Legislature to consider new funding model for schools

March 29, 2025 – State Representative Danny Garrett (R-Trussville) spoke on the Heart of Dixie Podcast with the Alabama Gazette's Brandon Moseley and Baldwin County Attorney Harry Still about proposed changes to the way Alabama funds education.

Representative Garrett chairs the House Ways and Means Education Committee that prepares the $9.9 billion education trust fund (ETF) budget every year. Garrett explained the state's current education funding model.

"The way the state funds education is a result of a lawsuit that was passed that happened 30 - more than 30 years ago - and has to do with equity funding. It requires every local to get state funding you have to contribute at least 10 mills of income - of your taxes," said Chairman Garrett. "We determine in Montgomery basically, I'm way oversimplifying this, but we determine in Montgomery how many teachers every school needs. You need so many teachers per pupil. You need so much money for transportation. You need a number of dollars for this, x for that, and we calculate all that, give that to each local system and based upon a headcount that was set 20 days after Labor Day a year ago. And so what happens is a system will get, the amount of money they get is from the state is determined by their by their local contribution."

Garrett said that there are some problems with the current funding model.

"We have schools that don't have the resources but have the tremendous costs and even the more affluent systems that have a lot of cost for special needs or ELL (English Language Learner) that we're not funding."

"We do an archaic funding formula based on a resource model that everybody's moved away from," explained Garrett. "And because of that we don't contribute at the state level to the cost of educating children that have higher costs associated with it, special needs, ELLL, poverty, or gifted. We also provide, we provide limited state funding for charter schools."

"We in Alabama are different from some states in that we allow city school systems," said Garrett. "You know, Florida, for example, doesn't have city school systems. They have one school district per county. And that, you know, we're not that way. Jefferson County, where I live, we have the Jefferson County school system. We have Mountain Brook, Vestavia, Homewood, Hoover, Trussville - multiple things like that. So we're different from that aspect of it."

Garrett and Senator Arthur Orr (R-Decatur), who chairs the Senate Finance & Taxation Committee are introducing legislation to change the funding model.

"We have this hybrid model that we will be discussing," said Garrett. "It should move with the budgets and that will help address some of the funding concerns." "You will see Chairman or and I both introducing bills this session that will address how we fund education. We're one of six states that don't fund education based on student needs."

Different systems have different levels of local funding. Garrett and Orr's changes to the funding model won't change that.

"Some locals have local funding that allows them to supplement what the state gives," said Garrett. "We don't want to touch that local money at the state level. In other words, the local entity has raised their taxes for their schools. We want them to keep that."

Garrett said that he supports President Donald J. Trump's efforts to end the U.S. Department of Education and their imposing of regulations on local school systems.

"I've talked to a lot of people in both in higher ed, the state department of education, other people who are involved in this and most of the states are happy - would be happy, would welcome more control over what we do because a lot of the issues we have in the state have to do with unfunded federal mandates or strings attached to federal dollars. And that sometimes creates a lot of inefficiencies, waste of money. It also creates just that we can't solve some of the problems we can solve and creates problems with some of the things they've done."

Garrett acknowledged that there are concerns that some federal funding could be going away.

"I don't think there's a resistance at least among the people I've talked with and certainly myself about us basically taking more responsibility for this," said Garrett. "The question is we rely on a lot of federal funding. I don't think that funding goes away. How we get it may be different."

The Alabama Legislature meets a maximum of 30 legislative days a year in a regular session. Thursday will be Day 18 of the 2025 Legislative Session.

To view the whole Heart of Dixie podcast including the full interview with Rep. Danny Garrett: