Examining 'School Choice': The Impact of Charter Schools & Tuition Vouchers In Tuscaloosa
TUSCALOOSA, AL — The concept of "school choice" is as popular to some as it is polarizing for others, evolving in recent years from a topic of dinner table conversations to real policies that will soon change the educational landscape in Alabama for better or worse.
{p/p}What this will mean for schools, educators, families and students in the Tuscaloosa area varies greatly depending on whom you ask and how one looks at the situation.
On one side of the debate, advocates insist that policies such as private school tuition vouchers and the proliferation of charter schools will only hasten the decline and demise of public education in Alabama by siphoning off students and much-needed resources.
On the other side, advocates for the aforementioned policies insist that "market-based solutions" would both improve overall academic outcomes while at the same time forcing public school systems to look for ways to compete.
The most sweeping changes won't go into effect until next school year, so Tuscaloosa Patch took a deep dive into the good, bad and ugly impacts such a seismic shift could have on education in Tuscaloosa County.
Private School Tuition Vouchers
The CHOOSE Act was signed into law by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey in March after she referred to it as her "top legislative priority" and established the structure for what amounts to providing private school tuition vouchers to the families of qualifying students.
The measure directed the Alabama Legislature to appropriate $100 million annually to the CHOOSE Program Fund, with Ivey also setting aside $50 million for the fund in the Fiscal Year 2024 Education Trust Fund supplemental.
"Because of the passage of the CHOOSE Act, more families than ever before will have the opportunity to choose the best educational environment for their children — regardless of zip code or income," Ivey said in March.
The new Alabama law offers refundable income tax credits, referred to as education savings accounts (ESAs), with the application window for the 2025-26 school year opening on Jan. 2, 2025.
According to the National Education Association , ESA programs receive a portion of a state's per-pupil education funding to then be put into an account that parents can use to pay for approved education expenses like private school tuition.
The state has committed to provide $7,000 per student enrolled in a participating school while awarding up to $2,000 per student not enrolled in a participating school.
The latter group includes students who participate in individual or group homeschool programs, co-ops, or "other similar programs."
When looking at the most recent tuition numbers for local private schools, it becomes clear that $7,000 a year would go a long way for many, while presenting more of a tuition coupon for others.
For instance, Tuscaloosa Academy stands alone at the top of the local tuition market, with its 2023-24 tuition for 5th-12th grade students set at $12,300.
As Patch previously reported , Tuscaloosa Academy in March announced the introduction of a new "tailored tuition" model for the 2024-2025 academic year.
The private school says that its Tailored Tuition is an "individualized approach to tuition fees, taking into account each family's unique financial circumstances. ... The goal of our Tailored Tuition model is to create a personalized tuition amount that aligns with each family's financial situation."
A third-party service is then used to assess financial information provided by the family to determine the appropriate tuition rate, using a specific algorithm that takes into account a family's income, expenses and dependents before recommending a tuition rate.
Tuscaloosa Academy officials told Patch that the timing of the new tailored tuition model was a mere coincidence and not in anticipation of the CHOOSE Act, before saying that the feedback they've received shows the community views the new tuition structure as "an opportunity."
Still, detractors insist that the $7,000 per student that will be committed by the state would likely do little to aid truly economically disadvantaged students to afford tuition at pricier schools like Tuscaloosa Academy.
Tuscaloosa Academy, however, says its Tailored Tuition program may help retain students whose families might otherwise struggle to afford tuition fees, going on to say that by spreading the fixed costs of the school to a larger number of students, the program will keep tuition lower for all families.
Separately, other private schools in the Tuscaloosa area won't have to do as much reorienting of their tuition rates to attract new students — schools with more affordable tuition, like Tuscaloosa's American Christian Academy (ACA).
According to ACA's 2024-25 tuition brochure , tuition for the first child enrolled is priced at $7,608, followed by a descending price scale for each additional child from the same household ($6,847 for a second child and $6,162 for the third).
While TA and its retooled tuition model might still be too pricey for many blue-collar public school families looking for alternatives, schools with explicitly religious curricula — like ACA, Tuscaloosa Christian and North River Christian — might end up being more appealing, anyway.
Indeed, North River Christian in the current academic year charges $8,050 per high school student for the first child enrolled at the school, while Tuscaloosa Christian charges $6,315 annually for tuition.
At this point, it's important to acknowledge what these private schools stand to gain and what public schools could lose once the CHOOSE Act is more widely utilized.
