ATLANTA – A controversial private-school vouchers bill squeaked through the Georgia House of Representatives Thursday.
The bill, which would provide vouchers worth up to $6,500 to help students in low-performing public schools transfer to a private school, passed the Republican-controlled House 91-82, the minimum number of votes needed to win passage in the 180-member chamber.
The legislation next must return to the state Senate, which passed it last year, because House Republican leaders have made a number of changes to the measure.
Some of the House changes are aimed at limiting the voucher program’s financial impact on the state’s general fund budget. It prohibits spending more than 1% of Georgia’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) fund on vouchers, a cap that is currently set at $140 million a year.
In a bid to steer the vouchers to low- and middle-income Georgians, only students in families earning no more than 400% of the federal poverty limit – currently $120,000 a year for a family of four -would qualify for the program. The cap would be increased only if the General Assembly puts more money into vouchers.
“What you have before you is a responsible piece of legislation that will enhance the educational options we give children,” House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, told her House colleagues. “I have rarely encountered regular citizens who wanted fewer options.”
House Democrats argued that private-school vouchers aren’t the way to help the 90% of Georgia students attending public schools they said are underfunded despite the state having fully funded the QBE for six of the last seven years.
“Fully funded does not equal sufficiently funded,” said Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta.
“Vouchers are simply the defunding of public education,” added Rep. Miriam Paris, D-Macon. “Our focus should be to strengthen public schools.”
Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City, said vouchers would not help students in rural Georgia because there aren’t many private schools in rural counties. That was the reason a group of rural House Republicans cited in defeating the bill on the House floor last year.
But Jones said 79% of Georgia students live within 10 miles of a private school.
Rep. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth, pushed back on the notion that offering private-school vouchers would cripple public schools financially. He said Georgia’s public schools have $6 billion in reserves.
“To suggest there’s not enough cash to make targeted investments is intellectually dishonest,” he said.
The House version of the bill also includes a number of provisions unrelated to vouchers. It would codify all teacher pay raises lawmakers have approved since 2019, Gov. Brian Kemp’s first year in office, which have increased teacher salaries by $6,500 per year.
In a move to increase enrollment in pre-kindergarten classes, the legislation also would let public schools use state capital construction funds to build new pre-k facilities.
The bill would take effect during the 2025-26 school year and expire at the end of June 2035.
ATLANTA – Republicans in the General Assembly Wednesday revived a private-school vouchers bill that failed on the final days of last year’s legislative session.
The House Education Committee passed Senate Bill 233, which would provide vouchers of up to $6,500 for students attending low-performing public schools.
Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed the legislation during his State of the State address to the General Assembly in January, and House Speaker Jon Burns urged committee members at the beginning of Wednesday’s meeting to approve it.
“We will not let our children continue to be trapped in failing schools,” said Burns, R-Newington.
The state Senate’s Republican majority passed the vouchers bill last year during the waning weeks of the legislative session, voting along party lines. But the measure fell short in the House when 16 Republicans joined Democrats opposed to diverting funds from public schools in voting against it.
Burns said those GOP opponents have provided feedback since last year that has led to changes to improve the bill.
For one thing, only parents earning 400% or less of the federal poverty limit would qualify for private-school vouchers for their children, said House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton. Currently, that amounts to an annual income of $120,000 or less for a family of four, she said.
Also, the $6,500 limit on vouchers would be reduced in any year the state’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) student funding formula isn’t fully funded. The state has fully funded the QBE for six of the last seven years.
An additional change aimed at funding accountability would cap the vouchers program at 1% of the total QBE budget, Jones said.
“Georgia has a long history of offering state education funding to students in private institutions,” she said. “This is one more iteration of offering our students in Georgia choices.”
Jones said several other proposed changes to the vouchers bill incorporate other areas of education policy. The legislation would codify in state law several teacher pay raises lawmakers have included in state budgets since 2019, Kemp’s first year in office.
The measure also would let public schools use capital projects funding to pay for construction, renovation and improvements to pre-kindergarten facilities, a move aimed at increasing enrollment in pre-k classes.
