Just weeks after approving limits on screen time for preschoolers, Alabama lawmakers are mounting a last minute push to set screen time limits for all public school students. 

The House Education Policy Committee Thursday approved , sponsored by Rep. Jeana Ross, R-Guntersville and filed on March 5.  The bill is an extension of the signed by Gov. Kay Ivey earlier this month. 

“What I’m hoping this will accomplish is that these two acts will work together to create a continuous research based framework for developmentally appropriate technology you see from from early childhood to 12th grade,” Ross said in an interview Friday.

Among other features, ��Dz���’ bill would limit total screen time instruction in schools to two hours a day and mandate regular vision breaks after screen use.

��Dz���’ limited screen time for children from birth until kindergarten in licensed child-care facilities, public kindergarten classrooms and specific Pre-K classes. Under the law, the Department of Early Childhood Education, Alabama State Department of Education and Department of Human Resources would collaborate on creative guidelines for appropriate screen time usage.

During committee, Reps. Alan Baker, R-Brewton, and Marcus Paramore, R-Troy, brought extending the limit to 12th grade and requiring students to follow the “20-20-20 rule” during scheduled screen breaks. The 20-20-20 rule states every 20 minutes students must look at an object at least 20 feet away from them for at least 20 seconds. The method has been recommended by the to reduce and prevent eye strain.

Mark Dixon, president of A+ Education Partnership, a education nonprofit, said in an interview Friday the organization supported the bill. 

“We’ve seen the benefits of the cell phone ban that legislature and Gov. Ivey passed last year; we were already seeing the benefits in classes this year, and A+ is support of limiting screen time in an age-appropriate manner,” he said.

Messages seeking comment were left with School Superintendents of Alabama and Alabama Association of School Boards Friday.

During the meeting, Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, who chairs the committee, said Rep. Chris Blackshear, R-Smiths Station, brought the idea of expanding the limit to 12th grade. Attempts to reach Blackshear were not immediately successful.

Under HB 584, a 17-member task force composed of educators; vision specialists and national experts in child development, digital media research or cognitive science will work in collaboration with the Alabama State Department of Education to develop guidelines for best practices for screen-based instruction.

“We want it to be high quality and to be used intentionally, again, just avoiding that passive use of technology, just like with the birth to age five kindergarten, but on up through 12th grade, our technology is intentional,” Ross said.

Ross said after her original bill passed she heard concerns from parents about whether or not the bill would dictate what goes on in their homes. She said both bills only relate to instructional time in classrooms.

“It has nothing to do with what parents choose to do in their homes, but all to do with what happens in public schools and in places that receive public funds,” she said.

The bill was not on Tuesday’s House agenda as of Friday afternoon. There are seven legislative days left in the 2026 regular session. 

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

Alabama’s public school enrollment could see its largest decline in 40 years, Alabama State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey told members of the Alabama State Board of Education on Thursday.

Enrollment in the state’s K-12 schools in the 2024-25 school year , a slight increase over 2023-24. The department did not release numbers Thursday for the 2025-26 school year, but Mackey said Thursday only about 12 schools have seen growth in enrollment while other districts have seen numbers decline.

About 5,000 students have been unenrolled from public schools in the state with roughly 3,000 students total taking funds to go to a private school.

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The CHOOSE Act is a voucher-like program that offers families up to $7,000 per qualifying child for education related expenses including private school tuition. The program currently operates under income caps scheduled to be lifted next year.

“We know a portion of [the students] took CHOOSE Act dollars and we’re working with the governor’s office and the Department of Revenue to figure out exactly what that number looks like,” he told board members.

The department is expected to release final numbers next Friday.

The loss of students is a nationwide problem. In May, the that there would be a decline in public school enrollment, due to growth in private and charter school enrollment and the general aging of the population. Nationwide, public school enrollment is expected to fall by 7.6% by 2031. Alabama’s

Mackey said Thursday he was mostly concerned with the 2,100 students who were enrolled last year that never showed up for school.

“They didn’t transfer to private school, they didn’t go to home school, they didn’t go to school in another state. They just disappeared,” he told the School Board of Education.

Mackey said local superintendents have reported to him that a majority of the unaccounted students are Hispanic.

“We don’t know if they’re still living in this state, just not going to school. If they have moved to another state, they did not enroll in school in that state,” he told the board. “If they left the country, we don’t know if they are documenting students or undocumented, because, as you know, that’s something we are not allowed to ask, and we don’t ask under federal law.”

According to the , about 12% of students enrolled in Alabama public schools are Hispanic.

Mackey said getting these students back in school is important for their progress.

“If those students all come back to us in January and they missed a semester of instruction, we’re going to teach them, but we’re going to pick them up where they are,” he said. “I would implore, publicly, [for] parents to get them back in school. The sooner they get back in school quicker, we can catch them up and move them forward.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) has introduced a program that will provide state funding to those with two-year college degrees to attend four-year institutions and earn their bachelors’ degrees.

The program, called Pathways to Success, aims to bolster the state’s economy through offering support for ongoing education.

“For us, it’s about providing support for them growing their human capital for what is needed in that region,” ACHE Executive Director Jim Purcell said. “We basically did a statistical analysis using the American Community Survey (ACS) and determined two workforce regions that were on the cusp of economic growth but they needed to have a different mix of credentialed individuals.”

The ACS is an annual survey of social and economic demographics conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Students attending a four-year institution can receive up to $3,000 per academic year for full-time enrollment and $250 per credit hour for part-time enrollment. Students attending a two-year institution can receive up to $1,500 per academic year for full-time enrollment and $125 per credit hour for part-time enrollment.

The initiative currently focuses on the southeast, east and north Alabama regions. According to a presentation, the Southeastern region has a high number of people with associate degrees, but is in need of individuals with a bachelor degree or higher and higher labor force participation.

Jacksonville State University (JSU), Troy University, Athens State University and Calhoun Community College will participate in the program.

this academic year is $10,590 while is $10,176. tuition for last academic year was $6,120 and tuition for the same term was $5,120.

“Being selected for the Pathways to Progress Initiative affirms our commitment to helping northeast Alabama grow by building a stronger workforce and creating more opportunities for adult learners,” JSU President Don C. Killingsworth said in a statement.

Purcell said the program will move across the state as the ACS is updated.

“We will be looking at places which we think we can increase the speed we rightset the workforce there to provide an appropriate mix of bachelors and associates in a community,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

As the new school year begins, the real story isn’t just about raising test scores. It’s about rethinking what readiness should look like. Students will graduate into a job market profoundly different from the one they see now. States like mine are taking notice and rethinking how we prepare students for a future shaped by artificial intelligence, automation and data.

Today’s workforce increasingly demands professionals who can analyze, interpret and act on data. Some countries are already ahead of the curve. In the United States, now require data science or analytics skills. While many schools offer programs that recognize how essential these skills are, they are too often treated as electives. Many states have yet to incorporate data literacy into K-12 learning standards, and few teachers have the training or resources to teach it. The urgency is clear: According to the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, their international peers in numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments.

The United States remains largely unprepared by comparison. Although now require data science or analytics skills, they are still treated as an elective for students, if it’s offered in school at all. Most states have yet to incorporate data literacy into their K-12 learning standards, and few teachers have access to training or resources to teach it. The result is a fragmented approach that leaves students with vastly unequal opportunities to develop the skills they’ll need most.

Alabama is charting a different course. In 2022, the state passed the , a major policy effort aimed at strengthening math instruction through conceptual understanding, real-world applications and reasoning skills. The Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative has helped bring that vision to life, delivering hands-on professional development built around interactive problem solving to teachers across the state. To coordinate these efforts, the state established the , which implements evidence-based strategies and monitors progress. 

But Alabama didn’t stop at improving math scores. It recognized that numeracy alone isn’t enough in a world where data is driving decisions in everything from health care to criminal justice. Through a with Alabama-based AI and data literacy platform , the state has trained more than 1,400 teachers in data science, enabling them to provide instruction in topics such as data collection, analysis, visualization and AI literacy to 10,000 students in grades 6 to 12 across Alabama.

Students aren’t just learning basic numeracy or how to read charts or graphs. They’re gaining a full suite of critical skills, including statistical reasoning, data visualization and computer science. These are essential forms of civic and digital literacy in the 21st century, fostering the computational and critical thinking that allows students to be nimble problem-solvers. Alabama is one of a handful of states — including Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana and Nevada — leading the way on policies that to learn computer science. Last year, Alabama ranked for access, with 94% of its schools offering courses in the subject.

Outside the classroom, through the , high school juniors and seniors can gain paid, hands-on experience through internships that expose them to real-world applications of data work. This helps them build skills and confidence before they graduate.

The economic rationale for Alabama’s investments is clear. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in data science are projected to between 2022 and 2032. Starting salaries average more than $85,000, compared with Alabama’s overall average of $47,826. Preparing students for these jobs isn’t just good education policy. It’s a smart economic strategy.

Alabama’s progress has required legislative action; coordination among state agencies, school districts and postsecondary institutions; and a long-term commitment to providing teachers with resources, mentoring and professional learning. These strategies are not unique to our state — they can be adopted and implemented across the country. It takes treating data literacy as a foundational skill set, on par with reading and traditional mathematics. It also means building the systems to support that vision, from high-quality curriculum and robust teacher training to real-world learning opportunities for students.

Alabama’s recent success reflects a broader shift in how the country is preparing students for a future defined by data and technology. The state has demonstrated what’s possible with clear priorities and sustained, coordinated investment. We offer a model other states can build on to strengthen opportunities for all students in a rapidly changing world.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education’s latest notes the number of teacher preparation program graduates ready to teach math fell by 36% from 2012 to 2020, dovetailing with a decline in student achievement. While the study released today did not prove causality, the link, researchers say, seems clear. 

“High-quality teachers matter,” CRPE director Robin Lake said. “It’s the most powerful in-school factor in kids’ learning experience and it’s something people are not talking about enough.” 

At the same time, a topic that has been widely discussed — the debate over whether explicit direct instruction trumps a more student-centered learning approach — has left some educators unsure of how to teach the subject, researchers found.

“The math wars are as old as education itself,” said CRPE senior fellow Alexander Kurz. “That debate is alive and well through the science of math. As an educator, you are caught in the crossfire.” 

The result: Nearly 4 in 10 eighth graders failed to achieve even the most basic level of math proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, such as calculating the area of a circle or multiplying fractions, the study notes. The most recent NAEP scores, released just last week, showed the nation’s 12th graders doing worse in math than any senior class of the past generation.

While those scores were the first to come out for seniors since COVID, the study’s authors say the problem long predates the pandemic. They note that math performance in U.S. public schools has been declining for more than a decade and achievement gaps are at historic highs.

Girls, low-income kids, Black and Hispanic students, children with disabilities and multilingual learners are struggling most, CRPE reports. Citing NAEP data, the report notes that since 1990, the gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring students has grown 18% wider among eighth graders and more than 8.5% wider among fourth graders.

In addition to the teacher shortage and instructional quagmire, CRPE cites a number of other factors it believes contribute to abysmal student performance pre- and post- pandemic, including that many states’ test scores are inflated, obscuring results, “especially for different student groups.”

The report, the fourth of its kind, found that in , for example, students’ average math grade point average jumped 0.34 points from 2019 to 2021, triple the increase of the prior eight years. 

In , the report notes, math proficiency dropped 11 points on state exams while A and B grades on local courses declined by only 3 points. 

“A national study from 2021 to 2023 found that 57% of grades didn’t align with student knowledge as measured by tests, and two-thirds of those misaligned grades were inflated, most often for underserved groups,” the CRPE report reads. “ACT data show rising GPAs, especially in math, despite falling test scores. By 2021, even students scoring in the 25th percentile were graduating with B averages or better.”

The study found, too, schools are overly rigid, tracking students and hindering their success in the subject.

“Middle school math-tracking acts as math predestination, putting some students on a track to take Algebra I in eighth grade or earlier,” the report reads. “Less-advantaged students are less likely to be placed in advanced math courses, even when they demonstrate readiness.”

Joel Rose, co-founder and chief executive officer of New Classrooms, a nonprofit that focuses on student-centered learning, called the report spot on, adding schools don’t account for children learning at different speeds. 

“There is really only one track, the grade-level track,” he said. “If you stay on it and never fall behind, you do fine. The problem is most kids fall behind for one reason or another and there are not any viable paths for them to catch back up.”

It’s because of this, he said, that math education is turning into “our nation’s social sorting machine.” Students who don’t catch on to the subject will find a whole series of career pathways closed off to them, he said. 

But all of these problems are solvable, CRPE contends, noting that states like and school districts like New Jersey’s and , have made replicable gains. 

Alabama is the only state where fourth graders scored higher in the subject than they did in 2019, prior to the pandemic. 

Karen Anderson, director of the state education department’s Office of Mathematics Improvement, said Alabama has worked hard to align classroom lessons with state standards and to use evidence-based practices and high-quality instructional materials to help all students — no matter their zip code or performance level.

“We want to make sure we are using instructional strategies that actually provide results,” Anderson said. “We also want to make sure we know what students know — and what they don’t know. And, when we see students who need help, we provide assistance immediately.”

CRPE recommends schools stop poo-pooing direct instruction — in which teachers demonstrate or explain procedures and concepts. Likewise, it concluded teachers need clear guidance on how to balance conceptual understanding with procedural fluency — in addition to real-time data to identify gaps and better structure their lessons.