This can be boiled down to a simple number: the 30,000 or so students enrolled in Tuscaloosa City Schools (TCS) and the Tuscaloosa County School System (TCSS).
"My perspective on vouchers is that I feel like we've already shown a commitment to providing choice to our students in the district," TCS Director of Strategic Initiatives Andrew Maxey told Patch when asked about the potential impact the new state program could have on the city school system. "We have the Alberta School of Performing Arts, the Tuscaloosa Magnet Schools and programs in our high schools, so we're not scared about the concept of choice."
Outside of its lamentable revenue shortfall, TCS leadership is confident that its current approach is the right one that will continue to see academic outcomes, along with test scores and proficiency rates, improve.
However, those opposed to the recent property tax increase to provide supplemental funding to city schools argued that issues expressed by TCS could be attributed more to the mismanagement of pandemic aid money and poor decisions by the system's leadership.
This was the primary argument posed by Tuscaloosa businessman Steven Rumsey, who chairs the Tuscaloosa County Economic Development Authority Board of Directors, when he led the charge to oppose the recent property tax increase referendum for TCS.
For Rumsey and others, their opposition focuses on the underperforming academic outcomes for city schools, which still managed to slightly outperform its counterparts in the county on the Alabama Department of Education's latest report card with an overall score of 80 to 79.
Charter Schools
Private school officials who spoke to Patch for this story were clear in wanting this reporter to convey that the CHOOSE Act and the Alabama School Choice and Student Opportunity Act are wholly separate pieces of legislation.
Indeed, the latter went into law last year and set more defined guidelines for the creation and operation of charter schools in Alabama.
And it becomes even more relevant when considering that Tuscaloosa City Schools (TCS) recently announced its first-ever request for charter school proposals, which comes after its recent approval as a charter school authorizer by the Alabama State Department of Education.
Maxey told Patch the city school system submitted its application to become an authorizer and saw it approved in October, which prompted TCS to begin the process of accepting requests for proposals (RFPs) from those interested in forming a charter school.
"This is going to place a high emphasis on transparency with the community," he said. "There will be community meetings to gauge interest in support of any possible charter schools. If we are authorizing a charter, then we're adding an option for our students. Those are still our students and those charters would just be a partner that has a little bit of a different relationship with us."
But let's pause right here and take a brief moment to define what, exactly, a charter school is.
According to the National Charter School Resource Center — an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Charter School Programs — a charter school is a public school that is "exempt from significant state or local regulations related to operation and management" but that otherwise adhere to regulations of public schools, such as being prohibited from charging tuition or being affiliated with religious institutions.
For Alabama, specifically, Maxey said all applications for charter schools flow through the Alabama State Department of Education and are then authorized by either local school districts or the Alabama Public Charter School Commission . This is a practice that varies from state to state.
It should also be noted here that Tuscaloosa does not have a single representative on the 12-member commission.
Maxey went on to explain that the relationship between a local school district and a charter school it authorizes is similar to the dynamics of a school district operating under the oversight of the state Department of Education.
"[The state] lists charter schools as districts because, from a technical standpoint, that's how they function," Maxey said. "But they report to their school district authorizers for purposes of accountability."
The first deadline for interested parties to submit a notice of intent to TCS was Nov. 8, with Maxey saying that the city school system had not yet received any inquiries.
This also comes as the area's first new charter school — I Dream Big Academy — is slated to open in the fall of 2025 on the campus of Stillman College in Tuscaloosa.
Amid the push for a since-failed property tax increase to provide additional funding to the school system, TCS Superintendent Mike Daria told Patch last month that he had already met with leaders from I Dream Big Academy and that the TCS central office welcomes the concept.
"It's coming to Alabama, so you won't hear opposition from any of us," Daria said in September. "Our focus is to just keep getting better. If charter comes in and we're not where we need to be, then shame on us. We just have to focus on getting better."
Daria's previous point echoes much of what some local business leaders have told Patch, especially in the lead-up to the failed property tax referendum: that competition will be a good thing for local public school systems if indeed they do intend on improving so they can compete within the market.
This has been a consistent talking point raised by local developer Ron Turner, who has made no secret about his desire to build a new charter school near the aged Collins-Riverside Intermediate School property in Northport.
Competition in the market, he says, along with "getting back to the basics" of focusing on "reading, writing and arithmetic" at the elementary level, would do wonders to improve educational outcomes across the Tuscaloosa metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, the two public school systems in Tuscaloosa County have been facing their own individualized sets of problems and now will have to reckon with increased competition as the door opens for more charter schools to open.
