ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a $36.1 billion fiscal 2025 state budget Thursday with generous raises for teachers and state employees made possible by a huge surplus.
“This is an awesome budget that addresses the needs of every Georgian from all walks of life,” House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said following the 172-1 vote.
The budget, which takes effect July 1, would increase state spending by $3.6 billion – or 11% – over the original fiscal 2024 spending plan the General Assembly adopted last spring.
It includes 4% pay raises for most state employees, with an additional $3,000 one-time increase for state law enforcement and correctional officers. Workers in state agencies suffering from high turnover also would receive additional targeted raises above the 4% salary hikes.
“Agency attrition is a problem,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin. “The slow, steady increase in salaries … is moving the needle on state employee recruitment and retention.”
The budget also includes $2,500 raises for public school teachers. Separate legislation the House passed last month would provide salary increases to superior court judges, judges on the state Court of Appeals, and justices on the state Supreme Court.
With the state sitting on a $16 billion surplus, House lawmakers approved significant increases for education and health care, either agreeing with Gov. Brian Kemp’s budget recommendations or adding to the spending plan Kemp proposed in January.
The budget includes $249.6 million to account for public school enrollment growth, $204 million for more school buses, and $104 million in grants to improve safety on public school campuses. Each public school in Georgia would receive a $45,000 safety grant.
The spending plan also includes $146 million to fully fund reimbursement increases for health-care providers to Medicaid patients.
“We constantly are losing providers because we don’t reimburse them enough,” Hatchett said.
The fiscal ’25 budget now moves to the Georgia Senate.
ATLANTA – An ad hoc committee of Georgia House lawmakers is recommending smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay, and more money for operating and capital costs to beef up the state’s pre-kindergarten program.
With few changes in state support to the lottery-funded program since its inception 30 years ago, pre-kindergarten enrollment in Georgia has fallen from a high of 82,868 students in 2012 to 73,462.
A report released by the House Working Group on Early Childhood Education Tuesday blames the decline on an inability to find teachers willing to work at state-funded salaries and inadequate state funding for opening and operating classrooms.
“We know when our children start fast in school, educational outcomes are improved dramatically,” said House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, who formed the ad hoc committee last spring. “One of the best predictors of educational success is having a strong pre-kindergarten program.”
“This is very much a workforce development issue,” added Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, who chaired the committee. “The more children have access to pre-k, the more parents can reenter the workforce.”
The committee is recommending reducing the average pre-kindergarten class size from 22 – a move the state made during the budget crunch the Great Recession brought on more than decade ago – to 20.
The report also proposed raising the salaries of assistant teachers in the pre-k program from $20,190 per year to $25,700, which would align their pay with K-12 paraprofessionals, and increasing pay for lead pre-k teachers to the state’s salary schedule for K-12 public school teachers.
“There’s no substitute for equalizing salaries, to recognize the great important work these folks are doing,” Burns said.
The committee also is recommending updating the pre-k formula for operations from the current $8,000 per pre-k classroom per year, which has not been changed since 2004, to $30,000. Both public schools and private pre-k providers for the first time would get state funding for construction of pre-k classrooms.
The various recommendations in the report would cost just more than $100 million per year, funds that would come from the Georgia Lottery Corp.’s healthy budget reserves.
Jones said the goal is to put the state in a position to offer pre-k to every parent in Georgia who wants to enroll their 4-year-olds in either a public or private pre-k program.
The percentage of children enrolled in pre-k varies widely across the state. Some counties have waiting lists as high as 339, with 2,714 youngsters statewide on a waiting list. Statewide, only 53% of eligible children are enrolled in pre-k.
“I’m hopeful we will see a more robust offering of public pre-k,” Jones said. “I’m confident we can change what has been happening over the last few years.”
ATLANTA – State Senate Republicans will introduce legislation during the upcoming General Assembly session to let school districts pay and train teachers to carry firearms in their classrooms.
GOP Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, said Wednesday increasing school safety will be a priority for Senate Republicans during the 2024 legislative session starting in January.
“One of the most critical duties we have as public servants is to protect those who are most vulnerable – including all of Georgia’s children,” Jones said during a news conference. “This legislation and associated state funding will ensure that our school systems and teachers have the necessary resources and training to increase safety across Georgia.”
The proposed legislation would build on school safety measures the General Assembly has passed in recent years. Lawmakers approved a key part of Gov. Brian Kemp’s legislative agenda this year requiring all public schools in Georgia to conduct active-shooter drills by Oct. 1 of each school year.
The new bill would give school districts the option of participating in firearms training that would lead to certification of teachers and include a stipend for completing the course. School districts would retain the right to determine for themselves whether to let teachers carry firearms on their campuses.
“With this legislation, we will make sure our teachers are more equipped to handle security threats [and] our schools are even more prepared for emergency situations,” said Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, chairman of the Senate Education and Youth Committee. “We [also] will expand grant programs to allow schools to hire additional security personnel.”