Melodie Baker, founder and executive director of , which aims to use research to empower communities of color, has worked in mathematics for decades. She said robust teacher preparation at the elementary school level is critical for student success.

“The lack of emphasis on math in elementary is a big issue,” she said. “For example, teacher prep programs spend far more time on early literacy than math.”

But they are of equal importance, Baker said.  

CRPE concluded states should consider better pay, team-teaching models and math specialists as a means to address the math teacher shortage. 

In terms of improving the student experience, it advises schools to adopt “flexible pathways with multiple on-ramps, automatic acceleration, and no lower-track dead ends.”

Based on their conversations with students, CRPE concluded that schools need to better serve children who require more time to understand math concepts.

“One thing I don’t like is when I ask a teacher a question because I don’t understand it, and then they make me feel like I’m a bother and I really shouldn’t ask more questions,” an 11th grader from Connecticut told CRPE researchers in 2022. “And that prevents me from learning. And I hated that because I actually want to know.” 

The student’s claims correspond with what CRPE found: Schools are regularly missing opportunities to address academic problems head-on. 

And while the federal Every Student Succeeds Act explicitly requires states to develop a concise and easily understandable online report card, most don’t meet the standard. CRPE found just 18 break down math achievement and growth data by student subgroups “in a way that we thought was clear and understandable.”

Only Illinois, the report notes, earned the highest rating in this category by providing comprehensive math performance and opportunity data that CRPE thought most parents would be able to use and understand.

Alabama schools are set to implement a new system to prevent vaping by public school students in the coming academic year.

, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Drummond D-Mobile, requires the Alabama State Board of Education to create a model policy for local boards of education to adopt by November.

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“[Drummond] wanted an anti-vaping law, so we were able to work with her on something that’s not too overwhelming for the districts, but they are all going to have an anti-vaping policy,” State Board of Education Superintendent Eric Mackey told members of the board in a meeting on Tuesday.

Under the proposed policy, students who are caught vaping once will have their parents contacted and students who are caught vaping twice will have to take a state approved vaping awareness, education and prevention class which includes a curriculum created in collaboration with the Drug Education Council.

The topics covered in the proposed curriculum presented to board members include health consequences, peer pressure, nicotine and addiction, resources to quit vaping and common misconceptions about vaping among others.

According to the , the media branch for the Children’s of Alabama hospital, nearly 20% of high school students in 2023 said they had vaped.

Some board members at Tuesday’s meeting questioned the need for the vaping law.

“As an educator, parent and grandparent, I don’t quite understand the focus on this and bifurcating or separating from the other common concerns in every discipline policy,” said Wayne Reynolds, who represents District 8 on the board. “Why would you separate what you’re doing to a child caught vaping and contacting the parents than any other child in the discipline policy?”

District 1 Representative Jackie Zeigler raised concerns about children moving onto other drugs like Fentanyl and Xylazine or tranq and pushed for broader language in the law to prevent having to add resolutions to add other specific items such as marajuana into the law.

“I don’t think by labeling it does any justice,” she said. “We need to make it broader so these things fit into it so we don’t have to come back and say, ‘now we have [THC] gummies, and now we have vaping.’”

Mackey agreed that the law is more specific than most Alabama Department of Education policies, but because it’s the law they have to follow it and said the board is “being no more restrictive than the law requires.”

Beginning in the 1995 school year, Alabama schools were required to have a and the states every county and city school system must have drug abuse and education courses in their curriculum.

The Alabama State Board of Education will vote on the model policy for the law next month.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

But after this weekend, when President Donald Trump Bowen, who specializes in primary care pediatrics, fears a new obstacle: her patients might lose access to the publicly funded health insurance that makes her work possible.

“Before they had insurance, but then they couldn’t get to the provider,” Bowen said. “Now you’ll have providers coming out — but they won’t have the insurance.”

Experts say Bowen’s concerns are not unfounded. The sweeping, which Republicans pushed through Congress last week without any Democratic votes, will cut federal spending on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits by $1.02 trillion and increase the number of uninsured Americans by 7.8 million people over the next decade, according to estimates by the nonpartisan

Cuts to the Medicaid budget will have “just tremendous impacts,” Bowen added. Schools receive about $7.5 billion annually from , a popular joint federal and state health program that insures nearly 70 million Americans, most of whom are low income. For more than 30 years, it’s paid for services in schools for students with disabilities as well as low-income students.

If all provisions in the bill are enacted, it will lead to enrollment drops in the , which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, and a $125.2 billion reduction in Medicaid by 2034, the Budget Office predicted, though it’s not clear just how many kids would be impacted. 

The cuts will come through a variety of mechanisms over the next decade, ranging from immediately enacted provisions that curb states’ ability to raise their share of Medicaid funding to new federal limits on eligibility — including work requirements for parents of kids 14 years or older — which will go into effect in 2027. These, in particular, could harm children, who are less likely to be covered themselves if their parents lose access, according to Anne Dwyer, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

“Like many, we’re still unpacking exactly what this will mean for states and for individuals covered by Medicaid and for students in schools,” Dwyer said. “Some of these cuts are immediate and some go into effect over time.” 

Republican lawmakers, though, argue they’re actually Medicaid recipients by removing undocumented immigrants and others they say never should have had access in the first place.

While there weren’t any provisions in the bill that directly slash school-based Medicaid services, the 20-plus Medicaid provisions it does include will ultimately place immense financial pressure on states to make up for the lost funds, which will have trickle-down impacts on schools, according to Dwyer.

In response, states will either have to raise taxes, or make further cuts within their Medicaid programs — the more likely option, Dwyer said. They could also look to backfill budget shortfalls by slashing other school-based programs.

“It’s just hard to imagine a scenario where states are faced with these levels of cuts, and individuals across the program aren’t impacted,” she said. 

School-based Medicaid makes up less than 1% of the overall program’s budget, but is still the fourth-largest federal funding stream for districts and allows them to pay for a swath of resources, including therapies for students with disabilities, school nurses, mental health care and specialized equipment, such as wheelchairs. 

The loss of funds will significantly impact how schools are able to cover mandatory services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to Mia Ives-Rublee, the senior director for the at the Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank.

Kids who are eligible for Medicaid through expansions or waivers — state-based mechanisms that widen access to some people who wouldn’t normally qualify — are particularly at risk of losing services, since their eligibility isn’t required by federal law, said Ives-Rublee. 

But, she added, children will largely remain more protected than adults since a number of pediatric services are mandated at the federal level, including preventative screenings, check-ups and vision and hearing services. 

Still, if fewer children are enrolled in Medicaid overall, it will reduce the pool of money that goes towards school-based services leading to fewer resources and providers.

“What we will start seeing, and what we’ve seen in previous states, is that there will be a chunk of people who will just lose eligibility … because they either don’t get the information about the new paperwork requirements, they don’t understand that they now have to do check-ins twice a year [to determine eligibility vs. once a year] … and they might miss a recertification process,” Ives-Rublee added.

The changes could also result in fewer social workers or school-based psychologists and decreased access to health care — especially in rural and urban communities, according to a opposing any proposed cuts that was spearheaded by the Medicaid in Schools Coalition and signed by 65 organizations.

of districts use Medicaid funding to pay for the salaries of health professionals, according to 2017 data. And — 40 million — are now insured through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In Alabama, where Bower sees patients, over are enrolled in these programs.

“If you put all the kids in the country together, they’re the largest group of impoverished people,” said Bowen, who also serves as the president of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, “and they have no political voice … They rely on adults to hopefully do the right thing so that they can grow up and be healthy and contribute to this country …. but if they’re sick, they’re hungry, they can’t be educated. It’s an all-around impact.”

These impacts will be challenging to track, though, as they play out over the next decade, experts warn — especially less tangible ones like the amount of time states will spend trying to untangle how to implement the bill’s complex provisions.

“We’re in for a long haul here,” said Dwyer. “A lot of these changes aren’t going to be overnight. They’re going to be over the next months and years to come. And so I think just documenting what’s happening, what’s working [and] where pressures are coming up will be really important.”

Even with her expertise, she still appreciates the support she gets through a University of Arkansas-run network. With funding from a federal grant, 250 participants from across the state work on increasing and for delays in speech, motor or social skills. 

“We try to catch those things early,” said Eichler. The network helped her become nationally accredited and now she’s one of the top-ranked providers in Arkansas. “The better we get, the better our kids get. It’s a win-win for our state.”

But President Donald Trump now wants to eliminate the funding that paid for that network and similar projects nationwide. Launched in 2014 during the Obama administration, were intended to expand pre-K for 4-year-olds from low-income families. During his first term, Trump significantly the grants into what Katharine Stevens, an early-childhood policy expert, described as a “conservative-friendly” effort to promote parent choice and put decisions about improving early learning in the hands of states.

The funds benefit kids from birth to age 5, not just pre-K students. That’s why it’s hard for her to understand Trump’s reason for eliminating them. 

“I sympathize with people who are feeling like the federal government has just grown way out of control,” said Stevens, founder and president of the Center on Child and Family Policy, a right-leaning early childhood think tank. But the grants, she said, have delivered “a lot of bang for the buck” by making it easier for parents to find high-quality programs. “Just doesn’t make sense to end it.” 

Despite his first-term goal of allowing states to take the lead, Trump wants to cut the program because it doesn’t increase the supply of preschool slots. The would save $539 million. Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, whose has guided much of the president’s second term, said the funding falls short because child care and early education programs don’t meet the demand. 

“These taxpayer dollars have primarily gone towards the planning and administrative side of preschool — things like ‘identifying needs’ and ‘engaging stakeholders,’ ” she said. “What’s needed most is more child care providers and more slots for children.”

The grant program might result in or incentive payments for providers, but doesn’t necessarily bring new teachers into the field, she said.  

In an earlier , the Trump administration pinned its objections on former President Joe Biden’s use of the “unproductive funds” to “push [diversity, equity and inclusion] on to toddlers.” As an example, a brief paragraph points to Minnesota, which listed DEI buzzwords like “racial equity” and “intersectionality” as for the grant in 2021. 

But many of the grants have gone to red states like Alabama, Florida and Idaho that have used the money to keep parents in the workforce and of early care and education programs, including Head Start.

Last October, 10 states and the District of Columbia received a , totaling $87 million over three years. One grantee, Kansas, is set to receive $21 million. In keeping with the to reduce regulations, the to speed up the fingerprinting process for staff and streamline applications for extra funding.

Minnesota intends to use its $24 million to support , family engagement efforts and salaries for early-childhood mental health professionals. The goals that the administration labeled DEI are not for classroom activities, said Anna Kurth, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Education, but to help children from low-income families gain access to services. 

As Congress debates next year’s budget, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, ranking Democrat on the and a former preschool teacher, said she hopes the grants continue. 

“President Trump talks a lot about parental choice, and here he is pushing to ax investments to expand families’ child care and pre-K options,” she said in a statement to The 74. “Congress has got to reject these cuts, and I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure we do.”

It’s unclear whether Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the committee, agrees with the president’s budget plan. But in announcing a Preschool Development Grant in 2023, she said it would “build an educational foundation for Maine children that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.”

‘Shore it up’

Parents have before their children become old enough for school, including long waitlists for good programs and costs that are often out of reach. Providers face their own financial obstacles. They’re compared to those in professions requiring similar training, and over 40% depend on and other public assistance programs to get by.

Stanford University’s , which has captured the impact of the pandemic on families and the workforce, shows that the percentage of early education providers struggling to afford at least one basic need increased in 2022 and was still high in 2024. 

Eliminating the grants won’t solve those problems, said Philip Fisher, who directs the Stanford Center on Early Childhood and founded the survey.

“If you think about a market that’s teetering on the edge of collapse, resources that go into that market are going to help shore it up,” he said. “This may not directly put money into the pockets of providers or parents to pay for care, but it creates a more efficient system and enhances quality — a huge issue for a lot of parents.”

States have used the funds to address some of those challenges and to encourage early education leaders from school districts, child care centers and faith-based programs to tackle them together.

With a for 4-year-olds already in place, used its roughly $48 million in federal grants to coach child care providers, help teachers get bachelor’s degrees and improve transitions for kids into kindergarten.

The University of Arkansas spent the it received in 2023 to improve quality in rural areas, like Eichler’s town of Romance, about 45 miles north of Little Rock. 

“Large centers just aren’t viable in some of our communities,” said Kathy Pillow-Price, director of Early Care and Education Projects at the university. “Family child care providers really support us and our workforce.” 

‘Private and faith-based’

With advocates concerned about the future of Head Start, which the administration initially proposed to eliminate, the fate of the Preschool Development Grants has received less attention. 

Trump’s budget, released May 30, preserves Head Start — rejecting, for now, a Project 2025 to end it. The document didn’t specifically cite Preschool Development Grants, but it called for shifting more child care funding toward . Trump’s Jan. 29 on school choice echoed that theme by calling for families to use their child care subsidies for“private and faith-based options.”

But experts say the grants have already met those expectations. As in Arkansas, Idaho used its funds to support the growth of licensed in “child care deserts,” like rural areas. Leaders also offered providers training in business practices. 

Christian and other religious early-childhood programs have been among those benefiting from the federal money. According to a , “faith-based entities” were among the new partners in 2019 participating in state and local efforts to improve services. 

The grant program has been a boon to member schools by supporting quality improvements and training opportunities for staff, said Althea Penn, director of early education for the Association of Christian Schools International. 

