ATLANTA – Emory University ranks as the 22nd best university in the nation, while the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are among the top 20 public universities, U.S. News & World Report announced Monday.
Many of the schools ranked ahead of Emory on the magazine’s annual list are Ivy League colleges and other universities with long-standing reputations for academic excellence, including Duke University, the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University.
Emory tied at the 22nd spot with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, U.S. News ranked Georgia Tech as the 15th-best public university in the country, while UGA is 16th, tied with Ohio State University.
UGA was ranked in the 16th spot for the second year in a row, marking the seventh straight year the university has placed in the top 20 for public universities.
“The consistency of our national ranking is a testament to the commitment of our talented faculty, staff and students; the generosity of and support of our loyal alumni and friends; and the effectiveness of our vision and strategy to reach new heights of academic excellence,” UGA President Jere Morehead said Monday.
Georgia is one of only four states to land more than one institution among the top 20 public universities. The others are California, Florida and Virginia.
Georgia Tech and UGA also consistently rank among the top universities in the country for value, with relatively low tuition and comparatively high starting salaries for graduates.
As a private university, Emory typically scores high for availability of scholarships and grants.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Reversing learning loss stemming from the pandemic, boosting the education workforce and stepping up school safety measures will be Gov. Brian Kemp’s top education priorities if he wins a second term in November, Kemp said Monday.
At an elementary school in Oconee County, the governor announced he will ask the General Assembly for a $25 million grant program in the mid-year state budget to help schools pay for additional tutoring and other steps to supplement existing learning loss services.
Just 63% of third graders are reading at or above grade level this year, down from 73% in 2019, the year before the outbreak of COVID-19 prompted schools to close their doors and switch to online instruction, Kemp said.
“I am committed to making sure every child in our state has the opportunity to reach their full potential and succeed in the classroom,” the governor said Monday. “By working with our local school systems and providing targeted funding to bring these kids back up to grade level, I am confident we can lend a helping hand to the students who need it most.”
The $25 million in state-funded grants would be in addition to $37.4 million in federal pandemic relief aid Kemp announced last month would go toward addressing learning loss. Much of that money will go to nonprofits including the Georgia Alliance of YMCAs and the Georgia Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs.
Kemp also unveiled a plan to address a shortage of teachers in Georgia through a $15 million program providing $3,000 grants to help paraprofessionals interested in becoming teachers with certification costs and an additional $25 million to help school systems hire more counselors.
Most of the school safety initiatives Kemp announced Monday would involve providing more training for school resource officers and teachers interested in developing school safety and gang prevention skills.
Also, the school safety plans schools currently must submit to local emergency management and law enforcement agencies would go instead to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency.
Stacey Abrams, the Democrat challenging Kemp’s reelection bid, has pledged to raise minimum teacher salaries in Georgia from $39,092 a year to $50,000 and the average salary from $62,500 to $73,500.
Abrams also has proposed offering free college tuition at a state university to students willing to commit to teaching at least four years in a rural part of the state.
Kemp gave teachers a $3,000 raise during his first year in office back in 2019 and another $2,000 increase this year, fulfilling a campaign promise he made during the 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley hit the campaign trail Friday with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, praising the Republican for reopening Georgia businesses during the pandemic earlier than most of his counterparts.
“The courage we have seen from Gov. Brian Kemp has been extraordinary,” Haley told reporters during a late afternoon stop at The Varsity restaurant in Midtown Atlanta. “He’s the one who saved the economy for businesses like The Varsity.”
The Kemp campaign has reminded voters that his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, opposed the governor’s decision to reopen the economy during the pandemic’s early months in 2020 as a “dangerously incompetent” decision that would put Georgians’ health at risk.
“Because our state has been open, we’ve had great revenue … two record years of economic development,” Kemp said.
On Friday, Kemp said he moved quickly when the pandemic struck Georgia to augment hospital staffing and medical supplies to cope with the outbreak of COVID-19, just as he is moving now to fill the gap in health-care delivery looming when Wellstar’s Atlanta Medical Center closes on Nov. 1.
“Expanding Medicaid would not save that facility,” the governor said. “I’m sitting down to find a solution. … We’re going to figure this out.”
Abrams has said Medicaid expansion would be a top priority if she defeats Kemp in November. Georgia is one of only 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act a then-Democratic Congress passed more than a decade ago.
Kemp and other Republican governors have been criticized in recent weeks for taking credit for federal pandemic relief flowing into their states due to acts of Congress they opposed.
“I’m taking the money they’re spending way too much of and putting it out to help people in our state,” the governor said.
Kemp complained that Georgia hasn’t received its fair share of pandemic aid because the formula being used to allocate the money is penalizing Georgia for the state’s low unemployment rate.
The Democratic Party of Georgia used Haley’s appearance with Kemp as another example of the governor aligning himself with politicians taking extreme positions on abortion.
“Brian Kemp continues palling around with extremists who want to pass a national ban on abortion or make abortion illegal with no exceptions — dangerous positions that threaten Georgians’ lives, health, and freedom,” Democratic spokesman Max Flugrath said.
Haley, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the administration of former President Donald Trump, said the Democrats’ emphasis on the abortion issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion isn’t resonating with voters as much as inflation, rising crime and international threats.
“From what I’m hearing around the country, abortion is about fifth,” she said.
