The republicans in the State of Alabama are all LIARS

This bill is a side step to improving public education. Why should public money or credits against public revenue e-v-e-r go to a private school? This was never an issue before integration. The American people once took great pride in the quality and availability of free public education, an necessary component to the perpetuation of democracy. Since integration, so many people fail to see that all Americans have to have access to high quality education, no matter the race, national origin or disability. This entire state should have schools like the best systems in North Alabama. Teach for America volunteers are being sent to parts of Alabama like it is the damn third world. The answer is equitable funding, not money going to private schools.

The democrats in the State of Alabama are all LIARS

How are we going to pay for it?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I'm ashamed this day to be a Republican. I'm all for letting kids choose where they go to school but giving them money to go is ridiculous. SHAME ON YOU TERRI.

The educators are mad because AEA did not control the vote. The bill is good for the students. The bill is good for Alabama. Why would anyone want their child to have to stay in a failing school system if they had a choice. We have dumbed down our educational system so much under the leadership of union thug Paul Hubbert that we have forgotten that our children CAN learn and WILL learn if given instruction away from the grasp of union oriented mindsets. Rumple asks the question "Why should public money or credits against public revenue e-v-e-r go to a private school?" I ask the question.....why should MY(public) money go to fund sub-standard public schools?

Hopkins and Nichols need to read the bill before they make judgement. Both admitted that had not read it, but were upset because of changes? Were they upset with the changes or because the union thugs told them that they should be upset?

This is the best bill to come out of Montgomery in decades!

Amen, Ted.

The problem with this idea is that most of the problems in education are with the people that have the kids the 16 hours a day they are not in school. This bill gives a tax credit to those people to allow them to move their kids to schools where those of us who work hard and make our kids work hard send our kids. This is will not correct the schools on the list. It will just make the better schools have to slow down instruction. Educatation starts at home and there is nothing either party can do to correct the problems in most of the schools on that list.

I partially agree with you Iris. It does begin at home. You said that neither party could correct the problem......, I disagree, and I think it started yesterday. The democrats have controlled our educational system for umpteen years and I think we can all agree that THEY have failed. It's time to pass the torch.

Henry Mabry, just today put out a directive, filled with half-truths and downright lies, to all of its members telling them to corner their legislator in the grocery stores and churches and express their dis-pleasure. They have ruled for decades using these strong-armed tactics, much the same as used in Chicago by the union thugs and politicions that come out of there, We are better than that. I know that Hopkins got his feelings hurt, but he's a big boy and will eventually get over it.

Unless they are running failing schools, it shouldn't matter

Teachers in Alabama have long evaded accountability to the state citizenry and should be accorded the opportunity to acquaint themselves anew. The abandonment by veteran leadership ahead of a precipitous drop in revenue, coupled with a massive shift in public opinion and legislative mandate, have the AEA reeling and very unsettled. Attached to the weakened political party, and, with no clear direction, the union members are only beginning to regret organizing against their neighbors and fellow citizens, and, questioning the wisdom of political partisanship rather than neutrality. Few believe the Alabama Democrat Party will be restored to power in the foreseeable future and see further deterioration a forgone conclusion. Some are loathe to accept their roles in advancing the horrific social agenda set forth by the Democrat Party, and endorsed by the Decatur Daily, the latest social cause being homosexual tolerance, all the while demanding higher salaries. There are those, perhaps a majority, who comprehend the years long erosion of public support and the need to conform to community standards before any remaining credibility is sacrificed. The hope of the public school system lies with them. Godspeed.

I cannot help but laugh when I think about the millions of dollars the AEA poured into the Alabama Republican Party primary to defeat Bradley Byrne to get "their" man elected governor in 2010 - only to see it blow up in their face. Poetic justice!

What does Arthur Orr have to say? Is this a week for him to lead or one for him to hide? THE DAILY has to go to Terri Collins for quotes. Bless her heart.

Ok, when students leave the failing public school and attend a private school and get kicked out for disruptive behavior or failure to show to class on a regular basis, who is going to be held accountable for them fail now. Look at the demographics of some of these failing school and I bet you will find students who have attendance and behavioial problems, lack of parental support. If the student does not have any of the following issues then they are probably the top of the school. Educational challenges can also be reinforced at home by the parent adding addition studies at home. Teachers can't be everything to every child, what happened to parent being partially responsible for their child education and making sure they get their homework done and study for test and attend school everyday.,

Tired of politics all together. Sad as it might be (and to the brave veterans that have sacrificed I am sorry) I refuse to vote until some honest people with common sense run for office. People that honestly want to serve their people and are not just in it for their own power and greed.

Terri Collins is an idiot. What will happen when all of these kids in failing schools show up at Decatur Heritage? Why do you think the school they left was failing to start with? How will they educate them? Do you seriously think that educators just sit around all day and do nothing. Will Decatur Heritage be able to take tax dollars and accept or deny students based on a disability or skin color? Is that legal? Wait till they show up at your school John in Hartselle and you have to educate them. People don't understand what kind of student is being sent to school to be educated anymore, but you will in the near future.

I think Mr. Ed Henry should be sent to show one of these failing schools how to get these students performing above grade level. How about it, Mr. Henry? Work for three years teaching kindergarten in Florence Howard Elementary School and show improvement until those students are scoring just as well as the kids in Mountain Brook. Or perhaps you would rather teach algebra to the 8th graders at Kinterbish Junior High School for three years, showing everyone how it's done so that 100% of the students are above grade level. About half of new teachers quit the profession within the first five years. After three years, maybe Mr. Henry would understand why. Right now, he and his cronies are clueless and powerful in education, a harmful combination.

