This is an opinion column.

Gov. Kay Ivey has some strange things she wants to do with Alabama’s $2 billion education budget surplus, including bailing out broke sports events and subsidizing a really expensive whitewater boat ride.

The World Games would get $5 million, and Ivey’s budget proposal directs $25 million of education money to a water park — a Montgomery tourist attraction still under construction, over budget and behind schedule, despite having received more than $50 million of county and city tax dollars already.

But those might be the second and third-worst things in the governor’s shopping list.

Take that $25 million, multiply it by four, and that’s how much education money Ivey’s administration wants to spend — on prison construction.

Last year the state allocated $1.3 billion to build two new 4,000-bed mega prisons, which included $400 million of COVID-relief funds from the federal government.

Now Ivey wants to spend $100 million for prisons that Alabamians were told they’d already paid for.

Out of money meant for schools.

PREVIOUS: Alabama governor sends education dollars to water park

Like the money for the Montgomery Whitewater park, it’s not easy to find Ivey’s prison funding in her education budget, but it’s there. You have to know where to look and what questions to ask.

“To the Alabama Community College System for one-time expenses, $252,390,831,” it says. “Of this amount, $100,000,000 shall be used for Prison Education.”

Certainly, incarcerated people could benefit from education, which might reduce recidivism which, in turn, could reduce the state’s prison population, grow the workforce …

All good things.

But education is not a one-time expense. This $100 million would be. I wrote the state’s finance director, Bill Poole, to ask him how exactly the community college system would use the money.

Would the money be spent for educating folks or for building prisons?

“This funding would support the construction of the education and vocational facilities at the planned Elmore and Escambia prison facilities,” Poole wrote back. “These funds would be restricted such that they could not be used for any purpose related to those projects beyond the construction and equipping of the education and vocational facilities.”

In short, this isn’t money to educate prisoners — it’s money to pay for the part of the prisons where they’ll educate prisoners later, three or four years from now when, the Good Lord willing, the prisons are finished.

But prison construction, nonetheless.

Gov. Ivey’s $1.3 billion no-bid prison plan is now a $1.4 billion plan, and there’s reason to believe the cost will only grow.

PREVIOUS: Alabama’s billion-dollar no-bid prison disaster is only the beginning

Prison construction has been a priority for Ivey since she took over for the disgraced Gov. Robert Bentley, who resigned after a scandal. Prison construction was a priority for him, too.

Under Bentley, the state was supposed to pay $900 million, total, for four new prisons — three for men and one for women.

After Ivey took over, that plan changed to $900 million for three new prisons, all for the men. The ladies got cut out of the deal.

Then, last year, the governor got lawmakers’ approval to spend $1.3 billion on two prisons, one in Elmore County and one in Escambia County.

Most recently, Ivey approved spending nearly $1 billion of that money on just one prison, the Elmore County facility, or about $243,750 per inmate bed.

A billion-dollar, no-bid prison.

How the state would build a second prison after spending $1 billion on the first was a head-scratcher. There would only be $300 million left from last year’s allocation.

Now we know where some of that might come from.

I’d like to explain the cost overruns to you, but first I’d have to see the prison plans and Ivey’s administration says that’s classified. But for the location of the prisons and some of the companies involved, all that information has been deemed off-limits for security reasons.

The governor’s office hasn’t shared so much as an artist’s rendering of what these prisons might look like.

What is this education money paying for? A hundred classrooms? One classroom? A woodshop? A gym?

That’s none of your business, the governor says, but it will cost at least another $100 million of your money.

The school-to-prison pipeline means something different. This isn’t about students anymore, but education dollars, too.

Like every other governor in my lifetime, Kay Ivey campaigned on the promise she’d be Alabama’s education governor.

But an incarceration governor is what we got, instead.

More columns by Kyle Whitmire

Alabama governor sends education dollars to water park

Alabama’s billion-dollar no-bid prison disaster is only the beginning

Kay Ivey’s billion-dollar surprise

This contraption would cost Alabama schools $1.7 billion

Alabama won big at the Oscars. Why aren’t our public officials acting like it?