This is a guest opinion column

Alabama has made record investments and policy reforms in education over the past few years and it’s starting to pay off. Last week, we learned that Alabama has catapulted from 52nd in 4th grade math in 2019 to 32nd in 2024 and we are the only state in the country to surpass our pre-pandemic NAEP math scores. We are incredibly proud of these results and what they mean for our state. They are a testament to the hard work and dedication of our students, teachers, families, and state leaders.

When you take a closer look at these 4th-grade math scores, another important data point emerges. Students living in poverty are dramatically underperforming their peers who aren’t living in poverty, resulting in a 36-point gap between these student groups. Imagine what would be possible for our state if Alabama made a significant investment in supporting these students.

This is precisely why we, the Every Child Alabama Coalition, believe the time has come to address the upstream cause of our achievement gaps: our state’s school funding policy.

Recognizing the need for reform, the Alabama Legislature established the Joint Legislative Study Commission on Modernizing K-12 School Education Funding in the 2024 legislative session. Over five meetings, the commission explored pathways to modernize our outdated system. They examined our current Foundation Program formula, its inadequacies, and its inability to address each student’s unique needs. Some of their key takeaways:

● The current model is 30 years old and ranks 39th in the nation on per-pupil funding, which is $4,009 less than the national average per student.

● After adjusting for inflation, Alabama’s state funding decreased by $860 per student from 2008 to 2022.

● Our state is one of only six that still funds schools based solely on student headcount rather than individual needs.

● Most importantly, the $5.3 billion K-12 budget only allocates 1.2% to students with the greatest academic needs, including those in poverty, with disabilities, or English learners, which equates to approximately $138 per student.

With the guidance of state and national experts, the commission explored other funding models and whether Alabama could afford to implement a change. They learned:

• Forty-one states have a student-weighted formula.
• We can afford to make the transition. The Legislature can do this without a tax increase.
• The research shows money matters. An additional $1,000 through school funding reform efforts results in the same academic effect of roughly 72 additional days of learning. Increased funding also increases test scores, graduation rates, college-going rates, and adult wages, as well as improved economic outcomes for the state.
• Mississippi transitioned its funding model in 2024 and Tennessee in 2022. Other states, like North Carolina, are actively considering modernizing their funding formulas.

What’s next? The commission plans to finalize its recommendations in the first days of the 2025 legislative session, and they are examining three potential pathways forward:

• Option 1: Make no changes to the Foundation Program. Continue business as usual without any impactful investments in student needs.
• Option 2: Move to a Student-Weighted Formula. This option fully replaces the current Foundation Program.
• Option 3: Shift to a Hybrid Formula. This option pairs the existing Foundation Program with a new weighted formula for students who need additional support. In recent weeks, we have been excited to see and hear overwhelming bipartisan support for the hybrid model.

More money for students is a no-brainer! We encourage our Legislature to make modernizing school funding a priority for this session. An investment in Alabama’s students is an investment in our state’s future. And who knows! Alabama could break into the top twenty in 2026 NAEP scores, with every child performing at higher levels. We deeply believe it’s possible.

Signed by the following coalition members:

Jason Meadows, Advocacy and Partnerships Director A+ Education Partnership

Huntsville Committee of 100

David Wells, President & CEO, Goodwill Alabama

Tracye Strichik, Director, Alabama Expanded Learning Alliance

Bryan Billy, Executive Director, Teach For America Alabama

Dr. Jeremiah Newell, CEO, Mobile Area Education Foundation

Samantha Williams, Executive Director, Birmingham Promise

VOICES for Alabama’s Children

Baldwin County Education Coalition

Joel Brandon Smith, Chief Academic Officer, STAIR Birmingham

Mariohn Miichel, Executive Director, Breakthrough Birmingham

Dr. Andrew Pendola, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Auburn University

Carlos Aleman, CEO, Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama (¡HICA!)