For his part, Kemp said there’s been a lot of misinformation circulating about the “heartbeat” bill the General Assembly passed in 2019 banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. He said the Supreme Court did the right thing by turning over decisions on abortion to the states.
Haley also appeared in Norcross earlier on Friday with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s film industry took off after the General Assembly significantly strengthened the state income tax credit for movie and TV productions in 2008.
The industry’s annual economic impact has soared from a relatively paltry $242 million the year before lawmakers upped the ante on the credit to $4.4 billion last year.
Now, the Peach State’s musical performers and producers are urging lawmakers to give them the same boost by sweetening the incentives the state offers their industry.
“We see what has happened with the film business,” Chuck Leavell, the Georgia-based keyboardist for The Rolling Stones and previously for The Allman Brothers Band, told members of a legislative study committee. “You’re going to attract all manner of performers … if we can put these incentives in place.”
The Joint Georgia Music Heritage Study Committee began a series of meetings Sept. 7 looking for ways to grow the music industry in a state with a rich and diverse musical history including the Allman Brothers, Otis Redding, Little Richard, James Brown, Johnny Mercer, Ray Charles, and Jason Aldean.
The General Assembly passed legislation in 2017 providing tax incentives to musical productions, including both live and recorded performances.
But the tax credit is due to expire at the end of this year unless the legislature renews it.
A bill introduced during this year’s legislative session called for lowering the spending threshold to qualify for the credit from the current $500,000 for a live performance to $100,000 and from $250,000 for a recorded performance to $50,000.
House Bill 1330 also proposed doubling the value of the tax credit from 15% of a production company’s qualified expenses to 30%.
The legislation made it through the House in March but died in the state Senate, shoved aside by other business in what was a particularly busy flurry of election-year lawmaking.
Entertainment lawyer Steve Weizenecker, who has been involved in efforts to pass both the film and music industry tax credits, said he expects supporters to try again to get the bill through during the 2023 session beginning in January. He said he’s optimistic about its chances.
“Everybody, no matter what your political stripe, likes music and wants to see it grow,” Weizenecker said. “It’s an easier thing to sell at the Capitol.”
The study committee’s kickoff meeting was held in Macon, which boasts an especially vibrant music scene. The city is home to The Big House Museum, where The Allman Brothers Band lived during their heyday in the 1970s; a restored Capricorn Studios, where the group recorded; the Otis Redding Museum, and the Little Richard House.
Among the city’s performing venues, The Macon City Auditorium just got a $10 million facelift, and construction is underway on a 10,000-seat amphitheater.
“Music brings us together. What brings us together also makes money,” Alex Morrison, director of planning and public spaces for Macon-Bibb County, told committee members. “We hope we can be an example to the rest of the state of how we use music to grow our economy.”
Leavell said strengthening the tax credit would help Georgia attract music producers and performers who otherwise might be lured elsewhere.
“We know the competition, what’s happening in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Tennessee,” he said. “We need to get at least even with these guys.”
Leavell and others also asked members of the committee to support the creation of a state-level music director or commissioner who could promote the music industry full time in the same way Lee Thomas, director of the Georgia Film Office, advocates for the film industry.
“If all they’re thinking about is how to grow music in Georgia, it’s going to grow a lot more,” said Julie Wilkerson, executive director of the Macon Arts Alliance.
The study committee will hold its next meeting in Athens, another epicenter of Georgia’s music heritage, from R.E.M. and the B-52’s to Widespread Panic.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue
ATLANTA – Sonny Perdue has been a Georgia state senator, governor and U.S. secretary of agriculture.
But not until Friday did the longtime public servant officially take on “maybe the most impactful job I’ve ever had” when he was formally invested as the 14th chancellor of the University System of Georgia.
“We touch the lives of people where it really counts and help them add value to themselves,” Perdue said during an investiture ceremony inside the chambers of the state House of Representatives that coincided with his 50th wedding anniversary.
Perdue actually began his new job back in April, succeeding the retired Steve Wrigley. The new chancellor quickly established a reputation as a hard worker who expected his staff to work hard, said Teresa MacCartney, the university system’s executive vice chancellor of administration, who served as acting chancellor last year and early this year after Wrigley left.
“He focuses on the details. He’s data driven,” MacCartney said. “He always wants to know how we can do better.”
Gov. Brian Kemp said Perdue’s experience in the General Assembly, where he chaired the Senate Higher Education Committee, and as governor made him “immensely qualified” to take on the role of chancellor.
Kemp praised Perdue for visiting all 26 of the system’s colleges and universities soon after taking office to gather feedback not only from staff and faculty members but from students.
“He hit the ground running,” the governor said. “He’s traveled the length and breadth of our state.”
Perdue took the opportunity of Friday’s ceremony to put in a plug for the system’s new website Georgia Degrees Pay, which launched last month, part of his commitment to transparency through sharing data with the public.
“It shows the value of a Georgia degree and a college diploma,” he said. “We’re not hiding anything. … We want to earn the public’s trust.”
Perdue also promised to push to build back student enrollment in the system, which declined slightly last fall after seven straight years of growth, and to improve student retention rates at the various campuses.
Harold Reynolds, chairman of the university system Board of Regents, presented Perdue with a medallion symbolic of his new role and responsibilities.
“We trust Sonny will carry out this great obligation with dignity and humility,” Reynolds said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