Iris is the only one on here who truly understands how it will impact good schools. No Ted they will not learn and some do not want to learn. The union has nothing to do with kids learning Ted, that is silly. Most students that are graduating today are smarter than they were 30 years ago. More math, science, technology and foreign languages have been placed on them. Academics have been dumbed down for certain sections of students because they can't handle the requirements that have been placed on them by the Federal Gov't.

People in Alabama need to be concerned. If the legislature can do what they did in secrecy yesterday with the governor's backing, then please realize they can do it about other areas where they do not want anyone to oppose them.

"The secret of what was really happening did not leak -- not to the press, not to lobbyists and not to Democrats. And it did not leak to state Superintendent Tommy Bice or the Alabama Association of School Boards; both had supported and worked to pass the original flex bill. Marsh kept them in the dark."I have no apologies keeping them in the dark," said Marsh. "We knew they would oppose what we trying to do"(AL.com)

Right now our legislatures and governor are being influenced by a powerful lobbyist group led by Michelle Rhee/Students First Organization out of Washington, D.C. Do your research. Is she someone that we need running our schools? She is going to take Alabama's schools down to a level that we don't want to go. Just ask the Washington, D.C. schools..

I am also ashamed to call myself a Republican after reading this bill. Even Terri Collins said she only had an hour to read the revised 27-page bill. That sounds very similar to the way the Health Care bill was passed by Congress. As Pelosi said, you have to pass the bill to find out what is in it. What is wrong with allowing members to read and debate a bill before passing it? And, private schools had better watch out about receiving public money whether it comes from students or the government. The courts may rule that if you receive government money, then the government can dictate how you operate your schools. The people of Alabama need to be concerned about who is putting these ideas in the minds of the Republican leadership. They obviously aren't receiving their ideas from people in education. I agree with John, they could be getting their ideas from Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C. schools. And where do the Federal government leaders send their children to school. I believe a vast majority send their children to private schools.

They are getting their ideas from Michelle Rhee. Keep reading. I have been researching Michelle Rhee and Alabama's association with her and her group since 2011 when Gov. Bentley hired Emily Schultz. Wake up Alabamians. I'd rather trust the people who have worked in education than someone like Michelle Rhee. Just google her name and read about her. Don't just take my word. Be educated. Right now we have Michelle Rhee and her assistants influencing Alabama's schools and both of them have taught very little and there is so much negativity about them. Everywhere they go it seems they leave a mess behind them. " Gov. Robert Bentley's new education policy director has worked under some controversial regimes in high-profile efforts to turn around failing schools.

Emily Schultz, 28, began her job as Bentley's education policy adviser in November, (2011) with a top priority of getting a law allowing charter schools passed during the next legislative session.

Previously, the Birmingham native worked under Michelle Rhee, who became chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools after the mayor took control of the district.

Schultz worked under Rhee as nearly two dozen schools were closed, the teacher pay scale was changed and hundreds of teachers, principals and administrators were fired.

After the Washington job, Schultz worked as a consultant in Central Falls in Rhode Island, which made headlines in February 2010 when it fired all the teachers at a failing high school". By Marie Leech -- The Birmingham News

So, let me get this straight. If I work hard and earn a good living, I can afford to move to an area where schools are NOT failing. However, if I don't work hard and earn a good living, I cannot afford to move to an area where the schools are NOT failing, but now, the GOVERNMENT will allow me to send my child to the "good" school AND will PAY me to do it!

I'm sorry....isn't this EXACTLY the kind of government involvement that the R's have been complaining about?

If, as has been reported, this expanded bill has been sitting in some legislators' desk drawers for over a week before it was suddenly foisted on the Legislature as a whole, I have to wonder who actually wrote the bill. Lobbyists for charter schools is a good bet. That would explain Bentley's smile.

“Decatur High” you are the essence of the reason there is backlash against the education establishment/union mentality that has held power for decades and continues control of Alabama education. You express spitefulness, even hatred, toward a private Christian school, not only for providing a better education opportunity than the public monopoly, but resentment for the parents paying your salary through taxes in addition to the tuition and all else they pay at the private school [they are paying double]. Public, read government, schools have evolved into mills for “educating” the progressive, socialist, statist line of thinking and have kept the AEA expanding and educators such as yourself in a high paying/high taxpayer supported benefits and lifetime retirement costs. Do you expect us to believe you have our students lives and education at heart? Because, if you did, your system would not have ABANDONED and FORBIDDEN the very things that made American education the shining star of the world for years. In the last 40+ years your establishment, union and Democrat allies in government have dismantled what used to work, and you have successfully labored for and substituted the failing system we have now. Student achievement has been declining, dramatically, for decades now. Your experiments and solutions have all been shoved down our collective throats. For once, the Republicans learned and used your tactics and turned them to benefit students and parents at the expense of establishment control. Hats off to competition for government big-ed. Let us see how good they can be, and if they will try to improve. I suspect, even expect, they will be like "DECATUR HIGH" and resort to spiteful, vindictive methods to sabotage and savage private competitors. Actually, perceiving a threat to their fiefdom, they already are. Just look at the comments in this forum. After all these are the same union minded robots allowed to be in charge of putting devolved educational drivel into our children’s minds. It is really refreshing to see the beginnings of a rebellion against the government monopoly education establishment.

I am with William, Sparkman D, and George D.

sheep

I agree with John from Hartselle . . . . . Unless someone is running a failing school, it shouldn't matter