Stevens, with the Center on Child and Family Policy, remembers how the goals of the program from primarily expanding pre-K during the Obama years to encouraging states to identify their own priorities under Trump. 

“We need state-level innovation,” she said. “That is the entire purpose of these grants.”

With roughly 160 students — nearly two-thirds of them low-income — the rural Charleston County school recorded well below district and state averages. One-third of students were chronically absent, and school climate was ranked low by teachers.

“The school was a failing school, and it had been a failing school for a few years,” Smalls said.

Smalls’s first year coincided with the school’s acceptance into the University of Virginia Partnership for Leaders in Education, a program that helps improve low-performing schools through administrator training and professional development. 

Frierson Elementary is one of three schools that transformed from struggling to succeeding because of the turnaround program. After one year, the school went from an unsatisfactory to excellent rating, the in the state’s report card system. 

Since 2004, the partnership has worked with more than 900 schools from 33 states. Roughly half achieve double-digit gains in reading, math or both, within three years of starting the program.

For two to three years, administrators receive professional development at the university and coaches visit their schools to help brainstorm ways to improve academic achievement, attendance and culture. Districts must apply and, if selected, pay roughly $90,000 for program costs.

Leighann Lenti, the program’s chief of partnership, said the key to transforming a low-performing is to work with district and building administrators to make systemic changes that will lead to improved student outcomes.

“They’re given a chance to think about the design and the decisions they’re making in their buildings and in their school district,” Lenti said. “[They] think about their highest priorities and the root cause of what hasn’t worked, so they can solve those problems differently — not just keep doing the same things over and over — and see tangible results for kids.”

A 2016 found that 20 Ohio schools that participated in the program saw statistically significant academic improvement that persisted even two years after completion. 

The program focuses on four areas of school improvement: system leadership, support and accountability, talent management and instructional infrastructure. 

During the first year, University of Virginia staff work with district and school leaders to develop a plan for their school. They try to find root causes for low performance and create goals that are revised every 90 days.

Administrators at Schoolfield Elementary in Danville, Virginia, started the program before the 2023-24 school year and finished in January. Principal Kelsie Hubbard and her colleagues created a 90-day plan with three main areas of focus: professional learning, classroom instruction and teaching strategies.

Educators began professional development twice a week to make sure instruction and activities matched existing rigorous academic standards. They also worked to ensure students were being taught the same way in every classroom, so they didn’t have to relearn strategies if they changed grades or teachers.

“Coming out of COVID, we were seeing a lot of our students performing below grade level, and so a trend we started to notice is that our instruction was not meeting the rigor of the standards,” Hubbard said.”We were teaching lower level because we were assuming that students needed that intensive intervention. … But we were holding and keeping them further and further behind.”

At the end of the program, Schoolfield — a building of 500 students, with 85% low-income — improved its from 68% in 2023 to 78% in 2024. Math proficiency went from 68% to 73%.

Similar gains were observed in Alabama’s Florence City Schools, a district of 4,500 students that recently finished the program. Three of its lowest-performing elementary schools that participated all reported improvements in reading, math and chronic absenteeism.

Superintendent Jimmy Shaw said principals met with reading and math teachers to brainstorm why academic scores were lacking. 

For example, they found in Weeden Elementary that third graders had a hard time with geometry and other math topics while taking state assessments. Teachers began to give 10-minute mini-lessons daily to help students master specific skills.

“It’s been beautiful work to be able to build the capacity of our leaders and our research teams. To us, that’s what it’s about,” Shaw said. “It’s not about having some dynamic leader, but it’s about building the capacity of a group of adults who can understand system structures and processes to be able to attack a problem.”

Smalls’ 90-day plan for Frierson Elementary began with a list of goals such as improving school climate by training educators and ensuring they got enough classroom time to teach the? curriculum. She also delivered a “state of the school” address for families to explain Frierson’s unsatisfactory rating and what steps were being taken to fix it. Teachers hosted literacy and math nights to get parents more involved in their child’s learning.

“I felt like I created an environment, a climate or a culture where everybody was valued and everybody was seen as a leader,” Smalls said. “[The program] is very effective. It is very self-provoking, very reflective, very action-based and action-oriented. I really believe in it.”

Sixteen tables, two seats to a table, all in rows, face front “because that’s where the instruction is coming from,” he said.

About the only technology in the room: small handheld whiteboards, dry-erase pens and small stacks of index cards. The walls are almost entirely bare. And phones are out of the question, stowed in backpacks before class.

It’s intentional, said Harvard, who teaches Advanced Placement Psychology at James Clemens High School in Madison, Ala., a suburb of Huntsville.

Over the past decade, he has become something of an expert in focus, memory, forgetting and distraction.

Harvard has put these principles into his first book, published last week, titled, appropriately, . 

Harvard hopes the book will offer practical advice to teachers on how to use the principles of cognitive science to create better learning environments.

The time is right for a new book about attention, said , a professor of English at the City University of New York and founding director of CUNY’s Futures Initiative. She said she’s excited to see Harvard’s work.

Davidson noted several indicators of rising inattention, from falling reading scores to the growth of media misinformation and the higher prevalence of young people who say they’re with traditional education. 

“I think people are really seeing that what it means to pay attention is important,” said Davidson, who wrote 2011’s . 

Harvard mostly focuses on more intentional teaching methods that reduce distractions and help students manage the vast amount of content they’re called upon to remember —  often called “.”

These ideas are decidedly not on tap in most teacher preparation programs, said Harvard, who earned his master’s degree in education in 2006. His coursework contained “nothing on cognition — there was nothing on the brain, nothing on how we learn.”

‘Why don’t I already know about this?’

It wasn’t until 2016, a decade after graduate school, that Harvard happened upon the now-defunct Twitter account “The Learning Scientists.” In plain language, educational psychologists from around the world laid out the basics of cognitive science for educators. 

Harvard was gobsmacked. Instead of just shooting in the dark, he finally saw research on the effectiveness of various learning strategies. 

He found himself instantly hooked and soon for the group. That led to his own website, which eventually became the popular blog .

Nearly a decade later, he’s traveling the world, speaking at conferences about strategies that affect students’ ability to channel ideas into long-term memory. He’s lost count of how many times he’s had to inform audiences that — humans can’t consciously focus on more than one thing at a time.

Harvard subscribes to something he calls the “SAR method,” an accessible way for students and teachers to think about memory. When they’re about to start a lesson, he tells students that memory follows a three-step process: Sense, Attend and Rehearse. 

“You can hear your teacher,” he said. “You can see your teacher. You can see the board. You can sense it. But are you attending to it? Are you paying attention to it, or are there things getting in your way? Are you trying to multitask? Is the person sitting next to you talking?”

Once a student attends to the material, the rehearsal happens. That’s perhaps the most important and tricky part. In the book, he likens it to an athlete’s ability to learn a new routine. If he or she doesn’t rehearse before the big game, he writes, “that would not be a good recipe for success on the playing field.”

Rehearsing in the classroom can take the form of a multiple-choice quiz, a discussion or a project. The key is to access the material from memory and use it appropriately.

Accordingly, he begins many classes by simply asking students to review what came the day, the week or even the month before. Retrieving those memories, he said, makes them more likely to be there the next time the brain goes looking for them.

Another principle he employs is “wait time.” When most teachers ask a question, they’ll settle for the first student with her hand up. But Harvard adds a step, ordering students to retrieve their handheld whiteboard. Before anyone can answer out loud, everyone must attempt an answer in writing.

“Now they’re committed to thinking,” he said. “They’re committed to writing something down. It seems like such a simple thing, but when you make the students do that, you give them time to think.”

As they’re studying, he’ll often give students a kind of slow-motion, three-stage assessment he calls “Brain-Book-Buddy” to offer a more honest take on what they actually know.

In the first assessment, they answer a series of questions from memory. Then they fill in the answers they couldn’t remember with the help of their notes. In the final test, they can talk to classmates.

“They end up getting all the right answers, but they’re also acutely aware of what they actually knew, what they knew with their notebook, and what they had to ask their buddies, their peers, about,” he said. “It’s an ongoing conversation of them thinking about their thinking.”

‘Attention Contagion’

Lately Harvard has been evangelizing most eagerly about an emerging topic in cognitive science known as “.” Only a handful of small-scale studies exist on the topic, but Harvard says the evidence is compelling.

In the research, students pose as attentive or non-attentive classmates, and researchers judge how well actual subjects attend to lessons in their presence — how many notes they take and their performance on post-lesson quizzes. The results suggest that seatmates’ behaviors have a profound effect: When a student is surrounded by inattentive peers, the behaviors are contagious. It works the other way as well: If a student is surrounded by peers who are visibly paying attention, they’re more attentive. 

had undergraduates watch a video lecture with a “classmate” posing as someone who either seemed attentive — leaning forward and taking notes — or slouched, shifting his gaze, glancing at the clock and taking infrequent notes. Researchers found that being seated behind these classmates had a profound effect: Subjects sitting near attentive students took significantly more notes and rated themselves as being on task. They also scored more than five points higher on a multiple-choice quiz.

Other studies have replayed the dynamic, with similar results. The findings even hold true for students observing one another in a Zoom-like virtual environment, where all that’s visible is a student’s face staring into a webcam.

In other words, Harvard notes, attention and inattention can actually pass through the Internet.

He considers the findings especially resonant because the “contagion” doesn’t come from obviously bad behavior like yelling, interrupting a teacher or staring at a phone. It’s stuff that he and most other teachers would typically let slide.

“They’re just slouching in their chair,” he said. “They’re just not taking notes. They’re gazing out the window.”

What the studies show is that attention operates by a kind of quiet osmosis, in some cases literally felt but not seen.

, the researcher who has pioneered this work, emphasized the “non-distracting” nature of the inattentiveness in his studies, noting that it’s “driven by more than just peer distraction.” Peers can detect these inattentiveness cues, he told The 74, even via tiny changes in the case of the online environment, suggesting that students “pay attention to their peers on webcam — even when the video thumbnails are quite small.”

More data needed

In an email, Forrin cautioned that attention contagion ”has not yet been studied in real classrooms,” only in laboratory settings with video lecturers. But he said he’s confident that attention and inattention “can spread between students during lectures,” and that this spread affects learning. Students “are attuned to their peers’ motivation to learn” and pay more attention when they infer that others have strong learning goals. They pay less attention when they sense weak or no goals. 

He suggested that teachers do their best to cultivate these goals in their students. They should also let students choose their own seats so they’re not consistently sitting near inattentive peers.

But he said more data are needed to determine whether these phenomena occur in real classrooms, especially with live teachers and different levels of student motivation.

Davidson, the CUNY scholar, said research on topics similar to attention contagion go back all the way to , who at the turn of the 20th century was studying the social aspects of “vivid” thoughts, distraction and focus. More recently, she noted, the psychologist Danie Kahneman, who helped establish what has become behavioral economics, studied .

And of course TV producers who pioneered the “canned laughter” of laugh tracks on early TV knew that suggestions of an engaged audience make viewers respond in kind. 

But perhaps the greatest experts in attention contagion, Davidson said, are stand-up comedians — she interviewed several for her 2011 book, and they told her that visibly bored audience members are “the kiss of death” in live performance. “People fall asleep in the front row, and pretty soon they’re falling asleep in the whole theater,” she said.

Harvard, for his part, is convinced that attention contagion in the classroom is real — and he tells students about the research.

“It’s powerful for students to hear that simply being inattentive can distract someone else from learning,” he said.

More broadly, he said, cognitive psychology has simplified his approach to teaching, allowing him to focus on proven strategies that are neither traditional nor progressive. 

The most cynical person, he said, would probably say his classroom is “too traditional. But I’m not thinking, ‘Do I want a traditional or a progressive classroom?’ When I designed it, I’m thinking, ‘How can I put my students in the best situation where they can pay attention to what they need to pay attention [to] and be distracted the least?’ That’s everything that I’m thinking about, and nothing else.”

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said Thursday that job losses could result from the loss of federal funds in the near future.

Mackey made the comments after the State Board of Education approved the department’s $6.4 billion Education Trust Fund budget request for K-12 schools for fiscal year 2026, which lawmakers will consider when the Alabama Legislature meets for the 2025 regular session in February. Lawmakers will have the final word on how much money is allocated.

Mackey said the request included a $52 million line item for “Struggling Readers Beyond Grade 3.” The superintendent, who did not give an estimate of jobs affected, told reporters that he thinks the number one use for those funds will be to hire reading interventionists.

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“And a lot of it’s actually used, being used as replacement money, because they were hiring reading interventionists with federal funds,” he said. “Federal funds have gone away, and so they now want to keep their interventionists using these funds.”

Federal funds were provided to school districts and education through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. The funds, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER), to address needs arising from the pandemic and for ongoing recovery efforts afterward.

Alabama received $3.28 billion in ESSER funds. , 91.55% of the money has been expended. Recipients had until Sept. 30 to commit ESSER funds allocated under ARPA.

Lawmakers

Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, chair of the House education budget committee, said Thursday he could not comment on the budget until he spoke with Mackey about the proposal.

Garrett said that they have talked for years about ESSER funds being temporary.

“So that’s been something that’s not unexpected, and hopefully systems have planned accordingly,” he said.

A message was left with Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, chair of the Senate education budget committee.

