Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville (left), the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, speaks with Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Alabama Senate Finance and Taxation Committee, in the Alabama House of Representatives on May 8, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
State lawmakers Tuesday looked at different ways to make a major change in Alabama’s decades-old public education funding formula.
The three student-weighted funding models, aimed at better matching resources to the varying needs of students, would cost between $112 million and $200 million a year. Each would do away with the current hybrid-foundation model, tied more to average daily attendance at a school.
Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee, said the Legislative Study Commission on Modernizing K-12 School Education Funding is “not beholden to any” of the three models presented, calling the models a “starting point for discussion.”