ALABAMA🚨 ONE WORD. MASSIVE CHANGE. 🚨
Alabama Senate Bill 4 makes a fundamental change to how public schools handle Released Time Religious Instruction (RTRI).
📌 The change is one word — but it changes everything:
➡️ “may” becomes “shall.”
Under current law, local school boards may choose whether to offer elective credit for students who leave campus during the school day for religious instruction.
SB 4 removes that choice.
If enacted, every local board of education in Alabama would be required to implement a policy granting elective credit for Released Time Religious Instruction.
That single change:
• Eliminates meaningful local control
• Embeds private religious instruction into the academic structure of the school day
• Counts time spent in religious instruction as time “in school”
• Forces districts to restructure schedules, attendance, and credit systems around religious programs
This is not a technical edit.
It is a state mandate.
📌 Why this version matters
SB 4 was introduced by Shay Shelnutt, Vice Chair of the Senate Education Policy Committee.
It appeared in May 2025, immediately after SB 278 (He also sponsored and introduced this one)and HB 342 — bills that did the same thing — failed in committee.
Those earlier bills:
• Addressed Released Time Religious Instruction
• Pushed elective credit tied to religious instruction
• Sought to formalize RTRI within the school day
They didn’t advance.
SB 4 is not a new idea.
It is the same policy, rewritten and reintroduced — this time by changing the law from optional to mandatory.
📌 And educators should take note…
The Alabama Education Association donated to Sen. Shelnutt’s campaign.
The organization that claims to represent public educators financially supported a sponsor advancing legislation that forces religious instruction into the public school schedule and removes local discretion from school boards.
That contradiction deserves scrutiny.
📢 Public schools exist to educate — not to certify religious instruction.
📢 If a policy fails once, rewriting it to force compliance is not “choice.”
Read the full text of SB4 here- Parents, educators, and taxpayers deserve to understand what SB 4 changes — and why it resurfaced after failing under other bill numbers.
#PublicSchoolsNotPulpits
#RTRI
#AlabamaSB4
#ChurchStateSeparation
#StudentsFirst
What people are saying:
- Secular Education Association: Tagging for visibility- Facebook User Facebook User Facebook User Facebook User Facebook User
- Facebook User: Then, the instructors must be credentialed and background checked in accordance with board policy?
- Facebook User: Facebook User not sure about Alabama, but in Ohio there are not requirements to have degrees, there is no monitoring of what happens in classrooms.
- Facebook User: Shooting for that #50 spot in education this year, I see. What a worthless fucking state.
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