State Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, chairs the state House’s education committee, which could consider a controversial voucher proposal.
ATLANTA – Education bills are getting a mixed reception in the General Assembly this year.
Measures to protect teacher’s time and amp up the state’s literacy rates have received nearly unanimous approval, while private-school vouchers have drawn fierce opposition.
“The teachers I know don’t want to walk away … but too many teachers I know are running on empty,” Cherie Bonder Goldman, the 2022 Georgia teacher of the year, wrote at the start of a state Department of Education report published last year. The report recommended increasing the amount of time teachers have to deal with class planning and grading.
Lawmakers appear to have taken that advice to heart, with the state House of Representatives unanimously approving a measure last Monday that would guarantee sixth- through 12th-grade teachers a daily “duty-free” period.
The bill has now been assigned to the Senate Education and Youth Committee.
The legislature also appears eager to improve Georgia’s literacy rates.
The House has unanimously passed the Georgia Early Literacy Act (House Bill 538), sponsored by Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, a former teacher who chairs the House’s Education-Curriculum Subcommittee. The bill aims to improve the quality of early reading instruction.
“It develops a framework and it begins to really seriously take a look at literacy,” said Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, who chairs the House Education Committee. “Statewide, there’s a structure out there heavily involving our state [Department of Education] and getting them involved in working with the school systems.”
Erwin said school districts and students could begin to feel the effects of the bill as soon as next school year.
The legislation would require schools to screen students from kindergarten to third grade on their reading proficiency three times a year. Students who are identified as falling behind in reading would receive an “individual reading improvement plan” within 30 days of being identified and would also receive “intensive reading intervention.”
The bill would also require the state Board of Education to develop a list of high-quality, evidence-backed reading instructional and screening tools districts can use and boost literacy training for teachers.
The measure now must receive approval from the Senate Education and Youth Committee and then the full Senate.
For its part, the Senate has unanimously passed separate legislation to form a Georgia Council on Literacy. The 24-member council would include education experts, state legislators, a teacher and a local school board member. The council would review literacy research and make recommendations about best practices.
The literacy efforts take inspiration from Mississippi’s example, where a years-long concerted effort has taken the state from 49th in reading in the country to meeting and exceeding national averages.
Far more controversial is a Senate measure that would create $6,000 private-school vouchers for Georgia students to use at private schools or for homeschooling expenses.
The original bill would have applied to most students in Georgia but during last Monday’s Crossover Day bargaining, the Senate added an amendment limiting the scholarship to just those residing in the attendance zones of the lowest-performing 25% of schools in the state.
“The parent never has access to the money directly – it’s all administered by a third party,” said Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming. The $6,000 would not be considered taxable income and the funds would be limited to eligible educational expenses.
The bill passed 33-23 along party lines.
“It’s a hard ‘No’, ” said John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association and a former school superintendent, about his group’s position on the proposal.
“It appears to me that they’re beginning the process of funding two different school systems … with differing accountability systems for the same public money,” Zauner said, noting that the bill includes no mechanism to track what happens to the funds or to ensure that private schools eligible for the vouchers are providing high-quality education.
The bill also drew criticism from Senate Democrats for diverting funds from the public school system and because it lacked a fiscal note, the analysis that is typically required for bills that would impact state finances.
“Private school vouchers undermine public schools by diverting desperately needed resources away from the public school system, which serves all students, to fund the education of a few,” said Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson. “There is no fiscal note on this bill, something that should be required of any bill of this magnitude.”
The fiscal 2024 state budget the House adopted last Thursday would provide a $2,000 raise for state employees, including teachers, which would take effect in September and follows a $2,000 raise this year.
Georgia is also again fully funding its education commitments under its education-funding formula.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The economic slowdown in Georgia many economists have been predicting for this year hasn’t arrived yet.
The state Department of Revenue collected more than $2.12 billion in taxes last month, an increase of 8.7% over February of last year, the agency reported Friday. For the first eight months of fiscal 2023, tax revenues were up 5.9% over the same period in fiscal 2022.
Individual income tax receipts rose by 9.2% in February over the same month last year, as tax return payments increased by 31.3% while refunds were down 3.3%.
Net sales tax collections were healthy last month, increasing by 10.6% compared to February of last year.
Typically volatile corporate income tax revenues soared by 382% in February, with payments up by 97.5% and refunds down by 61.2%.
Tax collections on gasoline and other motor fuels – which had been virtually non-existent since Gov. Brian Kemp temporarily suspended the tax last March – still declined in February by 24.4% compared to the previous February. The governor reimposed the tax in mid-January.
The mid-year budget the General Assembly adopted this week includes $1.1 billion to help offset the loss of gas tax revenue that occurred last year.
Jeffrey Dorfman, the state’s chief economist, told Georgia House and Senate budget writers in January that state tax revenues are likely to drop sharply this year because last year’s huge increase in capital gains tax payments is not likely to be repeated,
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger launched a new computer system this week designed to improve the tracking of registered voters.
The $4 million Georgia Registered Voter Information System (GARViS) will contain more than 12 million voter records, including more than 7 million active voters.
