Beason picking a fight with four-year-olds

Discussion on the Alabama Education Trust Fund Budget continues.

Senator Scott Beason questioned additional funding for the pre-kindergarten program (First Class) in the State of Alabama. Senator Beason said he believes Alabama should have a strong K-12 program and put all of the funding into those programs rather than pre-kindergarten.

Senator Sanders noted that extended research shows that students who participate in pre-k programs tend to do better than students who begin with only kindergarten. Beason later noted that he didn’t even attend kindergarten and Senator Sanders did not have the opportunity to attend kindergarten because kindergarten did not exist.

Following Beason introduced an amendment to the Education Budget that would take away a large chunk of money from the pre-kindergarten program established in the budget and would reassign that money to classroom teachers. This would give schools approximately $400.00 per classroom for teacher use.

Senator Sanders made a motion to table Senator Beason’s amendment and it passed with a vote of twenty-six to three.