ATLANTA – Legislation to no longer count student discipline as a factor in a five-star rating system for schools and school districts cleared the Georgia Senate Wednesday.
The bill passed 39-12 and now moves to the state House of Representatives.
The state decided to include student discipline in the school climate rating system several years ago in an effort to improve poor behavior that was distracting from the learning process, Sen. Jeff Mullis, the bill’s chief sponsor, told his Senate colleagues Wednesday.
But it didn’t work, said Mullis, R-Chickamauga.
“Teachers are a little tired of this,” he said. “Discipline is important in order for other students to learn anything.”
The bill’s backers argued that removing discipline from the rating system would encourage teachers to actually punish misbehaving students. Many schools were failing to mete out discipline for fear a record of it would hurt their rating.
Rather than include discipline in the climate rating – which grades schools and school systems based on health, safety and attendance – Mullis’ bill would require keeping separate data on discipline.
Senators amended the bill on the floor Wednesday to require school districts to post the data on their websites to give parents considering whether to move into a neighborhood easy access to the information.
“We hope and believe discipline will happen because it’s no longer part of the grading of the school system,” Mullis said. “But it will be visible to the parents.”
The bill enjoyed bipartisan backing in the Senate. Democratic cosponsors included Sens. Ed Harbison of Columbus, Freddie Sims of Dawson and Lester Jackson of Savannah.
Legislation aimed at providing special-needs students with state-funded scholarships to attend private schools in Georgia that critics have called a costly voucher plan passed out of the state Senate on Wednesday.
Sponsored by Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the bill – which passed 30-23 nearly along party lines – would make special-needs scholarships available for students with a wide range of conditions including autism, Down syndrome, behavioral impairments and drug or alcohol abuse.
Students would have to be enrolled in Georgia public schools for at least a year unless they were adopted children, come from military families or faced challenges with online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gooch said.
“We believe that during this pandemic and this national emergency, we should not punish the child or the parent, especially those with special needs who were impacted the worst during the lockdown last year,” Gooch said from the Senate floor on Wednesday.
“This is not an open voucher system for Georgia,” he said. “This is limited to special needs children.”
Opponents likened Gooch’s bill to school voucher plans that draw criticism as a drain on state funding for K-12 public schools.
Savvy high-income families could take advantage of loose requirements and oversight in Gooch’s proposal, potentially securing special-needs qualifications with a doctor’s note, said Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.
“Families with the resources, the know-how and who live in proximity to private schools will be the beneficiaries of the expanded eligibility, while rural and working-class taxpayers will be left footing the bill for a program whose ultimate cost we can’t even accurately tabulate,” Parent said.
“These voucher programs are bad for kids, bad for families, bad for schools and bad for Georgia.”
Gooch and other supporters dismissed the notion scholarships would be harvested by wealthy families that game the system, stressing the focus is on boosting educational opportunities for special-needs children in Georgia.
The bill now heads to the state House of Representatives.
ATLANTA – Georgians and Georgia businesses hit in the wallet by the coronavirus pandemic would get a series of tax breaks under three bills the state House of Representatives passed Wednesday.
Lawmakers voted unanimously to raise the standard deduction Georgia taxpayers can declare on their state income taxes, then overwhelmingly approved two packages of tax credits and sales tax exemptions.
The income tax bill would let married taxpayers filing jointly add $1,100 to the state’s standard deduction, which would increase from $6,000 to $7,100. Single taxpayers would be allowed to deduct an additional $800, and married couples filing separately would get an additional deduction of $550.
More Georgians began taking the standard deduction rather than itemizing their returns after Congress passed legislation at the end of 2017 doubling the federal standard deduction.
“This will affect the most Georgians possible,” said Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, one of the bill’s cosponsors.
The bill would represent a total tax cut of $140 million.
The tax credit bill, which passed 157-14, would provide new state tax credits to Georgia manufacturers of medical devices and pharmaceuticals and to “high-impact” aerospace projects.
The aerospace tax credit would help Georgia take advantage of a “generational opportunity” to land contracts for a new generation of military aircraft that will be rolled out during the next three years, said Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta.
“There is capacity at Lockheed-Martin,” he said. “They’re turnkey ready right now.”
Another provision in the bill would renew a tax credit the state provides for maintenance projects along short-line freight rail lines that otherwise would expire in 2023.
The sales tax exemption bill, which passed 164-6, would extend the sunset date on an exemption on sales of materials used in construction of “projects of regional significance” in Georgia.
The state has only used the exemption for nine projects since 2012, but that work has generated 8,700 jobs, said Rep. Sam Watson R-Moultrie, the bill’s chief sponsor.
The bill also includes a tax exemption on the sale of tickets by performing arts venues across the state, which have lost the vast majority of their business to the pandemic.
“Hopefully, this will help them fill in some holes,” Watson said.