Mackey said they have given schools money for assessments and professional development, but there’s a missing piece with the interventionists, who work with students. Certified academic language therapists (CALT) provide intervention for students with written language disorders, including dyslexia,

“There are many of those children who have reading difficulties, but they qualify for special education services, so they have another layer of service,” he said. “But if they don’t qualify for special needs, then they don’t have that extra layer, and that’s where these CALT therapists come in very handy.”

Mackey said he has spoken with several superintendents who have the money to retain their interventionists but will not replace them when they retire. Other superintendents cut all of their interventionist jobs this year, he said.

“So, we’re going to see a little bit of both, I think,” he said. “Over the next three years, what we’re going to see is that they’re going to be fewer employees, basically in the system.”

He said they will regain some number of employees back with the Numeracy Act, which aims to set similar goals for math as the Literacy Act does for reading. The superintendent was hopeful schools would get more money for middle grade reading.

“As time goes they’ll be able to move to other jobs, but there’s just no way for the state to really sustain all the money, all the federal money we’re losing,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

An Alabama lawmaker has filed a bill that would prohibit K-12 schools from not transferring student records based on unpaid balances.

sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, would apply to transfers between private schools. Simpson wrote over text Monday that he is open to suggestions if someone wants to amend the bill.

“It just says these records, you can’t keep the records based on unpaid tuition,” he said in a phone interview. “If you need to get unpaid tuition, you have other ways to get that.”

Simpson said the bill came from a local school facing issues with their graduation rates because a private school will not release records to the public school.

“The theory behind the bill is that the student shouldn’t suffer over financials,” he wrote. “That’s out of their control.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama state superintendent said Thursday afternoon that a diploma pathway focused on career readiness should not be used to remove lower achieving students from another diploma pathway.

Speaking to members of the Alabama State Board of Education during a work session, Eric Mackey told board members that students should not be forced to work toward a career-pathway focused diploma known as Diploma B just because they have lower ACT scores than others.

“There will be no ‘If your ACT score is 22 you’re on Option A, and if it’s 21 you’re on Option B,’” Mackey said. “And if anybody tries to do that, the furor of the state superintendent will come down on them, because that is not the purpose.”

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The remarks came in a discussion over the diploma options of “A” and “B,” with “B” meeting a career-focused option required by the Legislature.

sponsored by Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, the chair of the Senate Education Policy Committee, was part of a package of bills focused on workforce development in the 2024 regular legislative session. The legislation requires the board to create a diploma under the law’s goal of facilitating “the development of a career pathways diploma at the K-12 level that would enhance career and technical education opportunities for high school students who plan to enter the workforce immediately after graduation.”

Mackey said that diplomas issued by the schools will not note whether they are the “A” or “B” option. Both diplomas require 24 credits.

But the superintendent said he was worried about returning to an old educational model where people sent students to vocational schools just to get them out of the building.

“I’m telling you, if anybody tries to go back to that, there will be fire raining down on them because that is not what this is about,” he said. “This is about giving students opportunities.”

Chesteen said in a Thursday afternoon phone call that he agreed with Mackey after the Reflector summarized what was said at the work session.

“I think it’s one thing to pass a piece of legislation. I think the most important piece to that is the implementation. How is it going to affect the students? And that’s what I want to monitor very carefully,” he said.

Chesteen said “we can’t use it for an easy pathway out for these kids that don’t score well,” and they need to have a career pathway after they graduate.

Diploma “A” requires four credits each in English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. Diploma “B” requires four credits in English Language Arts and Social Studies, but two credits in Mathematics and Science. Option “B” also requires three credits in Career and Technical Education to complete a whole sequence.

“We’re going to have kids that score a 32 on the ACT, that want to be Option B because they like working with their hands, and they want to go into robotics or such thing, and we’re going to have kids with with a 20 ACT, that are strivers, they want to do the Option A,” Mackey said.

The Board intends to announce the intent to adopt the changes in the October meeting.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Alabama lawmakers set out guidelines for developing a new funding formula for public education in the state at a meeting Thursday.

The Legislative Study Commission on Modernizing K-12 School Education Funding had a second meeting to learn more about a weighted student funding model, part of conversations about whether to adopt a new funding model.

Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, laid out “basic assumptions” on a slide in determining a new model: “1) Funding aligns with student needs;” “2) All districts will see increased per-pupil funding;” “3) School systems will receive more flexibility in allocating the funding they receive through the state’s funding formula;” and “4) Systems will retain control over local funding. Local dollars will not shift from one district to another.”

“This is a good faith effort to try to understand what other states are doing, to see if after 30 years of the current education funding model, we need to take a different approach and modify what we do,” said Garrett. “We’ve communicated there’s no decisions have been made. There’s no preconceived ideas.”

Alabama’s current system is a hybrid-foundation model, which allocates resources based on a formula of students and faculty. The funding is tied more to a headcount than the needs of students, while the costs of individual students can vary based on need.

Alabama is in a minority of states that still uses that model, compared to a student-weighted funding model, which aims to allocate money based on need. Garrett said that a lot has changed in the 30 years since the current model was adopted, and they are looking at options.

Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee, told reporters after the meeting that they would not be moving local funds around.

“That money would remain with the locals to determine how they spend it,” he said.

Asked if that meant that some districts could be seeing smaller amounts of state funding allocated if a new model is adopted, Orr said it was too early in the process to say.

“We’d have to see because the economy is growing, we’ve got larger reserves and so it’s premature to say something,” he said.

Alabama’s constitution limits local governments’ ability to tax, and a series of amendments passed in the 1970s known as the Lid Bills capped assessments of properties, particularly for homes and farms. County governments, particularly in rural areas, often struggle to raise adequate revenue for education.

Jennifer Schiess, senior partner and practice lead for policy and evaluation at Bellwether, an education nonprofit, said in a presentation to lawmakers that the state’s current funding model was inflexible.

“Resource based formulas like Alabama’s really center funding conversations on inputs and that kind of specifies a particular mix of personnel choices, a particular mix of instructional choices that essentially is a template, a one size fits all approach for all districts, and doesn’t really enable districts to make choices based on their individual student populations,” she said.

Scheiss presented four takeaways from her presentation: Alabama’s foundation program hasn’t kept up with inflation and doesn’t address student needs; more investment in education leads to better outcomes; student weight-funding formulas address adequacy, student needs, accountability and transparency better than other models; and other state examples can inform a potential new Alabama one.

“We’re seeing stronger outcomes tied to increased funding,” she said. “So it’s just something to think about as you think about sort of the future workforce, these as a state as well, and that’s part of what this investment is buying.”

Alex Spurrier, associate partner with Bellwether, told lawmakers that different states have different models.

Student weights can be attached to items like English as a second language or special education that would lead to more money being allocated to the school system.

Tennessee, Spurrier said, has 10 different tiers for weights, ranging from 15% for special education consultation services to 150% for homebound, hospitalized or residential services.

Lawmakers asked the Bellwether representatives questions throughout the process, with Orr asking questions about the use of money, such as spending money on sports rather than academics, or a gaming of weights. He also asked about accountability for achievement.

Orr told reporters after that it was important to him that they don’t give districts more money and get the same outputs.

“If the expectation is that your student population requires additional funding to improve their outputs or their academic standard or the academic achievements, then we are going to have that expectation if we give you these extra dollars,” he said.

Orr said that he didn’t think they would “not rip the band aid off” like Tennessee and Mississippi and that it would be more a long term process. He said they wanted to lay out the facts for the committee.

He said that details about filling funding gaps would come if the Legislature decides it’s something they want to pursue.

“Then it’s up to the consultants to bring various models for us to look at and then see what we’re interested in going forward,” he said. “So we’ve not looked at those models yet.”

The committee plans to meet again in October.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

RUSSELLVILLE, Ala. — Lindsey Johnson and Yesenia De La Rosa were taking different approaches to teaching the same English lesson on silent letters as they sat at opposite ends of this first grade classroom in West Elementary School. On this March afternoon, Johnson, the classroom teacher, was reading a story with the 6- and 7-year-old children who were fluent in English. The students of bilingual aide De La Rosa were still learning the language, so while she read the same story, she went slower, translating words, acting out emotions and showing them pictures on her iPhone.

Valentina, 6, wearing a black T-shirt with a gold Nike logo and leggings, had arrived less than two weeks earlier from Guatemala. She sat on the floor near De La Rosa’s chair, her cheek almost touching her teacher’s leg. De La Rosa worked with her individually because she didn’t know any letters or numbers, in Spanish or in English. When Valentina went to kindergarten in her home country, all she did was color. “So when she came here, that’s what she thought she was going to do. Just drawing,” De La Rosa said. “But here it’s different.”

The Russellville City school district created De La Rosa’s position in early 2021 as part of a larger effort to help educate its growing population of students who speak English as a second language. Many of the English learners, as they’re called, have parents from Mexico or Guatemala who work at a nearby poultry plant and in local manufacturing and construction jobs. Today, in the district, 60% of children are Hispanic/Latino and roughly a third are English learners.

Without De La Rosa, Johnson said she wouldn’t be able to communicate with more than half of her students, or understand the challenges they face. Johnson knew that Yeferson, an English learner from Guatemala, was one of the smartest children in the class, already reading more than 100 words, well above the goal of 60. “He’s a sponge, he soaks everything up,” Johnson said. She learned from De La Rosa that he’s doing well in spite of his many responsibilities at home: His mom works night shifts, so Yeferson does the laundry, washes the dishes and looks after his younger siblings. Said Johnson: “Having a bilingual aide makes a world of difference.”

Russellville may not seem like a community that would be home to investment and innovation for immigrant students. It’s a politically conservative city in northwestern Alabama of about 11,000, where 72% of voters chose Donald Trump in the last presidential election. When the poultry processing plant opened in 1989, the Latino population was about 0.5%. By 2000, it had grown to 13%, and in 2020, it was almost 40%. The school district, like many around the country, struggled early on to accommodate the rising numbers of English learners, who were dropping out at high rates, being pushed into special education classes and showing little academic progress. Yet their success matters: Today in the U.S., are English learners and, at a time when overall public school enrollment is falling, they are among the country’s fastest-growing groups of students.

In early 2015, when its superintendent announced his retirement, the district recruited Heath Grimes, then superintendent of the nearby Lawrence County school system, for the job. A self-described Southern conservative and man of faith from rural Alabama, Grimes, 48, set about overhauling instruction for English learners, establishing culturally relevant extracurriculars and reaching out to the Latino community. Those efforts had an impact: The share of Latino students taking Advanced Placement classes and dual enrollment courses at a local community college went up. Parental involvement increased. And Grimes led an effort to lobby lawmakers for a change in the state funding formula for English learners, boosting the state’s allocation more than eightfold, to $18.5 million. The district and Grimes won state and national recognition for their efforts with English learners.

“Any district with a significant English learner population has looked to Heath because he’s been ahead of the game,” said Ryan Hollingsworth, the executive director of the School Superintendents of Alabama, which represents the state’s 150 school districts. “It is just amazing to see what he’s been able to do in a small district with not a lot of resources.”

But as Grimes’ star rose statewide, according to local educators and residents, his relationship with city leadership started to unravel. Then, in mid-May 2023, a member of the school board told Grimes that it would not be renewing his contract, which was to end in June 2024. He agreed to retire when his contract ended the following year in exchange for a bump in his final year’s salary. Starting in November, I tried to talk with school board members, the mayor and City Council members about the school district and Grimes, but they did not respond initially to my interview requests. (When I introduced myself to the mayor, David Grissom, on the street in Russellville, he told me “no comment” and walked away.) But over the months, I was able to talk to more than 60 state officials, local administrators, teachers, former school board members, community leaders and residents, including people I met in businesses and on the street in Russellville. Those interviews suggest that the decision to force out Grimes as superintendent stemmed from a tangle of small-town politics, deep-rooted antipathy toward immigrants and a yearning for the city Russellville used to be.

“Heath Grimes put students first. And this ultimately may have hurt him,” said Jason Barnett, superintendent of the Guntersville City Board of Education in northern Alabama and one of dozens of district leaders in the state who worked closely with Grimes. Approximately 18 educators and community leaders in Russellville, many of them with knowledge of the events, told me that Grimes’ support for the growing English learner population was key to his loss of support among top city leadership. Many asked not to be quoted for fear of retaliation or straining relationships in this small community. One school administrator, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing their job, said of Grimes: “Many folks said the increase in the undocumented population was because he made Russellville schools a welcoming place that immigrants wanted to live in. People didn’t like that.”

In early July I went back to Grissom, school board attorney Daniel McDowell, and Gregg Trapp, who was until recently school board president, with my findings from months of reporting and a detailed list of questions. McDowell and Grissom replied with written statements that said that Spanish-speaking students had thrived in the district long before Grimes’ arrival and denied that the superintendent’s commitment to English learners had led to his departure. “Immigrants from Latin American countries have been moving to Russellville for the past 25 years and have always been welcomed into the city and the student body,” wrote Grissom. “Looking back, our high school has crowned a Latina Homecoming Queen, as voted by the student body and has recognized the first Latino Valedictorian. Those events took place long before Dr. Grimes came to Russellville.”

IMMIGRANTS NOT WELCOME

Before Grimes arrived in Russellville, state lawmakers in 2011 had passed , widely considered the harshest anti-immigrant law in the nation. It gave police authority to stop individuals they believed did not have legal documents to live in the United States, and made it a crime for businesses to knowingly hire, and landlords to rent to, those who lacked documentation. Public colleges couldn’t admit students without immigration documents and, even though, under federal law, K-12 schools are required to serve students regardless of citizenship status, the Alabama legislation also called for school districts to collect information on their students’ citizenship status. While parts of the law were later struck down by a federal court, the message was clear: Immigrants weren’t welcome.

