Alabama Senate committee adds funding for children’s summer meal program to ETF

Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, hands a resolution to legislative staff in the Alabama Senate on April 18, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

An Alabama Senate committee approved a $9.3 billion education budget Tuesday afternoon that includes $10 million for a summer meal program for children.

Committee chair Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, encouraged members of the committee to speak with him over the next roughly 48 hours about changes before they end up on the floor.

“I meant to bring them, your pile of requests, and, that’s fine, but they’re about two inches stacked together,” he said.

The Senate package of bills includes a 2% pay raise for educators, first introduced in the governor’s budget.

The Senate Finance and Taxation committee substitute includes a year over year increase of around $113 million (7.5%) for colleges and universities, from around $1.5 billion to around $1.7 billion; a local board of education Foundation program increase of roughly $155 million (3.4%), from around $4.5 billion to around $4.6 billion; a roughly $36 million increase for the Alabama Community College System (6.5%), from around $551 million to around $587 million and an increase to the State Department of Education of around $172 million (32%), from around $535 million to roughly $707 million.

The increase to the Department of Education includes funding for programs like the Alabama Reading Initiative O&M and the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative O&M.

The Senate committee substitute increased funding for the State Department of Education, colleges and universities and the community college system. The Senate version decreased funding for the foundation program.

Other changes highlighted by Orr in the meeting included cutting $2 million from the Education Trust Fund Advancement and Technology Fund for teacher development and putting it in the formula based on headcount and adding $5 million to the budget for automated external defibrillators.

Textbooks or digital resources are allocated at $100 per pupil, up from $75 this year, based on the average daily membership during the first 20 instructional days after Labor Day of the previous school year.

The budget also includes $10 million for the Summer EBT Program in 2025.

Summer EBT is a federal program that helps feed low-income children over the summer break. Federal funding will cover 50% for the 2024 summer benefit program. The pandemic-era program, which Alabama participated in, covered 100% of those costs.

Alabama missed a deadline to participate in the program last year. Speakers at a public hearing last week urged legislators to appropriate money for the program. 

Both the SPLC Action Fund and Alabama Arise sent statements in favor of the EBT addition.

“We are thrilled to see the state legislature provide the Department of Human Resources with the funding necessary to administer the 2025 Summer EBT program,” wrote Jerome Dees, Alabama policy director for the SPLC Action Fund, in the statement. “This essential funding means thousands of children across the state will now have access to vital nutrition next summer.”

Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, asked about a raise for retired employees. 

“I think if we can appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars for tax credits for people who could already pay to send their children to private schools and if we’re talking about paying additional millions of dollars for an election that could already be held on any election that’s being handled, we certainly, certainly can do this,” she said.

“Let’s circle up because you’re on point, senator,” said Orr.

The Alabama State Department of Education requested $22 million to aid struggling readers beyond thir grade. Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, asked about in committee. It appears in the supplemental as $5 million.

Orr told reporters after the meeting that he had heard part of the issue was finding staffing.

“So we really have a personnel problem,” he said. “It’s not so much a money problem.”

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