Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Craig Pouncey does not mince words when it comes to his opinion of the state legislature moves to raid the Alabama Education Trust Fund to make up for shortfalls in the General Fund.

“I think it’s ludicrous,” Pouncey said after a meeting of the system’s board of education on Tuesday morning. “When you have these elected state officials that have been up there a long time, and they’re responsibility has been to make budgets and make laws — for them to cast that education has a surplus, as a result of laws they pass, is nothing more than a carnival shell game.”

As Pouncey was speaking, the Alabama State Senate was meeting in a special session, passing a measure that would transfer $100 million from the Education Trust Fund’s reserve account so that it would not affect the 2016 fiscal year budget for education. But Pouncey said that move would limit what is available to allocate in 2017.

“The $100 million that they’re proposing to solve the General Fund problems should have been appropriated over the last three years to schools,” Pouncey said.

Because of that, JefCoEd has had to pay upwards of $20 million for special-education programs out of local tax revenues, as well as $4 million extra for transportation.

“We have some elected officials that are short-sighted, and only concerned about their self-preservation,” Pouncey said.

The State House of Representatives approved a similar measure last week, but their bill called for transferring just $50 million. By Tuesday afternoon, a conference committee of members of both chambers reached a compromise of $80 million, and the full legislature took up the new amount in debates soon afterward.