And now, something completely different!

On the phone with one of my friends who is teaching in the state, I heard something disturbing.  He told me that, this month, in Alabama, the state department of education DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY 100% OF OCTOBER PAYCHECKS.  What??!!??  If nothing else in the business is, I thought, “Surely, the meager paycheck a teacher earns for empowering a generation of students every day for 180 days out of a year is SECURE.” 

Apparently, not so much.  On Tuesday, state Superintendent, Joseph Morton, sent a memo to all school boards in Alabama stating:

To date, the Education Trust Fund has enough tax receipts to pay 75% of the October allocation for the FY 2009 education budget.  Since it appears certain that 100% cannot be paid by Thursday evening in order to get you the state allocation in time to meet October payroll obligations on Friday, October 31, please prepare a 75% payment for October.

Morton said that the remaining 25% should be expected by November 7.  But in the same breath, he said if local school boards needed to take money out of their local “Rainy Day Funds”, to do so immediately.  If they needed to borrow money from their designated banking institutions, they should begin that process immediately, as well.

So, the culprit here is the Alabama Education Trust Fund, which earns money off of oil and gas revenue in Alabama? The assumption can only be that disruptions in oil production this summer (hurricanes, etc.) has hurt us.  But that assumption comes WAAAY too close to advocating “drill, baby, drill,” since the trust fund is only a “rainy day” account.  Or…as was stated on the Mobile NBC station’s website, perhaps it is the fact that in this weak economy and tough times for homeowners, people have elected not to pay their property taxes early–which has created an education budget shortfall.  But more likely is the fact that, back in early summer, when the Alabama education budget didn’t originally pass, the state department of education scrambled to pass something.  the version that did eventually pass came through with projected shortfalls. 

Maybe I’m overreacting, and this is not a big deal.  So far, it seems that all Alabama school systems have been able to come up with the remaining 25% for teacher, administration, and support staff paychecks without much issue–but how have we allowed this to happen in the first place? The original sin, of course, is due to the inability of past and present governors and legislators to find real, substantial, and stable ways to fund education in the state.  But, since they have not yet been able to–or won’t–we’ve come to depend upon the Education Trust Fund, to borrow our shortfall for the year.

Ironically (or not, depending on your ability to concoct conspiracy theories), the major amendment on the Alabama ballot this year is “Amendment One”, concerning the above mentioned Education Trust Fund. Not exactly the hot-button Proposition 8 of California, but no less important to Alabama’s youth.  According to the UAH Government Relations Department:

Alabama currently has a constitutionally established ‘rainy day fund’ for education that was designed in 2002 to address budget shortfalls. The language in the 2002 constitutional amendment was “flawed” in that it placed a fixed cap on the rainy day fund based on 2002 appropriation levels. Amendment 1 basically changes the wording in the constitution to allow the rainy day fund cap to increase as the education budget grows over the years.

Think about it this way. Suppose in 2002 you had set aside enough money to purchase a full tank of gasoline for your automobile in case of an emergency. But an emergency did not occur until 2009. And when you pulled up to the pump in 2009 you discovered the amount of money you set aside in 2002 was not enough to purchase a full tank of gasoline now. That situation is analogous to what has happened to the education budget. We are faced with addressing a 2009 funding shortfall with a rainy day fund capped at a 2002 level.

This rainy day fund is built upon a larger Alabama Trust Fund (from the same oil/gas taxes) that, last summer, was quite healthy, with about $3.3 billion. Currently the cap on the education trust fund is set at 6% of the 2002 education budget, which in no way relfects the rising costs in Alabama and across the United States. From what I understand, this is due to the poor wording of the original measure.  If the amendment passes, it will not cost us, the taxpayers, one red cent–it will just allow education to tap into more of the larger trust fund. 

And now, my official statement.

TODAY, IN ALABAMA, TEACHERS CAME CLOSE TO LOSING 25% OF THEIR PAY.  WE SHOULD NEVER BE THAT CLOSE, FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE WHO DEDICATE THEIR LIVES TO EDUCATING OUR FUTURE. NEVER.

Please vote wisely.  Vote yes on Amendment One, Tuesday, November 4.