MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, said Wednesday he supported changing the way the state distributes money for public schools.
Speaking to the Association of County Commissions of Alabama in Montgomery, Ledbetter said that lawmakers are looking at putting “money where money needs to be,” and that it will be a “game changer.”
“We should have been doing that a long time ago. We haven’t changed our education formula for over 30 years. It’s time,” Ledbetter said.
Alabama currently uses a hybrid-foundation model, tied more to average daily attendance at a school, to distribute public school money. Lawmakers have been considering moving to a student-weighted funding model, with a goal of better matching resources to the different needs of students. Under Alabama’s existing funding framework, only 1.2% of state education funds specifically address student needs, such as those for students with disabilities, English language learners and students in poverty.
Chair of the Alabama House’s education budget committee Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, who also co-chairs the Legislative Study Commission on Modernizing K-12 School Education, said Monday it’s time to change the state’s method of distributing public school funding, saying the current method was holding Alabama education back.
Ledbetter said that it’s time to give “kids in the Black Belt just as good opportunities” as other parts of the state.
“It’s time that we give kids in Wilcox County just as good of a chance as kids in Huntsville, Alabama,” Ledbetter said.
However, some legislators Monday raised questions about how money would be distributed, particularly in rural areas and to charter schools.
This article originally appeared in the Alabama Reflector, an independent, nonprofit news outlet. It appears on FOX54.com under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