A provision in the bill aimed at Coastal Georgia would remove the sunset provision on a tax exemption on sales of parts used to repair boats.
“We want the big yachts to come to our state to be retrofitted and repaired,” Watson said.
The tax credit and tax exemption measures were titled “The Georgia Economic Renewal Act of 2021” and “The Georgia Economic Recovery Act of 2021,” respectively.
“Our economic renewal and recovery will create jobs and spur growth in several industries in Georgia,” said House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
ATLANTA – For the first time during the 2021 General Assembly session, legislative leaders have combined all three forms of gambling they’re considering legalizing into a single resolution.
A Georgia House subcommittee approved a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would ask voters whether to legalize casinos, sports betting and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in the Peach State.
While efforts to legalize casinos and horse racing haven’t made it through either legislative chamber despite years of trying, backers of legalized gambling have long cited polls that show most Georgians would support legalized gambling if they ever get a chance at a statewide referendum.
“Let folks vote on it,” said Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, chairman of the House Regulated Industries Committee, which is expected to take up the new resolution later this week. “They’re the only ones who can make the decision.”
As introduced in January, the constitutional amendment was limited to casinos. A portion of the proceeds was to go toward the lottery-funded HOPE Scholarships program.
The new version of the measure not only would broaden legalized gambling to horse racing and sports betting.
Instead of going to HOPE, the state’s share of the proceeds from casinos and horseracing would be dedicated to health care, while the sports betting proceeds would go toward needs-based scholarships.
HOPE was founded as a need-based program during the early 1990s but was later converted to award scholarships based on merit.
Powell said putting most of the state’s proceeds from legalized gambling into health care would provide a much needed boost to a variety of programs that could use the help.
“We could expand Medicaid, do mental health, rural hospitals, lots of things,” he said.
House Democrats have long expressed a desire to launch a needs-based scholarship program in Georgia. Committing sports betting proceeds to that purpose would help line up support for the constitutional amendment from the Democratic Caucus.
Still, the resolution faces long odds. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, a barrier supporters of legalized gambling thus far have been unable to hurdle.
Powell said if the constitutional amendment clears the General Assembly this session, an “enabling” bill spelling out details of how each of the three forms of legalized gambling would be administered would follow next year. The statewide referendum would take place in November 2022.
Legislation aimed at separating Georgia school sports teams between children assigned male or female at birth advanced in the state Senate Wednesday amid criticism it discriminates against transgender persons.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Marty Harbin, R-Tyrone, would bar “biological boys” from playing in school sports against “biological girls,” using language that transgender advocates say discriminates against LGBTQ persons.
It is one of three bills before the General Assembly that would require similar school-sports gender separations in Georgia that define gender as biological sex and allow lawsuits against schools that defy splitting up different-gendered student athletes.
Backers of Harbin’s bill and two others by state Reps. Philip Singleton, R-Sharpsburg, and Rick Jasperse, R-Jasper, argue the proposed sports split-up is needed to protect fairness in girls’ sports and prevent male student athletes from taking female athletes’ scholarships.
“Unfortunately, boys have certain biological advantages when it comes to sports that make it impossible for competition to be fair if both genders are competing in the same sport,” Harbin said at a Senate Education and Youth Committee hearing on Wednesday.
“Forcing girls to play against biological males limits the ability of young women in the state of Georgia to win competitions, receive scholarships and to achieve the highest level of success in their sports.”
LGBTQ advocates have called that reasoning a smokescreen to trample on transgender rights and ostracize transgender students who already face large obstacles. They also oppose conflating gender with sex, citing research that disputes equating a person’s sexual identity with their sex organs.
Requiring transgender girls to join boys’ teams after years of playing on girls’ teams could expose them to traumatic taunting from parents and male students to the point that transgender athletes simply quit playing sports, said Jen Slipakoff, a Kennesaw mother whose transgender daughter plays school sports.
“If she doesn’t belong on the boys’ team and she doesn’t belong on the girls’ team, where exactly do you think she belongs?” Slipakoff said. “Can you tell me she belongs somewhere?”
“Or do you think she doesn’t belong anywhere? Because that is what passing this bill will tell her.”
Supporters of the bill have largely dismissed concerns the team restrictions could harm transgender girls, stressing that the measure’s aim is to bolster fair competition for female student athletes in Georgia.
“I’m super concerned that we would put our girls in Georgia at risk of losing scholarships by not handling this in a timely manner,” said Virginia Galloway, regional field director of the Duluth-based Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“Based on reality, I would say we need to pass this bill and protect sports for women.”
Harbin’s bill passed out of the committee by a 5-3 vote along party lines and now heads to the full Senate.
Voting in favor were Republican Sens. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas; Matt Brass, R-Newnan; Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming; Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta; and Sheila McNeill, R-Brunswick.
Voting against the bill were Democratic Sens. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta; Lester Jackson, D-Savannah; and Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.