For instance, TCS is dealing with a revenue shortfall that will no doubt be exacerbated by federal pandemic aid funding drying up.
As was pointed out at every turn by city school system advocates, TCS has said without the supplemental federal funding, it will be required to make additional staffing cuts, including reducing the positions of up to 50 educators.
The city school system also said it will have no choice but to remain stagnant on pay for teachers while lacking the funding to meet essential safety needs.
As recently as last week, Patch reported that TCS plans to make substantial cuts to its wildly popular Summer Learning Program due to a lack of funding, with the program possibly pivoting to a paid model.
TCS says it will now have the resources to serve only about 1,200 students in 2025, which is down from the 3,200 students served in 2024 at no cost to their families.
ALSO READ: A Postmortem Analysis Of Failed Tuscaloosa City Schools Property Tax Referendum
If you ask Tuscaloosa County School System leaders, the problems they're dealing with all seem to relate to its rapid growth and flat revenue in recent years as many move from the city to places like Samantha and Lake View.
When TCSS saw its own proposed property tax increase referendum fail last year, system leaders lamented the lack of funding to build new facilities in places like Samantha.
For example, this unincorporated community in northern Tuscaloosa County is in desperate need of a new elementary school to alleviate overcrowding at Walker Elementary, where many students still have to eat lunch in their portable classrooms because of the size of the school's current lunchroom.
The differences in need for the two school systems present an interesting contrast, though, when examining the impact that more charter schools could have at the local level.
While TCSS has not yet been approved as an authorizer, TCSS Superintendent Keri Johnson told Patch that the county school system was in the process of applying to become one.
For Tuscaloosa City Schools, however, the possibility of the system losing students is likely not a welcome one, especially considering the subsequent loss of federal per-child funding that will result in its wake.
TCS leadership is remaining optimistic, though, with Maxey saying the current RFP process is not the district seeking a solution to a problem. Rather, he said this is the school system getting out ahead of emerging trends in education.
"We want to be clear, we do not object to charter schools but neither is this a signaling that we're trying to move more toward charters," Maxey told Patch. "And if there are parties that can help drive our agenda forward, like charter schools, then we welcome that."
Pros & Cons Of Private School Tuition Vouchers
Perhaps the biggest positive touted for the CHOOSE Act can be found in the name of the legislation — more choices for families as it relates to the educational opportunities in their communities.
Supporters, such as the aforementioned real estate developers, insist this would also add a new layer of competition that would place good-faith pressure on public schools to do more to compete: I.E., "market-driven solutions."
"Every Alabama student should have the opportunity to receive a high-quality education that meets their individual needs," Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said in October when the CHOOSE Act's website was launched. "The CHOOSE Act is School Choice for a Strong Alabama — a wonderful opportunity for eligible families to receive the assistance that will have a positive impact on their students' academic future and the future of our great state."
State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey has been one of the only state-level officials to voice concern in the past over a lack of "guardrails" for such a program but has since come around to the current incarnation of the policy.
"There have been dozens of school choice bills introduced over the last few years," Mackey said during a speaking engagement in Tuscaloosa earlier this year . "This is by far the best one we've seen. It includes a level of accountability and transparency we have not seen in previous bills."
Interestingly enough, public school officials from TCS and TCSS aren't concerned about the impact on their respective student populations, primarily due to the fact that there are only so many students these much smaller private schools can take in — regardless of the supplemental funding made available to families through the CHOOSE Act or any changes at the federal level with a new presidential administration.
For instance, Tuscaloosa Academy has a little more than 400 students from K-12th grade, while American Christian Academy has nearly 1,000 students in its K-12th grade classes. Given these are the two largest private schools in Tuscaloosa County based solely on student population size, it seems to validate the lack of concern from public school leaders whose systems stand to inevitably lose some students once the ESA program ramps up.
This notion also undermines an argument by many who support tuition vouchers and argue that increased access to more affordable private schools would have a positive impact on classroom sizes and overcrowding for the two public school systems in Tuscaloosa County.
After speaking at length with leaders from both school systems, they did not think this would be the case.
Nevertheless, schools like Tuscaloosa Academy do have high academic standards and, for TA specifically, the school recently started playing public school sports as a member of the Alabama High School Athletic Association, thus raising the school's appeal even more for families looking for options.
Following a close examination of tuition numbers and the provisions offered in the CHOOSE Act, though, there are certain positives, but also glaring concerns when looking at how taxpayer dollars would be spent.