So when Greg Batchelor, then president of the Russellville City school board, was looking for a new school superintendent in 2015, he knew things would get controversial. The city’s Hispanic population was 22% and growing. Some longtime “Anglo” residents, as members of the white population call themselves, derisively referred to the city’s downtown as “Little Mexico” and complained about hearing Spanish spoken and seeing the colorfully painted houses they associated with the Latino community.

Batchelor and another former school board member, Bret Gist, recalled hearing from longtime residents who were enrolling their children in private schools or leaving Russellville because they didn’t want their kids to be “the minority.” Others worried that the English learners would drag down test scores and hurt their school district’s reputation. At that time, only five districts in the state had an English learner population above 10%; Russellville’s was the second highest, at 16%.

Batchelor, also chairman of the board of CB&S, one of Alabama’s largest community banks, said he knew the city’s future economy depended on the next school leader: “If our community survives and does well, it’s only going to be as good as we educate our kids.” He also said he believed that the town’s Latino students deserved the same chance as their peers, and he was deeply influenced by his , who’d served on the Russellville City school board for 20 years. “My dad used to say everybody puts their britches on the same way, one leg at a time,” Batchelor recalled.

At the time, Grimes, a former special education teacher and football coach, was in his sixth year as Lawrence County superintendent. In his first four-year term, he had because of falling enrollment and a budget shortfall he inherited. “It’s very unusual in Alabama for a superintendent to close schools in a county and then be reelected — and he was reelected,” said Batchelor. “I felt like he’s not afraid to make tough decisions.” Gist, the former school board member, remembers the excitement the board felt after Grimes’ interview. “I was ready for him to come in and make a big impact,” Gist said.

On May 11, 2015, Grimes was voted in unanimously as Russellville’s new school superintendent. 

NEW APPROACHES

Kristie Ezzell, who from Russellville schools in 2022 after 31 years under four superintendents, saw the transformation firsthand. As a second grade teacher in the 1990s, she taught one of the district’s first English learners. Ezzell remembers a little girl who kept trying to communicate, but Ezzell couldn’t understand her. “She started crying and then I started crying and we both stood there and hugged and cried,” Ezzell recalled. “The language barrier between us was just heartbreaking.” 

The rapid increase in the English learner population had taken Russellville educators by surprise. The entire district had just one teacher certified to teach English as a second language, no interpreters and very little by way of professional development. “We had students come in that don’t speak a lick of English, their parents don’t speak a lick of English, and we’re expected to educate them,” one teacher, who asked not to be named to avoid repercussions, told me. “And I didn’t even know whether they are asking to go to the bathroom or are they hungry.” The situation was also unfair for the English-speaking students who missed out on learning time because their teachers were preoccupied, she said. “It was just a mess all the way around.” 

Grimes, who does not speak Spanish and had little experience with English learners in his previous roles, said the first thing he heard was: “How are you going to fix this?” “I think they thought I was going to somehow make the English learner population go away,” he told me. “And I was like, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’” Instead, he asked educators to “Accept, Embrace, Celebrate.” “You first have to accept that your district is changing. And when we embrace that change, we’re going to see some very positive changes that we’ll be able to celebrate,” he recalled telling them. “And every bit of that has come true.”

By then Ezzell was principal of Russellville Elementary School. She recalled Grimes’ first meeting with teachers, where he presented student test scores broken down by school. “I sunk down in my seat and tears came to my eyes because our data was not very good,” she told me.

His message, according to Ezzell, was simple: “No more excuses. Our teachers are not going to say anymore, ‘Well, they’re English learners.’ That’s not OK. They are going to grow just like everybody else.” As he laid out his expectations, teachers started looking around nervously, she recalled. Some cried and one had to leave the room. A few worried that Grimes was criticizing their competence; others dismissed him as an outsider. But she says one thing was clear. “We knew he meant business,” she said. “He was very empathetic for everything we were dealing with, but he said, ‘This cannot continue.’”

When Ezzell went home that evening, she couldn’t stop thinking about the meeting. She knew how hard her teachers worked. “They were never not teaching,” she said. But the dismal statistics proved to her they weren’t focusing on the right things. From then on, Ezzell told me, she was on a mission to find better ways of educating her students: “I dedicated my life to it.”

Grimes said the prevailing attitude was that English learner students were a burden, similar to perceptions of the special education students he once taught. So he brought in a professor and education consultant, Tery Medina, who explained that immigrant children were district students under federal law. A Cuban refugee herself, she led discussions with teachers on similarities between Latino and Southern culture. “They love family. They’re hard workers and many have faith in Christ. It was all these things that everyone could relate to,” Grimes recalled. For her part, Medina said she was impressed with Russellville’s embrace of these learners. Under Grimes, “Russellville was a little gem,” she said, “where English learners were not seen as a burden.” 

The district also invested in professional development for teachers, ensuring that it happened during work hours, said Ezzell. Experts, books, videos, detailed lesson plans — to teachers at the time, it felt like a blur of continuous learning. Slowly, educators began sharing strategies and co-teaching classes. “You know the saying, ‘When you know better, you do better?’” Ezzell told me. “That’s what happened.” Teachers experimented, made their lessons more hands-on and followed the latest research. Some teachers created what became an in three languages: English, Spanish and Q’anjob’al, a Guatemalan dialect. “We were making time for them to go and learn best practices. And it benefited all students, not just English learners,” Ezzell said.

Not everyone in the district bought into the change. Grimes remembers meeting with one teacher who led a class in which 30% of students were failing. She didn’t see it as a problem, Grimes said: “It was like, ‘I’ve been doing this for 20 years and you’re not going to tell me different.’” She retired soon after, Grimes said; some other teachers resigned.

But teachers who stayed said they could see that students were beginning to respond to the new approaches. English learners began participating more in class, no longer sitting at the back of the room. More started taking AP exams, as well as dual enrollment classes at nearby Northwest Shoals Community College. “We pushed them. And when you push with love, you’re going to have success,” said Ezzell. 

The district began to accrue accolades. Several of its schools . Since 2021, Russellville High has been named one of the top 25 schools in Alabama . In 2022, it was the only majority-minority district in Alabama to receive an “A” grade in the state report card; in 2023, Russellville was one of only two in the state named a “Spotlight District” for reading and literacy, and its high school was named an , a designation given by a nonprofit contracted with the state education department to maximize college readiness.

Core to Grimes’ strategy, along with building cultural understanding and professional development, were bilingual educators. Early on, Grimes placed interpreters at each school to help with day-to-day translation, but he knew teachers needed more help in the classroom. A national shortage of bilingual educators, though, required creativity. Grimes decided to focus on recruiting bilingual aides, who earn half the pay of teachers. He reached out to the Rev. Vincent Bresowar at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Russellville to help spread the word about the positions. 

Bresowar’s congregation had ballooned in size as immigrant families moved to Russellville; his church had recently built a new $4.5 million building to accommodate the increase.

His parishioners, meanwhile, worked long, irregular hours, struggled financially and often carried trauma. “The suffering is very intense and can be very difficult,” he told me. In addition, he knew how the language barrier could exacerbate misunderstandings. Bresowar says his own understanding and appreciation for the Latino community changed once he learned Spanish and spent time with them. “I think a lot of people are scared because they can’t communicate and it makes it harder to bridge the gaps,” Bresowar said. 

He connected Grimes to parishioners, and in 2021, using pandemic funds, Grimes hired a dozen bilingual aides from that community. At the same time, he connected them to an apprenticeship program, run by the nonprofit , so they could simultaneously train to become teachers. “It was a game changer,” Grimes said about that additional school help. 

Elizabeth Alonzo was one of those bilingual aides. She joined the staff at West Elementary in 2021, where she worked mostly with second graders in small groups, as well as interpreting for school activities and communicating with parents. As she walked down a hallway on a recent school day, Latino girls from other classes broke out of their lines and ran to give her a quick hug. “At first it was like, ‘Oh, you speak Spanish?’ Their face just lights up, you know?” said Alonzo, who was born and raised in Alabama by immigrant parents. Last December, she completed the coursework to become a teacher and hopes to stay on at West. 

If she does, she’ll be the sixth Latino teacher in the district, up from just one when Grimes arrived. The level of resources for English learners is very different from when she was in school. Her cousin was pulled out of first grade class to interpret for her when she was in kindergarten in a county school, she recalled. “And then when I was in first grade, I would be pulled out of class to help my younger brother.” Alonzo attended Russellville schools from 2008 to 2013. 

Another Russellville teacher, Edmund Preciado Martínez, also remembers feeling isolated as a student in Alabama in the late 1990s. He sometimes confused Spanish and English words, he said, so was often too embarrassed to talk in class. “It landed me in special education because they thought something was wrong with me,” he recalled. 

He was a teacher in a nearby district when he heard about the changes Grimes was making in Russellville and decided to apply for a job. Six years ago, he was hired to work with English learners at Russellville High School. 

Every year, he says, teachers choose a slogan to unite around, like #whateverittakes, or #allin. The camaraderie is very different from stories he’s heard from counterparts around the state, who talk about their colleagues complaining about English learners and even referring to them with derogatory language and slurs.

“Whenever we need something, we simply ask for it and they do their best to get it for us,” Martínez said of his district’s leadership. “And even if they can’t, they find alternatives that we can use.”

‘ROOM FOR ALL OF US’

Grimes also focused on involving Latino parents in their kids’ education. Many were too intimidated or embarrassed to speak to educators, he realized; in their home countries, it was sometimes seen as disrespectful to question a teacher or even ask about their child’s progress. So he set about building relationships by patronizing Latino businesses, meeting with community leaders and translating into Spanish all announcements on the district website and its Facebook account.

Those efforts changed the school experience of parent Analine Mederos. She’d dropped out of school in Mexico in seventh grade, and was desperate for her children to get a good education. But when her eldest daughter enrolled in Russellville schools in 2006, Mederos says she wasn’t involved in her education at all. “I was not interacting with the teachers because I didn’t speak very much English. I was afraid to talk most of the time,” she told me. She felt school employees looked down on her because of the language barrier, and she didn’t see a point in speaking up. “If you have questions, who’s going to help you?” she said. “So whatever they say, I was like, ‘OK, fine.’” 

But with her second child, now a 10th grader, it’s been a completely different experience. “Grimes has done a huge, I don’t even know how to say like a big impacto, especially with the Hispanic community,” she told me. Her daughter loves school, she said, and her son in middle school can’t wait to try out for the soccer team. When she sees Grimes in the community, she said she feels comfortable enough to talk to him about her children: “He’s going to listen. He’s not going to act like he’s listening. No, he does listen.”

Mederos finds it easier to follow school meetings now. Just a few years ago at West Elementary, there was just one interpreter for 600 children, which meant the school could schedule meetings with parents only when a child was in trouble or failing. Now, with six bilingual aides, school staff can have one-on-one meetings with every family at least once a year, and they also offer two full days of programming annually for parents in English and Spanish. Parents know there will be an interpreter in the room and that sends a clear message. “Our parents know we’re embracing them and we appreciate them,” Principal Alicia Stanford told me. 

A Hispanic Heritage Month event that Grimes started in Russellville High School has now grown into a , where students learn about different cultures and traditions, perform dances, read celebrated authors and research historical figures. But a soccer program Grimes started has received perhaps the biggest response. Students had lobbied for the program before Grimes’ arrival with no success, but he understood that it was a beloved and important part of Latin American culture. “They wanted something that was theirs,” he said.

He didn’t have funds for a new soccer field, so he had the football field re-turfed, and students began playing in 2017. In 2021, when the Russellville Golden Tigers soccer team played in the state semifinals, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic families turned out in droves. “Everyone was cheering, ‘Sí, se puede,’ ‘Yes, we can,’” recalled Grimes when we met in his office this March. The school’s logo is a torch like that on the Statue of Liberty, and there’s a school tradition of holding up clenched fists to show unity and pride. “The whole Latino community stands up with their torches raised,” he added, “and they’re chanting, ‘Russ-ell-ville, Russ-ell-ville.’ That was very, very powerful.”

Grimes’s office wall was decorated with sports trophies from events like these, along with framed academic credentials including his doctorate degree. He was the first in his family to attend college. There were also photos of his family and past students, along with a well-worn Bible on his desk.

Batchelor, the former school board president, says that, while the process was sometimes challenging, through Grimes’ sustained efforts and example, families of all backgrounds gradually saw that improving the outcomes of English learners meant that the entire school system was better. “I think the community has embraced the fact that there’s room for all of us,” he said. 

Not all of Grimes’ ideas worked. Early on, he separated English learners from other students during academic classes, but scrapped it after teachers told him it wasn’t working. Now schools do a combination of teaching English learners in small groups and with the entire class. After a back-to-school event took hours longer than expected because he asked for every sentence to be interpreted, Grimes decided to hold separate but simultaneous school meetings, where parents could choose to listen in Spanish or English.

And it hasn’t been easy to sustain all of the gains. Between 2019 (when the bilingual aides were hired) and 2021, English learners in some grades recorded big increases on language proficiency tests. For example, proficiency levels for second graders went from 46 to 84%, and for third graders, 44 to 71%. But the growth since then hasn’t been consistent, and proficiency levels in 2023 for some grades fell below 2019 numbers. Administrators say that is because the number of English learners continues to increase while the number of educators has not, so children are receiving less individualized attention.

