading, and good cause exemptions from retention.

SB171, by Sen. Arthur Orr, would establish the Alabama Numeracy Act and prohibit the use of the Common Core State Standards in public K-12 schools. Additionally, it would implement steps to improve mathematics proficiency of public-school kindergarten to fifth-grade students and ensure that those students are proficient in mathematics at or above grade level by the end of fifth grade by monitoring the progression of each student from one grade to another, in part, by their proficiency in mathematics.

SB170, by Sen. Arthur Orr, would exempt the academic performance of certain English language learner students from consideration in the assigning of an academic achievement grade to a school or school system.

SB175, by Sen. Arthur Orr, would allow allocations from the Education Trust Fund Advancement and Technology Fund to be used for capital outlay.

Capital Pulse February 4, 2022

February 1-4, 2022