Joe Morton, the state superintendent of education, told Congress on Wednesday that the sluggish economy will cost Alabama’s public schools nearly 3,000 employees next year. Morton’s testimony to Congress reiterated a report he made to the State Board of Education a week earlier — the same day the Alabama Legislature passed an education budget touted to protect state-paid teachers’ jobs.

By the time he spoke to Congress, Morton had the results of a survey his staff had conducted of local school systems during the past week. It confirmed his initial assessment. Across the 132 public school districts in Alabama, plans are in place to lay off 2,827 people, based on the fiscal 2011 budget, which takes effect Oct. 1. At the same time, Morton said, the schools project a rise in student population of approximately 1,780.

The state budget will provide nearly $5.5 billion, an increase of about 3 percent over this year, but 18 percent less than the record school spending in 2008. While the 48,000 state-funded teachers will get to keep their jobs, they will have to teach without new textbooks. And since the budget provides level spending for health care coverage, if health insurance rates go up, teachers will have to pay the difference.

Of the more than 2,800 education workers who will lose their jobs, some 1,600 are teachers who are paid by the school districts, not the state, Morton said. The rest are support personnel, such as office and lunchroom workers, bus drivers and janitors.

The situation is not hopeless for these workers. Morton noted that as local spending picks up over the summer, sales tax revenues will increase and some of the expected layoffs may not be necessary.

A bigger boost, however, could come from Washington. Morton’s appearance before Congress was in support of a proposal to extend the federal stimulus law to protect education-related jobs. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also testified in support of the bill introduced this week by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin. According to an article in Education Week, Alabama’s Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate education appropriations subcommittee, said he would consider backing this limited package aimed specifically at education, even though he did not support the original stimulus legislation.

More federal money, of course, is not the ideal solution to Alabama’s problem. The way we would prefer to restore funding to local schools is through local dollars, the result of increased spending in a thriving economy. But when Washington is handing out money, when has our state ever turned it down?