2,000 Tuscaloosa Summer Learning Students to Lose Free Access After Tax Fails

The number of students with free access to Summer Learning programs at Tuscaloosa City Schools will be more than halved in 2025, which administrators say is a direct result of citizens voting against a property tax increase to fund education.

On Friday, Superintedent Mike Daria distributed his Core Notes email and highlighted a meeting earlier this week where the Tuscaloosa Board of Education made the first major cuts to budgets which are now unsustainable after the last of federal COVID-19 funding expired this year. 

The school board asked Tuscaloosa citizens to adopt a 22 percent property tax increase to cover the pending shortfall, but the measure was narrowly defeated in a September vote that split 53-47 against the hike.

That leaves the school system facing a $6 million deficit this fiscal year, which must be corrected before their current reserves are depleted. So - budget cuts.

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Daria said the first program to be vastly scaled back will be TCS Summer Learning, which served 3,200 students in 19 programs in 2023 and made measurable progress against the trend of children backsliding on education during summer break each year.

Dr. Andrew Maxey, the system's director of strategic initiatives, told the board that around 70 third graders in Tuscaloosa who would have otherwise been held back because of their reading scores at the end of the 2023 school year were able to rise to fourth grade thanks to Summer Learning intervention.

Still, Daria said 40 percent of the program was paid with federal COVID money last year, and the budget must be righted. As things stand, TCS has the money to serve 1,200 students in Summer 2025, and for 22 days instead of the 24 days they managed this past summer.

Priority will be given to those students struggling to read before third grade who are subject to Alabama's Literacy and Numeracy Acts.

Nine schools will lose funding for their summer learning programs entirely - Verner Elementary, Rock Quarry Elementary, Tuscaloosa Magnet Elementary, Woodland Forrest Elementary, Tuscaloosa Magnet Middle, Northridge Middle and Northridge High School.

"We are in conversations with those schools, about what their summer learning options are," Maxey told the board, and those options would likely include a model where families must pay for their students to attend.

"We are not changing the design of the program," Maxey said. "We are scaling down. Our focus is now scaling down in ways that do not compromise the quality for the students who participate."

"It's sad for me to see, in black and white ... the changes that we are being forced to make because the vote didn't go our way in September," board member Lesley Powell said at the meeting.

For more coverage of issues around West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.