An approximately $10 billion Education Trust Fund (ETF) budget for fiscal year 2026 passed the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee on Wednesday.
The 2026 fiscal year begins in Alabama on October 1, 2025 and ends on September 30, 2026. In addition to the ETF budget, the committee also passed a supplemental appropriation of $524 million. Committee members passed another $1.25 billion supplemental appropriation from the Education Trust Fund Advancement and Technology Fund, including $422,079, to the controversial Magic City Acceptance Academy.
Committee members also passed a bill that would change how K-12 public schools are funded in Alabama.
“It’ll take time. It’s not going to be overnight. It’s going to take a period of years and it’s going to take legislative commitment to keep it going and steadily increasing year after year after year. As you heard from the committee, they’re certainly committed. They heard in the commission meetings throughout the fall about the importance of giving additional resources to children in poverty, children that have special education needs, the gifted group, and the English language learners,” State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) told reporters on Wednesday.
Orr said, “We are still in a good place with resources for our public educational institutions…but we’ve got to be very mindful going forward of the future and we’ve had it good for a run of years now and we wanted to budget cautiously, Chairman Garrett and I, did.”
“That’s what we’re doing, but we’re starting this long journey with the student-based weighting funding formula and joining the other 44, 45 states that do it that way,” Orr said.
The budget is expected to be voted on in the Senate on Thursday.
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