But the goodwill Grimes generated from embracing Hispanic families has paid off in unexpected ways. In 2018, the district needed roof work on school buildings but didn’t have the money to complete it, Grimes said. Someone in the Latino community called Grimes, he said, offering to do the work for free. “They volunteered their time, their efforts, their energy and their materials, and they completed those buildings,” he told me.

Today, Latino businesses dominate the downtown area of a few blocks, which until recently was full of deteriorating, vacant buildings. There are three Mexican bakeries, two Latin grocery stores, three barber shops, nail salons and a �������Ծ������í��, or butcher shop. Business owners make it a point to support the school system, said Yaneli Bahena, who graduated four years ago from the Russellville school district and now owns a business called The Ville Nutrition. 

A Mexican restaurant catered a 200-person back-to-school event, bakeries often donate bread and treats, and some salons provide free haircuts before school starts. The soccer field is ringed by banners from local Hispanic businesses that have sponsored the team. Bahena herself sponsors meals for school events and donates backpacks and school supplies. “School gave me a sense of hope,” she said. “I had really good teachers. Everyone cared about me.” In high school, she noticed that, unlike in years past, the students were included on field trips and encouraged to take electives. Bahena said some of her classmates stayed in school instead of dropping out to work because educators “pushed help.” She, too, credited Grimes: “Everything they put into these kids would not be possible without the superintendent.”

ADVOCATING STATEWIDE

In 2019, eager to find partners and support for his work with English learners, Grimes began chatting with other district leaders facing similar challenges and discussing what it would look like to advocate for those students statewide. Nationally, about are English learners and most of them speak Spanish at home. But even though most are U.S. citizens, they rarely get the support they need, in part because their education has become politicized, according to , a former superintendent and assistant U.S. secretary of K-12 education in the Obama administration. “People see the world (in terms of) a limited amount of resources. And so they feel, ‘if you’re giving them that amount, then you’re taking away from me,’” she said.

In part as a result of that attitude, experts say, reading and math scores for English learners nationally are among the lowest of all student subgroups, their lag behind, and they are less likely to go to college. “We need these kids and we need them educated,” said Patricia Gándara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and an expert on English learners. “They represent a very large part of the future of this country.” 

The next year, in 2020, Grimes founded a coalition of superintendents called Alabama Leaders Advocating for English Learners, under the umbrella of a state operation, Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools. “His passion was evident and he was not going to stop,” said Hollingsworth of the School Superintendents of Alabama. “If you keep knocking on the door, knocking on the door, eventually somebody’s going to open the door. And that’s kind of what happened.”

The superintendents coalition led by Grimes successfully pressed the Legislature for more funding for English learners, to $150 per student, from about $50 to $75 in 2015. Districts with an English learner population above 10% receive $300 per student. For Russellville, that meant a fourfold increase to $400,000, at a time when city funding declined. Grimes received a for his “remarkable contributions and tireless advocacy for English Learner funding in Alabama schools.” Thanks in part to his advocacy, the state now has instructional support for districts, 12 coaches and a state director of English learning. Grimes also advocated for English learners’ test scores to count on the state report card only after they’ve been enrolled for five years (approximately the time it takes for students to learn a new language). That law, , went into effect last year.

Barnett of the Guntersville City Board of Education said Grimes’ efforts with English learners helped persuade other district leaders that they could do the work too. “Russellville is a great place, but there’s nothing special there that it can’t happen anywhere else,” he said. “There’s nothing in the water. It certainly can be replicated.”

For seven years, Grimes and the Russellville school board worked well together, he and former board members said. But discontent among other city leaders surfaced early on, several people told me. Grimes had started to clash with the city’s mayor, David Grissom, who was first elected in 2012, about funding. A Russellville resident close to the workings of city government who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation says Grimes had angered Grissom and some City Council members early on when he noted publicly that his schools budget was $200,000 less than that of his predecessor. (McDowell, the school board lawyer, wrote in his email to me that Grimes was made aware of this cut after he took office and had agreed to it.) City Council members “did not take kindly to having their feet held to the fire or being made to look bad. So from then on, Grimes was marked,” the resident told me. Grimes also angered Grissom when he declined to publicly support the mayor’s choice for a City Council seat in 2020, preferring to stay neutral, several people told me. 

In his response to me, Grissom did not comment on those specifics but wrote that he “had interviewed and have been interviewed by several hundred people of all races and ethnicities” about Grimes’ performance and that some of those he spoke with were dissatisfied with the superintendent. He posed questions about whether Grimes had been in his office every day, treated employees differently, and spent too much district money on conferences. Grimes said that he sometimes traveled around the state for his work, that the conferences were for professional development and approved by the board, and that as a leader he did sometimes have to make decisions that displeased people because he was weighing different perspectives and needs. He said he was shocked by the mayor’s statements because neither the mayor nor anyone else had previously brought such concerns to him. Gist and Batchelor, the former school board members, said they had never heard any such concerns from anyone in their roughly eight years of working with Grimes. “Not one word,” said Gist. Grimes’ personnel file did not contain any information indicating concerns with the superintendent’s performance. Neither the mayor nor the school board lawyer would provide any clarification about why, if such complaints existed, Grimes was not notified.

As Grimes continued to invest in efforts to help English learners, their numbers rose every year, doubling in size during his tenure, to 33%. After the 2020 City Council election, in an effort widely seen as intended to remove Grimes as superintendent, Grissom and City Council members began replacing members of the appointed five-member school board that had supported Grimes. (In his email, Mayor Grissom wrote that the council has the right to replace board members and had done so prior to Grimes’ tenure as well.) In May 2023, Greg Trapp, the school board member, informed the superintendent they would not renew his contract when it expired the following year.

Gist, the former school board member, said that while he was shocked at first by the City Council’s decision to replace him and others, it made sense given the Council’s antipathy toward Grimes. “That’s small-town politics. In order for them to control the system, they had to get rid of the school board members that were doing it right,” he said, adding: “That’s the only way they could remove him.” What upset him was knowing the decision wasn’t driven by what was best for students. “If they wanted to replace me with somebody better, that is fine,” he told me. “But when they did it for a personal reason, that bothered me.” (I reached out to Trapp at least three times, as well as to other board members, and they did not respond to my requests for comment.) Batchelor, who was replaced soon after he voted in favor of keeping Grimes, also said the board’s majority decision was a mistake: “I think he’s the best superintendent in the state of Alabama.”

In March 2024, the district named a new superintendent, Tim Guinn, a former Russellville High School principal, who was also a candidate for the superintendent position when Grimes was chosen. Most recently he’d worked as superintendent of the Satsuma district. Guinn did not respond to repeated interview requests.

PROGRAMS UNRAVELING

Already, some of the programs and practices Grimes put in place appear to be unraveling. As of June, most of the bilingual aides, whose salaries are paid for by pandemic aid that expires in September 2024, had not been rehired. In addition, some bilingual teachers did not have their contracts renewed. The board has not indicated if it has plans to move ahead with improvements Grimes planned for middle and high school English learners. A dual-language immersion charter school, which Grimes had advocated for and the board had approved, was set to open in 2025. It has been scrapped. (McDowell did not comment in an email on the district’s plans for English learners. Regarding the bilingual aides, he wrote that some of them were not rehired because the federal grants had expired. Grimes said he had planned to pay for their salaries using a combination of district reserves and funds he would save from teachers retiring: “You make decisions based on what your priorities are.”)

Grimes and the board had agreed for him to stay on until the end of the 2023-2024 school year as the district searched for a replacement. But a week after my March visit to Russellville, McDowell, the school board lawyer, accused him of intimidating people into talking to me, according to Grimes, and told the superintendent that he could not be on school property or speak to district employees unless it was in his capacity as a parent. At that time, Grimes stepped down from the day-to-day responsibilities of his job, but he will remain in the community while his 14-year-old daughter finishes high school. His wife also remains a teacher in the district. (In an email and in an interview, McDowell, said that he had never accused Grimes of intimidating anyone nor banned the superintendent from school grounds.) Also after my visit, more than a dozen educators I spoke with in Russellville told me that they were no longer comfortable being identified for fear of losing their jobs. The Hechinger Report/palabra agreed to delay publishing this piece until Grimes received his last paycheck on June 30.

In July 2024, Grimes started a full-time position with Reach University, the nonprofit that trains the bilingual aides as teachers, as its regional director of partnerships in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. 

The past six months have taken a toll. Grimes has said little publicly about his departure and has told most people in the community that he’s retiring. When we were having lunch together at a local restaurant, El Patron, other diners kept stopping by to wish him well. Two of them joked about how he looked far too young to retire. Grimes laughed and played along, but after they left, his shoulders slumped and he blinked away tears.

“I’ve spent my career very invested, very committed to doing what was best for kids,” he told me quietly. “I didn’t feel like I deserved for it to end this way.” 

He said he doesn’t regret the changes he made for English learners in the city. “Jesus loved the people that everybody else didn’t. And that was part of his message — you love your enemies, you love your neighbors, you love the foreigners, you love the sinner,” he said. “I see God in those children.” 

Rebecca Griesbach of contributed reporting.

This story about Russellville schools was produced by , an initiative of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, along with .

Republicans in the Alabama House of Representatives have refiled a bill that would attach criminal penalties for having some materials in libraries that are accessible to children.

 sponsored by Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-Indian Springs, would apply certain criminal obscenity laws to public libraries, public school libraries and “employees or agents acting on behalf of the legitimate educational purposes of the K-12 public school libraries or public libraries.”

The bill, which does not apply to institutions of higher education, does not outline the level of felony or misdemeanor that would be applicable. Other penalties under the include mostly fines, with some potential imprisonment.

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Mooney did not return messages seeking comment.

The bill, which has nearly 50 co-sponsors including Republican leadership, would add another definition of “sexual conduct” to the Alabama code: “In K-12 public schools or public libraries where minors are expected and known to be present without parental presence or consent, any sexual or gender-oriented conduct, presentation, or activity that knowingly exposes a minor to a person who is dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, who is stripping, or who is engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing.”

Mooney’s legislation provides 15 business days for staff to move material to an age-restricted section; remove material; cease conduct; or make an official determination that the material or conduct does not violate the law.

If the parent, resident or guardian does not receive not receive notice within 25 days, the copies can be taken to law enforcement.

“Protecting Alabama’s children will always be a top priority,” House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement.“The goal of HB 4 is to ensure that our school and public libraries are an educational resource for children that parents can trust. I look forward to continued conversations and moving this legislation through the process.”

The legislation comes amid attacks on public libraries nationwide.found that there were more than 4,000 book bans in the first half of the school year.

Mooney filed a similar bill last year but with fewer co-sponsors. The bill passed the Last year’s version of the bill did not allow library staff to make a determination that material did not violate obscenity laws.

Craig Scott, the president of the Alabama Library Association and a library director in Gadsden, said in an interview that the bill does not offer a reasonable timeframe for the material to be removed from the library.

“If a book is objectionable, we will review it as a staff and make a decision if whoever the challenging person or persons are,” he said.  “If they don’t like our determination to move it or not move it, okay, then they can appeal that and here in Gadsden, it goes to a committee or and then it would go to our library board. In other libraries, it would go straight to the library board to adjudicate, okay? So, it’s a process, and it’s going to take a lot longer than 25 days. I sure wish they would have put 60 in there.”

He also said he takes “great offense” to the bill.

“My long story short, we have been doing the moving of books, or not ordering books, whatever the case might be as part of our jobs that a librarian has been trained for decades upon decades, and now these extremists and our legislators want to legislate our activities,” he said. In other words, they don’t trust us.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Released Tuesday, from over 7.7 million students who took the widely used MAP Growth tests from NWEA doesn’t bode well for teens entering high school this fall. Finishing 4^th grade when the pandemic hit, many students not only lost at least a year of in-person learning, but also transitioned to middle school during a chaotic period of teacher vacancies and rising absenteeism.  

The 2023-24 results reflect the last tests administered before federal COVID relief funds run out. Districts must allocate any remaining funds by the end of September — a cutoff that is expected to cause further disruption as districts eliminate staff and programs aimed at learning recovery.

Older students don’t make gains as quickly as younger kids and will have to work harder to catch up, the researchers said. At the same time, the effects of the pandemic “continue to reverberate” for children in the early elementary grades, many of whom missed out on preschool because of COVID. On average, students need at least four extra months of schooling to catch up.

“It’s not fun to continue to bring this bad news to the education community, and I certainly wish it was a brighter story to tell,” said Karyn Lewis, director of research and policy partnerships for NWEA. “It is pretty frustrating for us, and I’m sure very disheartening for folks on the ground that are still working very hard to help kids recover.”

Thus far, only two states, California and Colorado, have asked officials for extra time to spend the diminishing relief funds that remain, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That means the question for most leaders is how to keep paying for extra tutoring and staffing levels for students still learning below grade level — especially those belonging to groups that weren’t meeting expectations before the pandemic.

Relief money “made a difference, but it certainly did not eliminate the learning loss,” said Dan Goldhaber, director of the . A he authored showed that recovery linked to those dollars was small, in part because the federal government gave districts few restrictions on how to spend it. 

The American Rescue Plan’s requirement that districts devote 20% of the $122 billion toward reversing learning decline was “super loosey goosey in terms of what that actually meant, how it was measured and what programs counted,” he said.

