Alabama State Senator Arthur Orr is shepherding a bill through the legislature that asserts parental rights regarding the vaccination of their children:
https://www.al.com/educationlab/2024/04/alabama-legislature-may-ease-religious-exemption-for-school-vaccines.html. This isn’t a API BluePrint issue, per se, but we certainly support his effort to put parents back in the drivers seat with decision-making for their own children regarding medical and educational issues. That bill passed the Senate this week and is set for House action.
The budgets are on the move and are the yet again the largest budgets in state history. The general fund has an overall increase of nearly 12% plus over $215M in supplemental spending, most of which is allocated for prison construction. The ETF that passed the House grew by 6.3% to 9.3 BILLION, also the highest budget in Alabama state history. As a point of reference, Alabama State budgets have grown by 24.5% in the last five years and 46.9% in the past decade. In addition, lawmakers have added another $1.65 billion in supplemental funding to the current year budget with the bulk going towards technology and capital projects at K-12 schools, colleges and universities.