“GARViS is a tremendous step forward in the security and accuracy of Georgia’s voter registration system,” Raffensperger said. “This voter registration system truly reinforces Georgia’s status as the No.-1 state in America for election administration.”
The integrity of Georgia’s voting process came under fire after Democrat Joe Biden carried the Peach State over incumbent President Donald Trump in 2020. But a series of audits and hand counts after the election – including a forensic audit of the Dominion Voting Systems machines the state used – found the results were accurate.
“When people ask us, ‘How do we know who voted? How do we know it’s real? How do we know it’s fair? Because we have the receipts we keep on this secure system,” said Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office. “Don’t let anybody believe there are dead voters voting or double voting in any significant way because it’s just not true.”
Raffensperger’s office and two private partners – California-based software company Salesforce and Texas-based technology consulting firm MTX Group – spent more than 150,000 hours developing and testing the new system, as well as training employees how to use it. GARViS will replace the agency’s ENet system.
The new system also is expected to shorten wait times at the polls. Early voting in 2020 saw voters in some cases waiting for hours to cast their ballots.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a $32.5 billion fiscal 2024 state budget Thursday after a debate over whether to restore full funding to Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship program.
The budget, which passed 167-1 and now moves to the state Senate, would increase spending by $2.2 billion – or 7.4% – over the fiscal 2023 budget the General Assembly adopted last spring.
The House version of the spending plan prioritizes mental health, adding $51.3 million to the Department of Behavioral Health and Development Disabilities (DBHDD) beyond Gov. Brian Kemp’s request, and public safety, providing a $2,000 raise to state law enforcement officers on top of the $2,000 increases earmarked for teachers and most of the state workforce.
The budget also provides additional raises to DBHDD employees, state forestry workers and Department of Driver Services personnel, state agencies that have been harder than most by turnover.
“In an economy where every business is struggling to find staffing … filling state jobs has become even more difficult,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told House lawmakers.
The House approved Kemp’s request for $13.1 billion to fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education k-12 student funding formula.
However, House budget writers rejected the governor’s plan to restore full funding for HOPE scholarships for the first time since the program was cut in 2011 during the Great Recession.
Instead, the House spending plan would increase HOPE coverage of student tuition from the current 90% to 95% and redirect the remaining 5% to the Zell Miller Scholarship program, the component of HOPE that goes to students with high school grade-point averages of at least 3.5, and to health benefits for public pre-kindergarten teachers.
Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, objected to failing to fully fund HOPE. She pointed out that the lottery-funded HOPE program has built up $1.9 billion in reserves, $1.1 billion more than is required by law.
“The lottery is doing great,” she said. “We have the money to return the promise of HOPE to all our HOPE scholars.”
Evans voted for the budget anyway because, as she put it, 95% is better than 90%.
As is the case every year, the House also added some bond-financed construction projects to the list Kemp recommended. The House adds include $14.3 million to design, construct and equip college career academies around the state, $4.1 million for improvements to the Synovus Center for Commerce and Technology at Columbus State University, and $3.3 million to renovate the patient treatment mall at East Central Regional Hospital in Augusta.
ATLANTA – While Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis investigates allegations that then-President Donald Trump interfered with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, her office also should handle its day-to-day duties, state House Speaker Jon Burns said Thursday.
“They need to make sure they have the resources and bandwidth to take care of both issues,” Burns, R-Newington, told members of the Atlanta Press Club during a luncheon speech in downtown Atlanta.
The special-purpose grand jury Willis empaneled last year to investigate Trump’s alleged role in trying to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia completed its work and issued its findings in December. The portion of the panel’s report Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney allowed to be released concluded the election results were legitimate and recommended that one or more witnesses who appeared before it be indicted for perjury.
On Thursday, Burns cited remarks Georgia Chief Justice Michael Boggs made on Wednesday in his State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the General Assembly.
While Boggs’ theme was the huge backlog of criminal cases courts throughout Georgia face in the aftermath of the pandemic, he put some numbers to the backlog in Fulton County. He said Fulton is currently saddled with more than 4,000 pending felony indicted cases and almost 14,000 unindicted felony cases.
Burns made his remarks Thursday while defending legislation the House passed this week calling for the creation of a Prosecuting Attorneys Oversight Commission to investigate complaints against prosecutors and hold hearings.
Democrats have complained legislative Republicans are pushing the bill in response to Willis targeting Trump, a charge Burns rejected by pointing out that judges in Georgia are subject to commission oversight.
“I don’t think our district attorneys in this state should be treated any different than our judges,” he said. “We just want them to adhere to the law and apply it equally to every Georgian.”
During his speech, Burns also praised his House colleagues from both parties for passing legislation following through on last year’s landmark mental-health reform bill steered through the chamber by his predecessor as speaker, the late David Ralston.
“The House has been champions of mental-health reform in this state,” Burns said. “It began with Speaker Ralston.”
Burns, who was elected speaker by his fellow House members in January, also urged the state Senate to follow the House’s lead by passing bills aimed at breaking a legal logjam holding up Georgia’s medical cannabis program, giving tenants more legal rights in dealing with “troubling landlords,” and funding a proposed state police patrol post in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta.
