Across Alabama, our students have been returning to school this month. Heading back to school is an exciting time of year where students are able to reconnect with their peers, start practice for fall sports, and, most importantly, get a good education.

I’m a firm believer that our schools should be focused on setting kids up for success in life, not just the classroom. I think it’s so important to make sure that parents, not the government, are in charge when it comes to a child’s education.

That’s why we have the CHOOSE Act in Alabama, which puts the parents in the driver’s seat — where they should’ve been all along.

Importantly, the CHOOSE Act is specifically geared towards lower-income families. During the program’s first two years, participants were families who made $83,000 or less.

This program has been wildly successful and has continued to grow. I was happy to see that for the 2026-27 school year, 30,000 of the 48,927 applications were from first time applicants.

This program has proven to be successful – and I think it’s past time we expand it to give even more of Alabama’s students a say in where they get their education.

For some unknown reason, Democrats have been saying that they want to get rid of the CHOOSE Act. By every metric, the CHOOSE Act is working.

Not only that, but Republicans have built a program that specifically helps working and lower-class families have more choice when it comes to education.

Let’s face it, Alabama’s wealthy families already have school choice. If they don’t like their local public school, they can afford to move to another neighborhood or pay for private school. But for hardworking lower and middle-class Alabamians, the local public school may feel like their only option.

For those of you who are concerned that expanding school choice will hurt our public schools, let me assure you that this will not happen. We’ve proven we can expand choice while continuing to invest record amounts in public education.

Over the past decade, Alabama’s Education Trust Fund has nearly doubled from $6 billion to $10 billion.

The fearmongers who say that school choice is coming at the expense of public education simply have their facts wrong. While investing in the CHOOSE Act, Alabama Republicans have also continued to invest in public education, pay teachers more, and build better schools. And there’s no reason we can’t continue to do those things while expanding school choice.

The CHOOSE Act is roughly one percent of the education budget. I think we can afford more than that when it comes to giving parents a choice. And for a mother whose child is stuck in the wrong school, that choice can mean everything.

The government should NEVER be the one making a choice for a child instead of leaving it up to a parent. California might run their state that way, but that’s not how we do things in Alabama.

We send our kids to school for eight hours a day to learn, grow, and prepare themselves for success in the real world. I don’t blame parents who say they have lost trust in the public education system. But I think school choice is one of the ways we can earn that trust back.

I was a public-school kid. I taught at a public school; heck, I spent 40 years in education.

That’s why I can say proudly that Alabama has a great commitment to public education, and I intend to keep moving our state higher up the national ladder. I’ll keep investing in our public schools and fighting to make them better.

But supporting public education doesn’t require trapping a child in a school that isn’t right for him or her. Your ZIP code shouldn’t decide your child’s future — you should.

I see it this way: if your public school is best for your child, choose it. If another school is better, choose that. If homeschooling is right for your family, choose it.

Either way, the choice should be yours, because government doesn’t know what’s best for your child. You do.