Some districts that hired teaching assistants to give students additional practice in reading and math have now lost those positions. Dothan Preparatory Academy in Alabama, a seventh- and eighth-grade school, had several staff members who gave students “a few extra lessons” throughout the day based on their MAP scores, said Charles Longshore, an assistant principal. Now those positions are gone. 

He hopes a new sixth grade academy opening next month will better prepare kids for grade-level material. Two years ago, when he joined the Dothan City Schools, just north of the Florida Panhandle, he attended a districtwide administrator meeting where every school’s data was posted on the walls.  

He remembers looking at elementary school scores with “really low” student proficiency rates of roughly 20% to 30%; teachers have been trying to fill those gaps ever since. 

“We’re trying to go backwards to go forwards,” he said. “What third, fourth and fifth grade standards did you miss that are essential for your understanding of seventh and eighth grade standards?”

The NWEA results show achievement gaps continuing to widen. For example, Asian students are showing some growth, but made fewer gains in math last year than during the pre-COVID years. White, Black and Hispanic students, however, continue to lose ground. In both elementary and middle school, Hispanic students need the most additional instruction to reach pre-COVID levels, the data shows.

In reading, the gap between pre-pandemic growth and current trends widened by an average of 36%, compared with 18% in math. It’s possible, NWEA’s Lewis added, that districts focused extra recovery efforts on math because initial data on learning loss showed those declines to be the most severe. 

But that’s left many students without the reading skills to tackle harder books and vocabulary as they move into high school, said Rebecca Kockler, who leads Reading Reimagined, a project of the nonprofit . The organization is funding research to find which literacy strategies work with adolescents, who are easily turned off by books intended for young kids.

The pandemic, she said, only exacerbated a longstanding literacy problem for older students.

“About 30% of American high schoolers for 30 years have been proficient readers, and that really hasn’t changed,” said Kockler, a former Louisiana assistant superintendent who oversaw a redesign of the state’s reading program. “It’s always the hardest to move middle school reading results, and even some of the success we would see in fourth grade didn’t always carry up into middle school.”

School closures were especially hard on students with learning disabilities. Both of Tracy Compton’s daughters, who are entering fifth and seventh grade this fall, have dyslexia and didn’t receive services during the pandemic when they were in the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. 

“The time they were learning to read was during the school board’s shutdown of schools,” she said. Under a , the Fairfax district still pays for makeup services with a private tutor. 

But Compton also moved to a Massachusetts district where she feels her girls are getting the support they need, like access to audio books and noise-canceling headphones during tests to help them focus. “They have made progress, but [have] not fully recovered,” she said.

She said too many parents don’t know their children are behind.

“They see the report card with A’s or whatever and think all is fine,” she said. “They don’t know where else to check and how to weigh things like standardized tests.”

That’s likely because different tests often tell different stories. The MAP results, for example, are worse than what many states have reported about student performance on their own assessments, which are used for accountability. 

Several states last year noted at least partial recovery, and a few showed students had even reached or were exceeding 2019 scores. Lewis explained that state tests measure the “blunt designation between proficient or not,” while MAP tests capture the full spectrum of student achievement levels during the school year.

Districts, particularly low-income districts that received the most funding, need to contend with the latest snapshots of students’ learning as they adjust to the end of federal relief funds, Goldhaber said. 

“How districts go about dealing with the fiscal cliff is going to have pretty significant consequences, particularly for the kids that were most impacted by the pandemic,” he said. If districts have to lay off staff — and newer teachers are the first to go — they should limit the impact on the neediest students. “They’ll be shuffling teachers within districts, and that shuffle itself is harmful for student achievement.”

As more time passes since the pandemic, Lewis added that school leaders might be tempted to stop comparing their students’ performance to pre-COVID levels, when states were in closing achievement gaps. 

“What keeps me up at night is this idea that these persistent achievement gaps are inevitable, that this is just how it’s going to be,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the case, but I do think it takes innovation and creative thinking … to get us out of this mess.”

Alabama State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey said Wednesday that the Alabama State Department of Education’s computer systems had been breached last month, and that students and employees of the department may have been affected.

Speaking at a press conference in Montgomery, Mackey said  the breach took place on June 17. According to Mackey, the department’s  staff interrupted and stopped the attack.

Mackey said that there “was no question” that it was a denial of service attack to encrypt and steal data so they need to be paid off, but said officials were “still assessing exactly which data were taken.”

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“What I would say is that to all parents, and all local and state education employees out there, they should monitor their credit, they should assume that there’s a possibility that some of their data were compromised,” he said.

Mackey said that the department does not keep direct deposit information.

“We do have information about which data possibly could be taken because we’re able to look and see which servers they were not able to get to in the time they were in there,” he said.

A foreign agent may have been involved, Mackey said, but he said that he could not provide more information.

“I shouldn’t say I’m not aware,” he said. “I’m not able to answer that.”

According to a statement from the department, the Alabama Attorney General, the Alabama Office of Information Technology and an independent contractor are working with the department to strengthen the cyber defenses and identify which data may have been compromised.

The statement said notification will be made to relevant parties in full compliance with laws and best practices.

The Department has launched a dedicated landing site – – and questions and comments can be sent to databreach@alsde.edu.

Mackey said that their websites will be down for “critical updates” beginning at 5 p.m. Wednesday evening for several hours.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

With one legislative session finished and the next about eight months away, Alabama legislators will spend the time in-between deciding whether to develop an entirely new school funding formula.

The House and Senate committees that oversee the Education Trust Fund (ETF), the state’s education budget, held a joint meeting Tuesday to begin discussions about potential changes to the current public K-12 education funding formula.

“It has been 30 years since we changed our funding formula for education, and a lot has changed in the past 30 years,” said Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, in an interview after the meeting. “We are one of six states out of 50 that continues to fund the way we are funding, on a resource-model basis, so we are looking at what other options we have that would be better suited to that.”

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It is the first in a series of meetings aimed at providing members an education on the workings of Alabama’s Foundation Program, the in the ETF which provides funding for schools around the state.

Many states fund their schools using a student-based model, one that takes into greater account not only the number of students within a given school system, but also the students’ composition, such as whether they are English Language learners or someone with special needs.

Under Alabama’s current formula, in place since 1995, the number of students creates a certain number of teacher units. That number of teacher units then becomes the basis of much of the funding.

At a recent State Board of Education work session, State Superintendent Eric Mackey had defined the school as a “hybrid program” rather than a true foundation program because those units are the basis of funding.

“You get what you get based on the number of units,” he said.

Connecticut, Kansas, California, Tennessee, Maryland and Texas have all moved to a weighted student funding formula in the last decade.

Members discussed not only the funding formula, but also underfunding of schools in lower-income communities with significant minority populations; the role of economic development incentives and their effect on school funding, and the lack of funding for special needs students.

Kirk Fulford, deputy director of the Legislative Services Agency, provided lawmakers with an overview of the Foundation Program.

The amount that schools receive is based on a unit count. The state takes the average number of students enrolled in the school or school system for the 20 days following Labor Day. The number is then divided by the divisor, set by the Legislature for the number of students within a set of grade levels.

If a school has 100 students, and the divisor for K-3 grades is 14.25, the school or school district has a unit count for K-3 grade teachers of 7.01. That is then converted to dollars based on the salary schedule that is set.

The number of principals, assistant principals and counselors for a school is also calculated based on units, and the amount of Foundation Program funding for the school is converted by multiplying that unit count by the money per unit decided by legislators.

Other types of funding are added to the Foundation Program allocation for schools, from transportation expenses to additional money specifically for math and science teachers along with special education.

Money to fund the cost determined for each district is shared between municipalities and the state. The formula is designed so that more affluent locations pay a greater share of the cost than those whose residents are lower income.

Local governments must set property taxes at a minimum of 10 mills in order to receive money from the Foundation Program.

For the coming year, the state portion of the ETF for K-12 schools, including the Foundation Program; transportation, and programs run through the Alabama State Department of Education, is about $5.5 billion. The local fund portion is about $831.5 million.

The amount in local property taxes collected for the school system will vary by the assessed value of the properties within the school system’s boundaries. Poorer areas will generate less tax revenues than more prosperous ones.

Lowndes County, for example, an area with a significantly lower-income population, paid roughly $1.3 million into the Foundation program. Mountain Brook, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, paid about $7.3 million to the Foundation Program.

School districts with wealthier populations tend to record higher scores on standardized tests, according to an analysis based on FY21-22 spending and School Year 2022-23 scores

The local allocation has irritated some lawmakers who work to increase their economic development to increase school funding, only to have their state allocation reduced, leaving them net neutral.

“We always were under the impression that, ‘Wow, we bring in industry, and they pay $200,000 of property taxes to our schools,’” said Rep. Troy Stubbs, R-Wetumpka, who used to be on the Elmore County Commission. “We felt like we were improving our local schools because we were bringing in more money. However, Elmore County is only a participant in our Foundation Program with our 10 mills. We do not have any local funding. Because of that, all we were really doing was lowering the amount that the state contributed to Elmore County.”

In Tennessee, which moved to a weighted student funding formula in recent years, school districts were required to keep funding at previous levels, The state provided overall more funding to the education budget so that districts received more money by numbers, even if the share they received from the state lowered.

Garrett that the Educational Opportunities Reserve Fund, created in the 2022 regular legislative session, could be used in shifting the funding formula.

Schools receive additional funding for specific students, such as those with special needs, from the Foundation Program. The formula automatically factors in the number of students who have special needs at 5%. The unit count is then weighted up to 2.5 for those students to give schools additional dollars for more resources.

Currently, the sole adaptation in the formula is headcount, and doesn’t incorporate the specific needs of some in schools, one that is based on each student, might.

“We know the cost to educate a special needs child is, far and away, more than the average child,” said Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate’s education budget committee. “The cost to educate an English Language Learner is much more than an average Alabama child. Following the trend, or at least looking at the other states who have gone down this road, seeing if we want to consider changing our funding model, how we fund based on a type of student instead of just a student.”

The committees plan to resume the discussions at an August meeting.

Reporter Jemma Stephenson contributed to this story.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) on Friday approved a new graduate program on artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

The proposed degree, a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, would be implemented by January 2027. The program will be the first in the state to specialize in the use of AI for medical purposes and aims to meet the needs of the health care industry in Birmingham and throughout Alabama.

“This program does really seem to be at the leading edge of what’s going on across the country and therefore it’s very exciting,” said Robin McGill, deputy director for academic affairs at ACHE.

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The program aims to train students for AI-focused medical roles. The health care industry is increasingly using AI as the global AI health care market is projected to grow to $12.2 billion by 2030, according to . The program will train health care professionals in AI applications in medicine, including skills in deep learning, computer vision, and large language modeling for healthcare data.

Rubin Pillay, chief innovation officer at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, said to the commission that by 2025, when the program is expected to begin, the university system “would have the most comprehensive AI in medicine and healthcare training programs globally.”

“UAB will not only be the only institution in Alabama offering this comprehensive suite of AI training. They will be the only one nationally and globally as well,” Pillay said.

Stephanie C. Dolan, associate director of planning and policy, gave the commission an informational presentation on AI prior to UAB’s degree presentation. In it, she said that training people on AI will be fundamental for the future workplace, especially with an estimated 12 million people needing to change jobs due to AI.

“This means [employees] have to be upskilled and reskilled now, not later,” Dolan said.

The proposal estimates that $4.5 million in new funds will be needed for the program over the first seven years. During this period, the program is projected to generate $6,246,000 in tuition revenue and is expected to be self-sustaining from the first year.

Interested applicants need a four-year US bachelor’s degree equivalent in computer science, data science, statistics, AI, biomedical, electrical or related engineering fields, as well as a 3.0 minimum GPA and a strong background in calculus, statistics, and linear algebra.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

With one legislative session finished and the next about eight months away, Alabama legislators will spend the time in-between deciding whether to develop an entirely new school funding formula.

The House and Senate committees that oversee the Education Trust Fund (ETF), the state’s education budget, held a joint meeting Tuesday to begin discussions about potential changes to the current public K-12 education funding formula.

“It has been 30 years since we changed our funding formula for education, and a lot has changed in the past 30 years,” said Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, in an interview after the meeting. “We are one of six states out of 50 that continues to fund the way we are funding, on a resource-model basis, so we are looking at what other options we have that would be better suited to that.”

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It is the first in a series of meetings aimed at providing members an education on the workings of Alabama’s Foundation Program, the in the ETF which provides funding for schools around the state.

Many states fund their schools using a student-based model, one that takes into greater account not only the number of students within a given school system, but also the students’ composition, such as whether they are English Language learners or someone with special needs.

Under Alabama’s current formula, in place since 1995, the number of students creates a certain number of teacher units. That number of teacher units then becomes the basis of much of the funding.

At a recent State Board of Education work session, State Superintendent Eric Mackey had defined the school as a “hybrid program” rather than a true foundation program because those units are the basis of funding.

“You get what you get based on the number of units,” he said.

Connecticut, Kansas, California, Tennessee, Maryland and Texas have all moved to a weighted student funding formula in the last decade.

Members discussed not only the funding formula, but also underfunding of schools in lower-income communities with significant minority populations; the role of economic development incentives and their effect on school funding, and the lack of funding for special needs students.

Kirk Fulford, deputy director of the Legislative Services Agency, provided lawmakers with an overview of the Foundation Program.

