State Schools Superintendent Joseph Morton notified systems across Alabama Tuesday that the state is facing a funding crunch and will only be able to pay 75 percent of expected payroll for October.The Department of Education hopes to pay the remaining balance as soon as it is available — maybe by early November, but nothing is certain.
The school systems in Talladega and St. Clair counties have been preparing for just such an event and all say they have enough local money to cover the additional expenses, at least for the short term.
The problem is that nobody knows for certain how long the financial crisis will last.
“The scary thing is, we don’t know what’s next. This could go on for a long time,” said Pell City Superintendent Bobby Hathcock.
It’s that uncertainty that points to some fundamental problems with how we fund education in Alabama. The money that pays the bills for schools — including public colleges and the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind — comes primarily from sales tax revenues.
So when the economy tanks, the Department of Education faces funding cuts — shortfalls that are difficult to predict and plan for and that result in proration.
For a short-term solution, we can only hope Alabama voters approve Amendment 1 on election day next week. That measure would set up a rainy day fund to help cover exactly the kind of cash problem schools are facing this month.
We know from experience — since schools here have been faced with proration again and again — that such a move not only makes sound fiscal sense, but is absolutely necessary until we come up with a better way to pay for education in this state.
And that’s the real solution — reforming how we fund our schools. Having a revenue source that is unreliable as sales taxes are as the primary way Alabama pays for education just isn’t working now and has never really worked.
The system is broken, and it is far past time the state Legislature and governor address the problem. We have seen politics kill proposals to reform education funding too many times.
We need our state leaders to put aside their differences and work together and with education officials to find a permanent solution to this problem.
Because not being able to pay our schools’ faculty and staff is not an acceptable option.