Ashley Lucier, Executive Director, Amp Up Arts

Alabama Possible

Faith in Action Alabama

Ann McKimmon Sikes, Executive Director, Montgomery Education Foundation

Alabama Families for Great Schools

Dr. Melissa Capehart, Parent Advocate

Black Alabamians for Education

EmpowerEd

Tyler Barnett, CEO, New Schools for Alabama

Eugene McCall Jr., President and Founder, Education 4 Life

New Life COGIC

Shannon M. Shelley-Tremblay, Executive Director, The Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program

Susie Patrick, Parent Advocate

Dr. Erica Jewel Littleton, CEO, Learning Little People

Dr. Ashley Samuels, Executive Director, Birmingham Education Foundation

The E.WE Foundation AG Gaston Business Institute

Joan Wright, Executive Director, Childcare Resources

Dr. Jason Bryant

Annette Scogin, Lifetime Educator

Brittany Wade, Propel Education

About the Every Child Alabama Coalition:

Every Child Alabama is a coalition of organizations and individuals working to ensure every child across Alabama has access to a world-class education to reach their full potential. We share a unifying belief that when every child receives a transformative education, it strengthens communities, making them better places to live, work, and raise a family. The Every Child Alabama Coalition is powered by A+ Education Partnership.

On this date in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell used a phone for the first time. He called his assistant, Thomas Watson, who answered the call from his boss because he didn’t have caller ID.

The answers to Friday’s quiz is near the bottom.

Thanks for reading,

Ike

Cash flow, interrupted

President Trump’s interruption in aid to Ukraine also appears to be an interruption to a significant flow of money to defense contractors in Alabama, reports AL.com’s John R. Roby.

Alabama officials previously have touted the state’s impact on Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s 2022 invasion. Former President Biden visited the Lockheed-Martin plant near Troy, where thousands of Javelin anti-tank missiles were built and sent to Ukraine.

In Huntsville, Aerojet Rocketdyne has built rocket motors and Boeing has built “seekers” that are used against aerial attacks.

Add it all up, and $3.7 billion, according to Pentagon data, has flowed into defense-industry facilities in Alabama. That puts us second to only Arkansas for having companies land Ukraine-related defense contracts.

Early in the war, Gov. Kay Ivey even fired off the tweet: “We want the last thing Putin ever reads to be ‘Made in Alabama.’”

Ah, but that was so much politics ago.

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville voted for the first Ukraine spending package but his resistance rose sharply along with the cost of aid to Ukraine and eventually led to his calling Ukraine “the most corrupt country on the face of the planet” and warned that “we are on the cusp of a nuclear war.”

Skepticism has grown among many other Republicans, and a very contentious White House meeting involving President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was followed by Trump’s order to pause aid to the country.

An ambassador again?

President Trump announced that he’s nominated Montgomery businesswoman Lindy Blanchard as U.S. ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The organization leads efforts to fight hunger and has offices in more than 130 countries.

You may recall that Blanchard ran for governor in 2022 after briefly testing the water for U.S. Senate in that same election cycle. She finished second to Gov. Kay Ivey, pulling in 19% of Republican primary voters against a popular incumbent in a pretty crowded field.

She joined plaintiffs who sued Alabama officials over the state’s electronic vote-counting machines after that election but withdrew from the lawsuit before it was eventually dismissed.

Before that, Blanchard served as U.S. ambassador to Slovenia during Trump’s first term. She and her husband made much of their wealth through real estate.

What’s in a Name?

Tombigbee River

This week’s Alabama place name is the Tombigbee River.

When I was a young boy, I could’ve sworn the Tombigbee River was named after Tom, the surly cashier at Big B Drugs.

Remember Big B Drugs? It was last headquartered in Bessemer. While we’re throwing it back … Big B was sold in the late ’90s to … Revco. I remember in my hometown the Big B and Revco shared the local market with … Eckerd.

Back to Tombigbee, whose name had nothing to do with drugs as far as we know.

The Tombigbee starts in Mississippi and eventually joins the Alabama River to form the Mobile River.

William A. Read’s “Indian Place Names in Alabama” tells us that Tombigbee comes from Choctaw words meaning “box makers” or “coffin makers.” He follows the “coffin makers” line of thinking and reports that there was a class of old men who cleaned dead people’s bones and put them in boxes.

Yikes.

Read wrote that “Evidently some members of this class must have lived along the Tombigbee,” which doesn’t exactly sound like a sure bet, although this version of history is often cited.