The amount that schools receive is based on a unit count. The state takes the average number of students enrolled in the school or school system for the 20 days following Labor Day. The number is then divided by the divisor, set by the Legislature for the number of students within a set of grade levels.

If a school has 100 students, and the divisor for K-3 grades is 14.25, the school or school district has a unit count for K-3 grade teachers of 7.01. That is then converted to dollars based on the salary schedule that is set.

The number of principals, assistant principals and counselors for a school is also calculated based on units, and the amount of Foundation Program funding for the school is converted by multiplying that unit count by the money per unit decided by legislators.

Other types of funding are added to the Foundation Program allocation for schools, from transportation expenses to additional money specifically for math and science teachers along with special education.

Money to fund the cost determined for each district is shared between municipalities and the state. The formula is designed so that more affluent locations pay a greater share of the cost than those whose residents are lower income.

Local governments must set property taxes at a minimum of 10 mills in order to receive money from the Foundation Program.

For the coming year, the state portion of the ETF for K-12 schools, including the Foundation Program; transportation, and programs run through the Alabama State Department of Education, is about $5.5 billion. The local fund portion is about $831.5 million.

The amount in local property taxes collected for the school system will vary by the assessed value of the properties within the school system’s boundaries. Poorer areas will generate less tax revenues than more prosperous ones.

Lowndes County, for example, an area with a significantly lower-income population, paid roughly $1.3 million into the Foundation program. Mountain Brook, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, paid about $7.3 million to the Foundation Program.

School districts with wealthier populations tend to record higher scores on standardized tests, according to an analysis based on FY21-22 spending and School Year 2022-23 scores

The local allocation has irritated some lawmakers who work to increase their economic development to increase school funding, only to have their state allocation reduced, leaving them net neutral.

“We always were under the impression that, ‘Wow, we bring in industry, and they pay $200,000 of property taxes to our schools,’” said Rep. Troy Stubbs, R-Wetumpka, who used to be on the Elmore County Commission. “We felt like we were improving our local schools because we were bringing in more money. However, Elmore County is only a participant in our Foundation Program with our 10 mills. We do not have any local funding. Because of that, all we were really doing was lowering the amount that the state contributed to Elmore County.”

In Tennessee, which moved to a weighted student funding formula in recent years, school districts were required to keep funding at previous levels, The state provided overall more funding to the education budget so that districts received more money by numbers, even if the share they received from the state lowered.

Garrett that the Educational Opportunities Reserve Fund, created in the 2022 regular legislative session, could be used in shifting the funding formula.

Schools receive additional funding for specific students, such as those with special needs, from the Foundation Program. The formula automatically factors in the number of students who have special needs at 5%. The unit count is then weighted up to 2.5 for those students to give schools additional dollars for more resources.

Currently, the sole adaptation in the formula is headcount, and doesn’t incorporate the specific needs of some in schools, one that is based on each student, might.

“We know the cost to educate a special needs child is, far and away, more than the average child,” said Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate’s education budget committee. “The cost to educate an English Language Learner is much more than an average Alabama child. Following the trend, or at least looking at the other states who have gone down this road, seeing if we want to consider changing our funding model, how we fund based on a type of student instead of just a student.”

The committees plan to resume the discussions at an August meeting.

Reporter Jemma Stephenson contributed to this story.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama State Board of Education Thursday adopted a new literacy coursework for Science of Reading for teacher preparation programs in the state.

The , approved on a unanimous vote, comes after years of a state focus on literacy scores, especially in the lower grades.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the standards would apply to elementary teachers, collaborative special education teachers and “could be applied to some other areas also.”

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“Mostly, they are focused again on early childhood and elementary teachers,” he said.

The Science of Reading is an interdisciplinary body of research about reading and issues of reading and writing. definition, cited in the standards, includes phonemic awareness and letter instruction as instructional practices but not emphases on larger units of speech, such as syllables.

The new standards also outlaw the “three-cueing” system in institutions of higher education and K-12 schools. The rule change defines three cueing as a “model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure, and syntax, and visual cues.”

Three-cueing is a teaching strategy that is affiliated with “balanced literacy,” a compromise between whole language and phonics-based instruction that became prominent in the 1990s, Three-cueing encourages students to guess and look for clues, such as at pictures, when facing an unfamiliar word.

The skills associated with the Science of Reading were not taught in schools for many years, as reported by As of May 2023, 15 states had outlawed the use of three-cueing after Hanford’s reporting, with some lawmakers and policy makers citing the podcast, .

sponsored by Rep. Leigh Hulsey, R-Helena, would have banned the use of three-cueing, with some exceptions. The legislation passed the House of Representatives on March 5 but was among the many bills that died in the .

“This prohibition is specific to the teaching of foundational reading skills and should not be construed to impact the teaching of background knowledge and vocabulary as connected to the language comprehension side of Scarborough’s Reading Rope,” the reads.

Scarborugh’s Reading Rope is a visual representation of establishing proficient reading, according to the

Hulsey said Tuesday that her bill was “complementary” with the standards adopted by the board, and that she expected to bring it back next year.

“Ultimately, kids need to learn how to actually read, and that is done through the science of reading, learning how to decode sound out letters, and figuring out how to put those things together to actually decode the word and be able to be lifelong readers, versus someone who is just looking at words and guessing,” she said, “We’re not setting kids up for success if we’re not actually teaching them how to read.”

She said the exceptions in the bill were mainly for older learners and those with learning disabilities.

members of the Literacy Task Force cited teacher training and implementation as a hurdle in implementing literacy instruction.

Mackey said they had received comments earlier. They received no additional public comments on the current version, which they voted on the intent to approve months ago.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama Legislature Wednesday gave final approval to a bill requiring children to complete kindergarten or an equivalent program after years of efforts from supporters.

sponsored by Rep. Pebblin Warren, D-Tuskegee, would require students to finish kindergarten or pass a test that shows first grade readiness.

The bill passed 35-0. It would align Alabama with a minority of states that require kindergarten. As of 2020, 19 states and the District of Columbia require kindergarten,

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“I think now that we are fully implementing the Literacy Act that we need to do everything we can for these children early to give them a good foundation, so that they’re not coming into first grade already behind,” said Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, the chair of the Senate Education Policy committee and Senate sponsor of the bill.

Warren, who is currently in the hospital, said in a phone interview Wednesday that she was happy that it had advanced after seven years.

“This has been a battle I’ve been fighting and I’ve been fighting for the kids, because we got to find ways of making sure we can expose and educate our kids at early ages,” she said. “So we don’t have to wait until they get to the third grade to say that they can’t read.”

The bill passed after Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, a vocal opponent of the legislation in previous years, amended the legislation to create a schedule of assessments.

Under the legislation, a student entering first grade in the 2025-26 school year will not be excluded from enrollment, but will take an assessment at the start of the school year and in the second semester to determine any deficiencies and allow resources to those who perform below standards..

For the 2026-27 school year, a student will take the assessment to determine readiness for enrollment and will also take the second semester assessment with the available resources.

The State Department of Education will also develop an informational campaign with priority given to areas with the lowest numbers of kindergarten enrollment.

“I will say that I think it may be an opportunity for us to catch whatever situations that may exist on the front end,” he said.

The House of Representatives has approved the legislation multiple times, but Smitherman had blocked it in the Senate.

Warren said she has not had a chance to receive a report on the added amendment yet. She said she wished that the bill would be starting next year.

Chesteenthat the bill was a priority for the Republican caucus.

The bill had received support from the Governor’s Commission on Teaching and Learning,

Alabama lawmakers have placed more emphasis on early education in the last decade.

The Legislature in 2019 created the Literacy Act, which requires students to be reading on grade level by the end of third grade, or risk retention.

The Alabama Numeracy Act, passed in 2022, aims to increase math scores in the state.

The Legislature has also increased funding for the state’s award-winning pre-kindergarten program, which consistently receives high marks.

The bill moves to the House of Representatives for concurrence in Senate changes or a conference committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

A coalition of education and civil rights groups plan to push for changes to how Alabama funds its schools.

A Thursday news release announcing the formation of the coalition said that Alabama is one of the few states to allocate money based on enrollment rather than needs from students.

Education budget chairs and have both spoken in the past about changing the way Alabama provides funding for schools.

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“Alabama has not updated the way it funds public schools in more than three decades, and how we fund them creates large disparities across the state,” said Jason Meadows, the advocacy and partnerships director of A+ Education Partnership, wrote in the release. “Every child is different, and some children need more support to be successful. A better approach would be to consider the specific needs of students within each school system and ensure every school can fund the resources needed to help them and their families thrive.”

A+ Education Partnership, an education advocacy organization, launched the coalition. Other members include Alabama Possible, Alabama Network of Child Advocacy Centers, Alabama, Goodwill, Faith in Action Alabama, Teach for America Alabama, Huntsville Committee of 100, EmpowerED Birmingham, Birmingham Promise, Alabama Arise, New Schools for Alabama, Mobile Area Education Foundation, Black Alabamians for Education, Breakthrough Birmingham, Baldwin County Education Coalition, Inc., Alabama State Conference NAACP, Education 4 Life, Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama (¡HICA!), AG Gaston Business Institute, Alabama Expanded Learning Alliance, New Life Church of God in Christ, Montgomery Education Foundation, Alabama Families for Great Schools, VOICES for Alabama’s Children, Learning Little People, LLC, and John Wilson, Chief School Financial Officer, Baldwin County Board of Education, according the release.

Every Child Alabama is beginning by launching a

The 1901 Alabama Constitution, passed to take the vote from Black Alabamians and poor whites, includes tight property tax caps that make it difficult for local governments to raise adequate revenue for schools. , Alabama’s per-pupil spending in 2022 was $11,819, 36th in the nation. The national average was $16,340.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Equal Justice Initiative will soon open a third site in the Montgomery area memorializing victims of racial violence.

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a 17-acre site  located on the banks of the Alabama River on the north side of Montgomery, focuses on American slavery. Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of EJI, said the site aims to convey the brutality and horror of American slavery, and the resilience and hope of those in it.

“With any honesty about the lives of enslaved people, it is not just Alabama, it is all across this country, that we don’t have a very extensive or developed record about the experience of being enslaved, about living through enslavement, and about the legacy of slavery,” he said on Monday.

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The park is scheduled to open to the public by the end of the month.

Montgomery was a major center of slavery and the domestic slave trade. In 1860, — 66% of the population — were enslaved.  The city served as the first capital of the Confederacy. According to EJI, some 400,000 people were held in bondage along the Alabama River just prior to the Civil War. The nonprofit says that rail lines near the park were built by enslaved people in the 1850s, and were used in the buying and selling of human beings.

The Black community in the city maintained a long tradition of activism, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, both key events in the modern civil rights movement.

“Montgomery, for a long time, has defined itself as the Cradle of the Confederacy, the heart of Dixie, which means we are centered in a space that, in many ways, connects to the challenges that we are trying to address and educate people about,” Stevenson said. “But I also think Montgomery has an important role to play in leading the nation.”

The opening of the park is one of the most highly anticipated events of the year, so much so that featured

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park serves to complement and build on the themes that are present at the other two EJI sites located within the city. The Legacy Museum looks at the history of slavery, segregation and mass incarceration and explores their impact on Black Americans and the nation as a whole.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened to national acclaim in 2018, honors victims of lynching in the United States. There are sculptures and features placed within the space that testify to the experiences of those who died and the impact it had for their loved ones.

“I still felt there was a need to have something that you could experience the legacy of slavery around,” Stevenson said. “I have been around to the plantations that exist in this country, and to be honest, I don’t think any really, honestly, present the story of slavery centered on the lives of enslaved people.”

The park is laid out in a circular path that traces the history of the institution of slavery and begins with the transatlantic passage of people kidnapped from Africa to be sold into bondage.

Visitors are presented with information about their ultimate destination in the country, from the south to even as far north as counties in New Jersey.

Further down the path, visitors encounter displays on how people were trafficked to Montgomery to be sold. There is a rail car on the grounds that people can walk into and experience how slaves traveled centuries ago.

The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park includes two 170-year-old dwellings from a plantation in Alabama where enslaved families lived for generations. The third dwelling is a replica that reveals the most common size and design of dwellings.

The site also includes a whipping post to give people a sense of the agony that people who were enslaved had to endure when they were punished.

Sculptures

The park features sculptures from different artists — many African American, African or indigenous — that focus on different aspects of slavery, from the brutality of bondage to the courage of the enslaved. The park is designed to mix art and history in depicting the struggles of those seeking freedom and justice.

One sculpture places fingers around a tree growing from the ground, was done by Eva Oertli and Beat Huber is called “The Caring Hand.” A second statue features two arms with one holding a club is called “Strike” by Hank Willis Thomas.

The park also includes bricks made by enslaved people 175 years ago that visitors will be able to touch, as well as chains used to traffic the enslaved.

The main attraction is a 50-foot-tall monument listing 122,000 surnames of the 4.7 million slaves living in the nation according to the 1870 Census, the first taken after slavery and the first that recorded the names of former slaves.

Visitors descended from enslaved people can use a website to trace where their ancestors lived. They can also stop by the visitor center to research the different locations where slaves lived and find the surnames of those who lived in those locations.

“The most extraordinary thing, I think, about people who were enslaved in this country is they are people who learned to love in the midst of sorrow,” Stevenson said. “I would not be here if my enslaved fore parents had not found a way to love in the midst of sorrow, to create something hopeful, like a family, like a future, despite the brutality.”

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