As previously mentioned in this story, the $7,000 per child amount offered to families through the CHOOSE Act would cover or come close to covering the full cost of tuition for most private schools in Tuscaloosa County — other than Tuscaloosa Academy.
While acknowledging TA's innovative new tuition model, it's unclear if costs will decrease to the levels of other private schools in the county. After all, this would no doubt have a direct impact on the exclusivity that has set the private school apart from its contemporaries for so long.
The amount provided by the state through the program has also led those opposed to education savings accounts to argue that it will accomplish little other than providing a kind of discount tuition coupon for families who could already afford tuition — all on the taxpayers' dime and at the cost of public education in Alabama.
Inequity and a lack of accountability for private schools are also primary concerns for many public school advocates, with some worried that lower-income families may still struggle to find suitable options despite tuition vouchers being available.
This could also compound existing issues in communities relating to social and racial segregation, with those opposed to tuition vouchers saying families may choose schools based on demographic factors, rather than promoting a diverse educational environment. The argument could be made, however, that families by and large do this anyway when deciding where to live and send their children to school.
As for accountability, private schools are not subject to the same level of oversight as their public school counterparts, which could result in negative impacts on academic outcomes, but this is not likely to be the immediate case in Tuscaloosa due to the strong academic outcomes at schools like Tuscaloosa Academy.
Pros & Cons Of Charter Schools
Charter school advocates insist that the proliferation of the concept would increase educational choices for families, bolster competition, provide access to more diverse educational options and relieve overcrowding in public schools.
New Schools for Alabama , a 501(c)3 nonprofit charter school advocacy group, says its mission is to support the growth of charter schools in Alabama by aiding in the development of new schools, providing technical assistance to administrators and working to advance policy favorable to charter schools.
Concerns abound, though, such as the fact that charter schools are funded by public money, which could result in the diversion of resources away from traditional public schools while exacerbating existing funding disparities that could ultimately have a negative impact on the quality of a public school education.
When considering its advocacy for charter school legislative policies, New Schools for Alabama says that its legislative agenda serves the betterment of the charter school community while bearing in mind the broader needs of all public school students in Alabama.
Nevertheless, as is the case with private school tuition vouchers, opponents of the charter school concept share similar concerns relating to oversight and inequity.
New Schools for Alabama has a much different viewpoint, though, saying the organization works "to enhance parent and community access to information on local school quality."
Security and school safety is another potential blind spot that many may not be considering when weighing options involving charter schools.
As an example, I Dream Big Academy — a 6-12 charter school partnering with Stillman College — is set to open in Tuscaloosa in the fall of 2025 and has local connections in its leadership, such as co-founder and director of curriculum and instruction Lucretia Prince, who previously served as a principal at Crestmont Elementary School and Davis-Emerson Middle School.
I Dream Big Academy says its goal is to establish a lab school environment with shared resources and dual enrollment opportunities as a way to cultivate future HBCU collaborations.
Despite the school website going into detail about its nuanced approach to education, officials with the Tuscaloosa Police Department confirmed to Patch that the new charter school had not reached out to the department to inquire about school resource officers or help with security measures.
Still, one of the primary concerns mentioned time and again regarding charter schools can be found in their overall impact on public education.
For starters, Medium's Paul Randall Adams reported last year that the lack of regulation and oversight for charter schools has led to cases of fraud and mismanagement, which further harms students and ultimately results in wasted tax dollars.
He then cited a study by the Network for Public Education that found charter schools cost school districts over $400 million in funding each year, "resulting in reduced resources for public schools. The same study also found that charter schools enroll a smaller percentage of students with disabilities and English language learners, indicating that they often cherry-pick students."
What's more, in a 2022 policy memo from the National Education Policy Center , Helen F. Ladd of Duke University wrote: "Charter schools disrupt four core goals of education policy in the United States. These goals are (1) establishing coherent systems of schools; (2) attending to child poverty and disadvantage; (3) limiting racial segregation and isolation; and (4) ensuring that public funds are spent wisely."
Ladd went on to say that charter schools enjoy far more autonomy than traditional public schools, with many operated by charter management organizations or by management operating many schools that often have no ties to the local community.
Indeed, this appears to be an approach by New Schools for Alabama, which says it identifies the "highest-performing charter school networks in the nation and recruit the best among them to establish new schools in the regions of Alabama with the greatest need."
