Alabama School Board is sworn in

January 28, 2025 - MONTGOMERY, AL - The new and returning members of the Alabama Board of Education were sworn in by Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Sarah Stewart (R) in the old House Chambers of Alabama's historic 1859 Capital Building.

The eight-member board is being joined by Kelly Mooney (R) and Dr. Allen Long (R). Incumbent members Jackie Zeigler (R) and Dr. Tanya Chestnut (D) were sworn in to their new terms after being re-elected in November.

Board members Marie Manning, Wayne Reynolds, Tracie West, and Y'vette Richardson are entering the third years of their four-year terms.

The Alabama Legislature returns on February 4 and there are a lot of education related items to consider moving forward. Chief among them is whether or not the Numeracy Act is significantly improving math performance. There are also concerns that the standards were lowered so that more children were able to pass the reading requirements in order to move on to fourth grade. Beginning in 2024 third graders who could not read at third grade level in Alabama's public schools were required to repeat third grade - regardless of their grades or how well they were doing in other classroom assessments. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic which shut schools down for months, Alabama was ranked as the worst state in the entire nation for math and in the bottom 8 for reading. COVID-19 - and the extremely long school shutdowns in the blue states - has helped Alabama improve in the state rankings; but not in the actual performance of the students. There appears to be a whole cohort of students nationally whose education was, perhaps irreparably, stunted by the 2020-2021 school closures due to the pandemic..

In high school economic developers and private corporations have put pressure on the legislature to do more to improve the quality of the state's workforce. To that end, the state is moving every high school student on to a college, career, or military pathway cognizant of the fact that most children do not go to college and 40% of those who do, do not finish and the state has one of the worst workforce participation rates in the country - even though employers are struggling to find competent workers.

2025 is the first year that students across the state will be able to get a subsidy from the state to send their child to a private school. The first year is heavily means tested; but the program is due to expand to include more families in coming years. State revenues are at all-time highs. The state has never spent more money on education. The Legislature has to decide how much of those new revenues will go to public education and how much will go to private education as the state legislature prepares the 2026 budgets.

The Board appoints the state Superintendent. The ninth member of the board is the Governor of Alabama - Kay Ivey (R).

An effort by the Legislature to terminate the current elected Board and replace it with an appointed Board answerable only to the politicians was soundly rejected by Alabama voters in 2022.

Sarah Stewart was recently sworn in as Chief Justice, replacing the retiring Tom Parker.