Invest in our future.

The funding stretches, the teachers leave.

Alabama funds education through the Education Trust Fund, which is dependent on income and sales tax receipts and competes with every other state priority each cycle. Population growth in Madison County means the same per-pupil dollar is stretched across more pupils. Teachers, especially early-career ones, leave for districts and states that pay better, Georgia most of all. Each one who leaves takes years of training and institutional knowledge with them.

This isn't a crisis of caring. It's a structural one.

Who pays

• Students, particularly those in growing schools where headcount per teacher is rising
• Teachers, paid below market, expected to fill gaps that policy has created
• Working parents, for whom childcare and education are the same question, looked at from different angles
• Employers, competing for talent in a state whose K-12 outcomes don't compete

What we're building

1. Raise the starting teacher salary in Alabama to a level competitive with surrounding states. The state is already losing teachers to Tennessee and Georgia at scale.
2. Direct funding for school facility improvements in Madison County's fastest-growing zones, paid for through targeted state-level allocations rather than local property-tax referenda alone.
3. Universal pre-K expansion: Alabama's First Class Pre-K is one of the strongest programs in the country and it should be available to every four-year-old in the state, not just those who win the slot lottery.
4. A career-and-technical pathway investment: Madison County's economic engine is engineering, manufacturing, defense, and aerospace. Our high schools should be engineered to feed that engine directly.

Progress will be made through legislation, through community partnership with the school boards, and through whatever channels are open in a given quarter.