Alabama lawmakers head back into session on Tuesday and education changes are expected to be on the agenda.

AL.com’s Education Lab reporters, with help from colleagues Mike Cason and Sarah Swetlik, will cover all things education.

To stay up to date on coverage, follow the Ed Lab (and its reporters) on Twitter and Instagram and sign up for its newsletters, “Ed Chat” and “State of Education.”

Issues to track

Gov. Kay Ivey and new Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, have said education is their top priority, but neither has mentioned any particular actions they’re backing.

Education, and public schools in particular, became a flashpoint in a national culture war during the pandemic.

Alabama lawmakers took up some of those mantles in 2022, passing laws last year prohibiting students from using a bathroom not aligned with their assigned sex at birth and prohibiting any discussion of inappropriate topics in kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms.

Other bills already filed include:

And then there is the state’s education budget, which is a record $8.3 billion for the current year. Gov. Kay Ivey will announce her agenda and priorities and any proposals for teachers raises Tuesday.

Education officials pitched their requests to lawmakers in February, including recommendations for increased staffing, but it’s up to Ivey to finalize requests.

Lawmakers will also have to decide what to do with $2.7 billion in taxes in unexpected Education Trust Fund revenue that can be spent in the current fiscal year.

Republicans can pass anything they agree on, as they have a supermajority of seats in the Alabama legislature, holding 77 seats in the 105-seat House and 27 in the 35-seat Senate.

This is the first year of the state’s four-year quadrennium cycle, so the session starts later than it will in the next three years. An orientation session was held in December for the 37 new lawmakers and an organizational session was held in January where leaders were chosen.

How Alabama’s legislative process works

The session starts on March 7. That starts the clock on the 105 calendar days lawmakers have to complete the legislative session, meaning this year’s session must end by June 16. Within that time period, they can meet to vote on bills no more than 30 days.

If a special session is called, as is expected to handle outstanding federal COVID funding, it must be conducted within 30 days and lawmakers can conduct business on no more than 12 of those days.

Lawmakers sometimes prefile bills – though there weren’t many this year compared to previous years. Currently there is also a “Regular Session 2023 Prefiled Bills” tab. All bills are posted online at the legislature’s website under the “bill search” tab.

There are multiple ways to find a bill: by number, by sponsor, and by searching for keywords. There is also a way to save bills you want to follow by signing in with a Google mail account.

The Education Lab team typically monitors the Education Policy, Children, Youth and Human Services, Rules, and Ways and Means Education committees in the House. In the Senate, the team monitors the Children and Youth Health, Education Policy and Finance and Taxation Education committees. Committee assignments and schedules will be posted online after they are released.

As far as the process goes, the classic “I’m Just a Bill ‘’ song from Schoolhouse Rock describes a bill’s journey pretty well. A bill has to pass both chambers – the House and the Senate – and get signed by the Governor in order to become law.

The short version of a bill’s journey goes like this:

• A lawmaker gets an idea for a new law and files a bill,
• The bill is assigned to a committee in the first chamber – House or Senate – in which it was filed,
• The committee votes on the bill:
  • Favorable report means the bill heads to the floor of the first chamber,
  • Unfavorable report means the bill stays put and does not go any further, or
  • The bill could be tabled for future discussion.
• The bill gets put on the calendar (which can be difficult toward the end of the session),
• The full chamber (Senate or House) votes on the bill:
  • A majority yes vote sends the bill to the other/second chamber to get assigned to a committee,
  • A majority no vote kills the bill.
• Once in the second chamber, the process starts all over again.

If both chambers agree on a bill, it goes to the Governor’s office for her signature. If any wording changes are made after the first chamber passes it, both chambers have to agree to the changes.

How to follow bills

To find which bills are in which committee, check the Alabama Legislature’s online bill database listing to get the name of the committee and then check the schedule to see when the committee meets.

If you can’t tune in to the livestream, you can watch a replay of the meeting on The Alabama Channel, which is maintained by the League of Women Voters of Alabama.

Another option is to watch lawmakers when they’ve gathered in the full chamber to take up a slate of bills. That typically happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it could happen any day of the week. Again, check the livestream site and choose which of the two chambers you want to watch.