Mississippi historian Rufus Ward takes us down the “box makers” interpretation. In The Commercial Dispatch, he sites a territorial judge’s writing in 1805 that it was named for a box maker who once lived on the Tombigbee’s headwaters. He also sites other accounts that put the source of the name in Alabama where the French Fort Tombecbe once stood.

Also pointing in that same direction: According to Ward, a land draughtsman wrote way back in 1848 that, more than 100 years before, the Choctaws named the river after wooden boxes that were made by people along the river for shipping furs.

Which would make sense. We know that the French Americans were prolific fur traders. The Canadian Museum of History calls fur “the real economic driver of New France.”

It could be that it is memorialized in the name of an Alabama river.

More Alabama News

Alabama News Quiz answers/results

Overall:

• 5 out of 5: 31.6%
• 4 out of 5: 34.9%
• 3 out of 5: 20.4%
• 2 out of 5: 10.6%
• 1 out of 5: 2.2%
• 0 out of 5: 0.3%

This nationally known Alabama politician has been hinting at a run for governor in 2026.

• Tommy Tuberville (CORRECT) 93.5%
• Jeff Sessions 2.7%
• Katie Britt 1.9%
• Doug Jones 1.9%

This Alabama-connected author has a book of short stories publishing (posthumously) this year.

• Harper Lee (CORRECT) 85.8%
• Kathryn Tucker Windham 9.0%
• Winston Groom 3.3%
• Zora Neale Hurston 1.9%

The Iron Hills Country Music Festival — a new event — will take place at this site in October.

• Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham (CORRECT) 73.0%
• Oak Mountain Amphitheater in Pelham 20.2%
• National Peanut Festival Fairgrounds in Dothan 4.1%
• Buc-ee’s parking lot in Leeds 2.7%

A bill in the Legislature would require unemployment recipients to …

• Contact at least five employers per week (CORRECT) 62.7%
• Interview for a job at least once per week 33.5%
• Maintain an updated LinkedIn account 3.0%
• Memorize the line “My biggest weakness is actually also my biggest strength: I care too much.” 0.8%

Troy University’s Board of Trustees has voted to close the school’s location in this city.

• Phenix City (CORRECT) 67.3%
• Dothan 24.5%
• Sumter, S.C. 3.5%
• Da Nang, Vietnam 4.6%

The podcast

The Alabama gymnastics coaching staff intentionally set up the schedule for the Crimson Tide to compete twice this weekend to prepare the team for the same format it would face in postseason.

Alabama performed well on Friday night against Florida, but some missteps on the balance beam prevented the Crimson Tide from winning and putting up a new season high. In Sunday’s Elevate the Stage meet in Huntsville against Cal, Michigan State and North Carolina, the script was flipped.

A season-high 49.475 was posted on beam to start the event, but then Alabama had two of its worst performances of the season on its two best events: floor exercise and uneven bars.

Alabama finished in third place with a 196.875 behind Cal (197.200) and Michigan State (197.150) and ahead of North Carolina (195.625.) It snapped Alabama’s three-meet streak of scoring at least a 197.350.

The Crimson Tide had two gymnasts step out of bounds on floor and one fall, which caused Alabama to count scores of 9.675 and 9.575 on the event leading to a team score of 49.025. This was the Tide’s worst floor score since Week 3 against Oklahoma

Alabama came into the meet ranked No. 6 in the national on floor.

The team bounced back in the third rotation on vault with a 49.275 led by a 9.925 from senior Lilly Hudson. Despite the earlier mistakes on floor, the vault rotation set Alabama up to still finish with a score in the 197 range if it could just perform at its average on the uneven bars.

Instead, the Crimson Tide struggled to find landings on the podium floor in Huntsville, and Shania Adams fell off the bars in the anchor spot, forcing Alabama to count two scores in the 9.7-range. The Tide ended up with a 49.100 on the event, which was its lowest bars score of the season.

Alabama now has one very important meet left in the regular season on Saturday at Michigan. It will be the final opportunity for Crimson Tide to put up a score that elevates its National Qualifying Score to a point where Alabama is one of the eight teams able to compete at the SEC Championship meet in Birmingham the following week.

Currently Alabama, Auburn and Arkansas are all fighting for the final spot in the conference championship meet. Only eight of the nine SEC teams will be allowed to compete. Alabama finishes the regular season on the road while both Auburn and Arkansas conclude at home.