Ladd said other challenges relate to planning, especially when looking at the outflow or potential outflow of students to charter schools, making it difficult for district policymakers to plan for teachers, programs and facilities.
"Planning for programs requires that district policymakers determine in a timely manner how many teachers and with what qualifications are needed to meet the needs of their students," Ladd writes. "Bear in mind that the local district remains responsible for providing seats for any charter school students who opt to return to a public school or are forced to do so because a charter school shuts down."
Political Headwinds
Regardless of feelings on the ground in Tuscaloosa or of those held by the central office staff for either school district, Tuscaloosa City Schools Superintendent Mike Daria appears to have been right to say that prevailing policies like charter schools and tuition vouchers are here and will have to be reckoned with one way or another.
It's a similar viewpoint held by the much larger county school system, which signals a willingness by local education administration to adjust to the inevitable.
Indeed, "school choice" and "market-driven solutions" also factor prominently into the political game plan for president-elect Donald Trump, who made it a major plank on the campaign trail, promising he would do away with the U.S. Department of Education and reduce the role of the federal government in education to "that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states."
The dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, according to Trump, would then give more latitude and freedom to individual states to run their educational systems as they see fit.
Such an approach is also discussed at length in Project 2025 — a policy document published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that will likely be used as a kind of blueprint for Trump's second term.
"To the extent that federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund education programs, those funds should be blockgranted to states without strings, eliminating the need for many federal and state bureaucrats," the third chapter of Project 2025 states. "Eventually, policymaking and funding should take place at the state and local level, closest to the affected families."
The National Education Association (NEA) — the country's largest labor union with over 3 million members — has been called a "radical special interest group" by the president-elect and claims that Project 2025's approach to private school tuition vouchers mirrors the ESA program in place in Arizona.
Boasting one the largest voucher programs in the county, the NEA said in October that Arizona's is also one of the most unaccountable, alleging that it benefits predominantly private school families while siphoning valuable funds from public schools and destabilizing the state's budget.
Trump has been at loggerheads with the massive education labor union for years and is likely to take a transactional approach to policy as it relates to education at the state level.
For instance, Trump said last September that he planned to implement funding preferences and favorable treatment for states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure for grades K-12, in addition to hurling threats that he would cut federal funding for any school "pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children."
As for charter schools, the authors of Project 2025 advise that the second Trump administration must take immediate steps to lessen federal restrictions on the concept that has become an increasingly popular talking point among conservatives dissatisfied with public education.
This suggestion by the Heritage Foundation came in response to a U.S. Department of Education notice published in March 2022 relating to proposed priorities, requirements, definitions and grant selection criteria relating to federal funding for charter school applicants.
The Alabama Policy Institute is one of more than 100 conservative organizations involved with Project 2025's advisory board and said in September that last year alone, the federal government "funneled over $64 billion through direct payments, contracts, grants, and other forms of financial assistance to Alabama, making our state one of the most federally dependent states in the nation."
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in March that the Alabama Policy Institute, along with the State Policy Network , "led the coalition toward educational freedom in Alabama" after she signed the CHOOSE Act into law.
According to the Education Data Initiative , a nonpartisan research firm that collects and attempts to distill data about the U.S. education system for the average American to understand, Alabama receives about $1.85 billion in federal funding annually for K-12 schools.
If Trump indeed follows through on his campaign promise to close the U.S. Department of Education in favor of granting more autonomy to the states, then the Alabama Department of Education could end up gaining much more control over it spends it federal funding.
Whether this is good or bad has yet to be determined.
Indeed, it's still too early to tell what the school choice push will mean for Alabama, but if the current political climate is any indicator, state leaders will most likely to be emboldened to further expand its support of private school tuition vouchers and seed money for charter schools instead of using those tax dollars for traditional public schools.
Those opposed to bolstered school choice initiatives point to Alabama — a state governed for decades by a Republican supermajority in Montgomery — consistently ranking near the bottom among states for educational outcomes due to historically poor stewardship by the Alabama Department of Education and the state's regressive approach to distributing education funding.
Indeed, the National Education Association claims that if Title I is eliminated by the Trump administration, as stated in Project 2025, over 180,000 teaching positions would be eliminated across the country, further exacerbating issues for public schools in underperforming states like Alabama.
Concerns then become a bit more valid when considering how little improvement the state of Alabama has shown over the years when coupled with the very real possibility that the state could end up with far more control over how it spends federal education dollars during the incoming presidential administration.
The jury is still out, though, and only time will tell.
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