HCS Superintendent concerned about Accountability Act

Bill Cleveland predicts his office will receive hundreds of phone calls from people in Birmingham wanting to know how to enroll in Homewood schools.

HCS received nine such calls in the week before the Alabama Accountability Act was signed into law by Alabama Governor Robert Bentley in March.

The school choice section of the bill, located on page 18, section 5, states that a parent of a student in a failing school may enroll the student and transport the student to a nonfailing school that has available space and that is willing to accept the student.*

“We believe this law has very vague language, and we encourage our leaders to add clarification to keep systems out of litigation,” Cleveland said in a statement.

During a meeting at Homewood Middle School two days before the bill was signed into law, Cleveland voiced concern that if it passed Homewood City Schools could be adversely affected by an influx of new students that they are not prepared for. School system attorney Donald Sweeney found the terms “space” and “willing” in the section vague and cautioned Cleveland that they could be interpreted in a way that forces Homewood to accept students who live outside the city.

“We function by a strategic plan developed by the community,” Cleveland said to crowd of around 100 at the meeting. “If we can’t plan how many students we will receive, we might not meet our academic goals. We might hire too many or too little teachers.”

Before the bill was signed, HCS contacted Sen. Jabo Waggoner, Rep. Paul DeMarco and Gov. Robert Bentley’s Chief of Staff David Perry to express concerns with the ambiguity of language in this section of the bill.

“The only one that gets this is Paul DeMarco,” Cleveland said at the meeting. “We

need this language strengthened.”

DeMarco said he added clarifying language to version 7 of the legislation that is not present in the version, number 8, that passed, which reads: “Nothing in this act shall be construed to force any school, whether public or nonpublic, to enroll any student.”

“We are aware that Rep. Paul DeMarco will introduce legislation that will include

language that was in the original bill and was left out of the final version,” Cleveland said in a statement.

Cleveland encouraged residents to reach out to state leaders to ask them to support version 7 of House Bill 84 and Senate Bill 360, the versions he believes will protect Homewood schools.

Homewood City Schools is checking on whether the bill would allow them to charge tuition to students who live outside the district, if the tuition could include sales tax, and if the system’s current regulation that students must be a resident of Homewood would affect application of the bill.

*Full wording of Alabama House Bill 84, page 18, section 5:

“The parent of a student enrolled in or assigned to a school that has been designated as a failing school, as an alternate to paragraph b. of subdivision (4), may choose to enroll the student in and transport the student to a nonfailing public school that has available space in any other local school system in the state, and that local school system is willing to accept the student on whatever terms and conditions the system establishes and report the student for purposes of the local school system’s funding pursuant to the Foundation Program.”