A unanimous vote on a tough education budget

By Staff
Johnny Mack Morrow
It is a rare thing in the Legislature to have an education budget pass unanimously.
There is always a dissenting vote somewhere. With 105 representatives and 35 senators representing different areas and constituencies, and belonging to competing parties, it is not surprising that someone, somewhere, will vote 'no' on a budget.
Yet this year, the education budget passed unanimously, with every House and Senate member voting for the 2010 school spending plan.
The cooperation and bipartisanship couldn't have happened at a better time.
The school funding situation is one of the worst in decades. Alabama pays for its schools primarily by earmarking all state sales and income taxes to the Education Trust Fund, and when there is economic turmoil, revenue drops quickly.
The current troubles are the toughest economic times in decades, and schools have suffered right along with rest of us.
Earlier this year, the governor declared 12.5 percent proration, and budgets were slashed right away.
Some of the shortfall was made up by drawing down from a line of credit from the Rainy Day Fund, but that lifeline is now exhausted. At the start of the budget process, we were looking at cutting education up to 15 percent for next year.
To cut that much would have meant devastating the things we have built over the past ten years to improve teaching and learning. The initiatives in Reading, Math and Science that have fostered such improvement and achievement would have been zeroed out.
Thousands of teachers would have been let go. Class sizes would have increased markedly. It would have been a disaster.
Yet the education budget doesn't lay off one teacher, and maintains the programs vital to school improvement-an outcome nobody thought possible back at the beginning of the year.
In February, Congress passed the economic stimulus package that provided $500 million in emergency funds for education this year. That was a giant step in filling the budget gap.
Next, hard choices were made on where to make cuts in order to balance the budget.
Usually buses are retired after ten years, but that was extended a few years more in order to reduce transportation costs next year.
New textbook purchases were also pushed back a year. Classroom supply money, maintenance, technology, and library funds were all cut heavily in the belt tightening.
Programs like distance learning and the Alabama Reading Initiative got the funds they needed to continue, but not the funds they needed to grow.
However, while hard cuts were made, they were much less than initially feared. Thousands of teaching jobs were saved, which is no small feat in a time of rising unemployment where every job is precious.
Such hard budget decisions actually made cooperation and bipartisanship easier because all members of the Legislature recognized that the budget did the best possible with less.
Everyone agreed on the cuts. Everyone agreed on saving jobs. Everyone agreed that programs should be protected. Everyone voted yes.
It was a positive outcome in a tough time.
Now the education budget is on the governor's desk, and after the undivided vote in the Legislature, it would be nice to see him sign it and add his vote to the unanimous support for our schools.
Johnny Mack Morrow is a state representative for Franklin County. His column appears each Wednesday.