The “hardening” of classrooms by arming teachers has been a frequent Republican response in states across the nation to an epidemic of mass school shootings. Democrats have favored gun control measures rather than legislation leading to an increased proliferation of firearms.
ATLANTA – Legal limits on how Georgia teachers can approach potentially divisive subjects are spreading from elementary and secondary school classrooms to university lecture halls.
Controversial changes to rules for teacher training the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (PSC) adopted in recent months take effect Aug. 15. The new rules delete words including “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion,” and replace them with phrases including “fair access, opportunity, and advancement for all students.”
Those required changes in nomenclature also are tucked into broader legislation the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed last year prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts” in Georgia elementary and secondary schools. At the time, legislative Democrats, teachers, and civil rights advocates argued the restrictions would prevent teaching students the full reality of Georgia and U.S. history, both the good and the bad.
The new rules are sowing confusion among teachers, said Sarah Hunt Blackwell, First Amendment policy advocate for the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Educators don’t know what they can and can’t say,” she said. “It’s a continuation of the divisive concepts bill.”
But supporters say the changes were adopted in an effort to avoid confusion.
Brian Sirmans, the commission’s chairman, said the University System of Georgia (USG) asked for the new rules to clarify expectations for incoming teachers. The words the commission voted unanimously to delete from teacher preparation standards have come to mean different things to different people in recent years. which has made interpreting them difficult, Sirmans said he was told by university system officials.
The changes are not aimed at reducing educational opportunities for minority students in Georgia, Sirmans told his commission colleagues before a vote in June.
“We still expect to prepare educators who are well prepared to meet the needs of all of the students they encounter,” he said.
The university system, in a statement issued Thursday, said the new rules came about after the system asked the commission for improvements in literacy education and in what’s required of teacher education programs on how to teach children to read.
“The proposed changes are the result of USG and PSC working together to review and revise rules for teacher preparation based on research-based practices that have been demonstrated to work best in teaching reading,” the statement read. “USG teacher preparation programs will follow these rules as updated and approved by the PSC.”
But critics say Georgia’s new rules are part of a multi-state effort by conservative Republicans aimed at “woke” policies in education, including the “Don’t Say Gay” bill Florida lawmakers passed last year prohibiting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the schools.
“These rules changes indicate the commission doesn’t see the necessity of teachers being prepared to teach diversity,” Hunt-Blackwell said.
Hunt-Blackwell said the proposed rules changes were moving “under the radar” until the Georgia Coalition for Education Justice – an alliance of students, educators, parents and civil rights advocates – got wind of them. The coalition sent a four-page letter to the commission opposing the changes, held news conferences, and assembled speakers to testify against the rules at commission meetings.
“This has made a huge splash,” Hunt-Blackwell said. “This was the first time in decades people came to testify at their meetings.”
Hunt-Blackwell cited a study released last year by Hanover Research – a think tank that encourages school districts to adopt diversity, equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies – that reported a link between teachers prepared in DEI and a narrowing of academic achievement gaps for students.
“We as educators recognize our student body reflects our communities and state, and the population of our state is more diverse than ever,” said Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators. “Aspiring educators need the course work, information, and resources so they are not overwhelmed by the diversity of their classrooms.”
Morgan said Georgia’s teacher preparation programs have improved significantly in recent years.
“Changing these rules is taking a piece of that away,” she said. “Taking out these words is, in a sense, watering down.”
ATLANTA – The Georgia Professional Standards Commission voted unanimously Thursday to delete “woke” words including “equity” and “inclusion” from the state’s teacher preparation rules.
Along with “diversity,” a word the commission voted last month to delete from the preparation standards, the changes were requested by the University System of Georgia to clarify expectations for incoming teachers, commission Chairman Brian Sirmans said. Such words have come to mean different things to different people in recent years and have made interpreting them difficult, Sirmans said he was told by university system officials.
The changes are not aimed at reducing educational opportunities for minority students in Georgia, Sirmans said before Thursday’s vote.
“We still expect to prepare educators who are well prepared to meet the needs of all of the students they encounter,” he said.
But teachers, parents and civil rights activists who spoke during a public comment period said deleting those words will leave incoming teachers unprepared for the diverse mix of students they will see in their classrooms.
“To blatantly remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion is just horrible,” said Aireane Montgomery, president and CEO of Georgia Educators for Equity & Justice. “To erase diversity, equity and inclusion is to ignore and minimize marginalized communities.”
Jonathan Campos with the Intercultural Development Research Association compared the rules changes to “some of the darkest periods in history” when Hispanic children were not allowed to speak Spanish in school and it was illegal to teach enslaved children to read.
Other speakers argued the rules changes will strike a blow at the morale of minority teachers in Georgia and prompt many to leave the profession.
