The Alabama Accountability Act – The Whole Thing, Read It

UPDATE: Changes were made to the AAA in June 2015. Here is a link to the update.

The Alabama Accountability Act is now the law in Alabama. The final version of the Act is a combination of HB84 and HB658. I have not found the two bills combined into one for easy reading, so I did it myself with the handy cut-and-paste function in Microsoft Word (deleting all of those line numbers was ridiculously cumbersome).

So here is my compiled version of the Alabama Accountability Act. I do not claim that it is the “legal” version, rather it is my effort to pull the two bills into one readable document. I will continue looking for the “official” compilation.

Some of the details must be worked out by the State Department of Education and the Department of Revenue, but the guts of the Act are in writing.  I took the position that I would wait until the end of the legislative session to take the hard look at the Act and attempt to understand what it says and means for Alabama’s families.  I am in the process now of breaking it down into understandable chunks and will be writing about it for the next few days.

The Alabama House Republican Accountability Act of 2013 resource page states that the Act does three things:

1. Allows for flexibility contracts between the State Board of Education and local school districts
2. Creates tax credits for families with students in a (chronically) failing school to attend a nonpublic school or non-failing public school
3. Creates tax credits for taxpayers (individuals and businesses) who donate to a nonprofit “scholarship granting organization” that provides scholarships for students to attend a nonpublic school or non-failing public school

With those three areas in mind, I respectfully request that anyone who wishes to dialogue about the Act take the time and actually read it. Don’t be put off by the legal language, please. It’s actually very understandable.

The document I created is the compilation of HB84 and HB658, the original of each is linked below:

Here is HB84, the Conference Committee version that was passed on February 28 and became law on March 14.

Here is HB658, the bill to clarify portions of the Act, that became law on May 20.

Here is the Alabama House Republicans’ resource page for the Act.

So after you read it, let’s discuss. Here or on the facebook page.