New school funding options unveiled last week could give Alabama schools more money – and potentially more flexibility – to address student needs.

On Dec. 9, a legislative school funding committee reviewed plans that could give some districts up to $2,000 more state dollars to spend per student. Scroll down to see how different funding options could impact your school district.

Under each proposed option, no school district would lose any state dollars. Low-income schools would likely see the biggest changes, and across most districts, funding would nearly double for English learners and gifted students.

That could mean more money for counselors, English learner coaches, special education aides or other essential expenses in high-needs schools.

“Right now we do a lot of centralized decision-making out of Montgomery,” Rep. Danny Garrett, who co-chairs the committee with Sen. Arthur Orr, told reporters. “We earmark money for systems and say, ‘You have to use this money this way.’ This would give districts more flexibility, but it would also give them more money based upon their specific student needs.”

Legislators are considering shifting from the state’s decades-old Foundation Program school funding formula to a “student-weighted” model, which would designate extra state funding for student populations that have specific needs, such as:

• English learners,
• students with disabilities and
• gifted students.

The formula options also would consider weights for charter schools, rural districts and systems with large concentrations of students in poverty. The plans were created by the nonprofit Bellwether Institute.

Once fully funded after four years, the new options would add anywhere from $713 million to $825 million on top of the $5.5 billion currently allocated in the state budget to local school districts.

Garrett said the state will likely use reserves to fund the new model.

“We would not want to raise taxes to do this,” he said.

School funding in Alabama comes from three different buckets: state, federal and local funds.

Typically local funds are the most flexible, but they vary widely depending on a community’s local wealth and property tax rates. In rural Sumter County, for example, leaders have about $2,600 in local funds to spend on each student, compared to about $8,500 in Mountain Brook.

Currently, Alabama sends about $7,700 in state funding per pupil to local school districts through the Education Trust Fund’s Foundation Program. Those funds typically are used for staff salaries and other basic operational expenses. The state also allocates a few extra line items for student subgroups, but those funds are minimal and typically very restrictive, officials said.

“It’s not done in a manner that really is moving the needle,” Orr told the committee.

How would classrooms change?

About 45 other states currently use a student-weighted formula to determine how much state money districts will get.

Research has shown that targeted funding has helped to close achievement gaps between high- and low-poverty districts. But success largely depends on how much lawmakers are willing to invest in certain groups, said Julien LaFortune, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Significance is always relevant to how much money you put into it,” he told AL.com. “And that’s where it comes down to what gets funded and what weight do you give it.”

Alabama’s proposals come as schools adjust to the end of federal pandemic relief aid, which provided a historic infusion of resources. Officials said some local schools already are cutting key staff to keep their budgets balanced, and could benefit from extra support from the state.

Others may depend more on local money to fund essential programs like special education, which are seeing soaring costs, according to a recent Alabama Daily News analysis.

Rep. Van Smith, R-Clanton, himself a former educator, said rural districts sometimes struggle the most to fund those specialized programs because of population changes and unpredictable class sizes.

“It poses a different challenge,” he said. “If I’m a principal and I have two kindergarten [teachers] and 15 kids in each classroom, that’s great. But the next year I might have 23 in each one of them. So to get that third [teacher], I’m going to incur more costs because it’s a rural area that has a greater amount of fluctuation.”

Accountability

More flexibility to address local challenges, experts say, could be a good thing. But not all districts spread resources to schools that need them the most.

“There’s kind of a fundamental tradeoff between how much accountability comes down from the state and then how much flexibility you give local districts,” LaFortune said. “And so often there’s kind of a back and forth of what the right balance is.”

State money is typically less flexible and intended for “essential needs,” like staffing and operational expenses. Some states might restrict spending in the same way that certain federal grants would, LaFortune said. Others, like California, have opted to give districts more flexibility.

Spending decisions may be more straightforward for some student groups, like English learners and students with disabilities, where there are already firm guidelines around specialized staffing and supports. But some lawmakers said they need more information to determine how much money to give to other populations, like rural or low-income students.

“I care deeply about every kid in the state getting a great education, being college and career ready, and I recognize there are different challenges that people face around the state, and I want to fund them in a proper way,” said Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook. “But in order for us to do that, we’ve got to see information that says, ‘OK, if I have kids in a rural area,’ or, ‘I have more kids in poverty,’ what is it that makes it more? Show me those costs.”

Some states require districts to submit annual spending plans, which may have varying levels of community input, LaFortune said. But for now, that’s still a big question for Alabama lawmakers.

Garrett said lawmakers will likely discuss that accountability piece at a later date, if the committee agrees to move forward with a new formula.

“We want to make sure that systems are responsibly spending their money,” Garrett told reporters. “I know that a lot of systems I’m familiar with will do a great job of taking this money and spending it better than we do today, but there’s some systems, though, that we’re probably concerned about. So we need to make sure that we’ve got the checks and balances in place, that the money is not going away.”

Next steps

The legislative committee will review a final report in January. Officials said the committee hopes to make a decision before the legislative session begins on Feb. 4.

If lawmakers and the governor are on board, Orr said he and Garrett will likely introduce legislation during the upcoming session. A new model would ultimately have to be approved by Gov. Kay Ivey. if it passes in the House and Senate.

If a consensus isn’t reached in time, Orr said there are still other ways the legislature could increase funding for certain schools and students.

“We’ve got the pedal to the metal right now, we’ll just see where we go,” Garrett said.

“I think everybody wants to address the issue, it’s just how do you do it and how quickly do you do it.”

The table below breaks down the proposed funding amounts for each school district. If you can’t see the chart, view it here.