Another new provision would extend a state income tax credit supporting public schools due to expire in 2026 through 2029. It also would add another $10 million to the tax credit’s current $5 million annual cap, with the additional funding only to be used to benefit students attending low-performing schools.
House Democrats still didn’t appear to be impressed with the legislation, despite the changes. The committee defeated two amendments proposed by Democrats on the panel, who subsequently voted against passing the bill.
The measure now moves to the House Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
ATLANTA – A Fulton County Superior Court judge Wednesday dismissed six counts of a 41-count indictment charging former President Donald Trump and multiple co-defendants with interfering in Georgia’s 2020 president election.
Judge Scott McAfee declared the six charges legally defective – including a count charging Trump in the infamous January 2021 phone call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 additional votes he needed to carry the Peach State over Democrat Joe Biden.
However, the nine-page ruling did not address a motion to disqualify Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis from the case because of an alleged conflict of interest stemming from a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to pursue the charges.
Two of the other five counts McAfee quashed charge Trump directly, including a count accusing him of asking then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston to unlawfully appoint an alternate slate of presidential electors during a special session of the General Assembly.
Another count the judge dismissed charged then-Trump personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign lawyer Ray Smith with soliciting members of the Georgia House of Representatives to unlawfully appoint “fake” electors.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was charged along with Trump in the phone call to Raffensperger. Two counts list only “multiple defendants.”
In each instance, McAfee declared the counts defective because of a lack of detail.
“As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission, i.e., the underlying felony solicited,” the judge wrote.
“They do not give the defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the defendants could have violated the Constitutions and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”
The dismissal of the three counts against Trump mean he still faces 88 criminal indictments in Georgia, Washington, D.C., Florida and New York.
McAfee has indicated he expects to rule on the motion to disqualify Willis by the end of this week.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s Democratic Primary voters put President Joe Biden over the top Tuesday, giving him enough delegates to win renomination when Democrats hold their convention this summer in Chicago.
Former President Donald Trump also won big in Georgia but was still short of the delegate total needed to capture the Republican nomination. Trump was expected to clinch the nod later Tuesday night after GOP voters in Mississippi and Washington state cast their primary ballots.
With 65% of precincts reporting as of 10 p.m., Biden had racked up more than 95% of the vote. Author Marianne Williamson lagged far behind with 2.8% of the vote, and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., was last at less than 2%.
On the Republican side, Trump had won more than 84% of the vote in a field that was still crowded, although every other GOP candidate had dropped out of the race. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – the last also-ran to end her candidacy – was second with less than 14% of the vote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had captured just 1% of the vote, while the other eight Republicans on the primary ballot were being held below 1%.
The end of the primary season sets up the first repeat matchup of presidential candidates since 1956, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower won reelection by defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson for the second consecutive time.
The last time a former president ran for the White House was in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt mounted an unsuccessful third-party candidacy against incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, with Wilson winning the White House.
Democratic former President Grover Cleveland ousted Republican President Benjamin Harrison in 1892, the last time in U.S. history that an ex-president challenged an incumbent president.
With the outcomes in Tuesday’s primaries clear ahead of time, voter turnout in Georgia was low. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday afternoon that he expected only about 10% of the state’s registered voters would head to the polls.
ATLANTA – Cases of COVID-19, RSV, and influenza have declined significantly as winter moves into spring, State Epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek reported Tuesday.
On the fourth anniversary of the first reported death from coronavirus in Georgia, Drenzek told members of the state Board of Public Health the vast majority of patients hospitalized with the virus had not been vaccinated.
“There are still deaths and hospitalizations due to COVID,” she said. “But they’re drastically lower than they have been.”
In fact, cases of COVID-19 have fallen so much that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new recommendations early this month aligning strategies for preventing COVID-19 with those for RSV and the flu.
Those testing positive for COVID-19 no longer need to isolate themselves for five days, Drenzek said. Instead, those patients are advised to wait until their fever has gone away for at least 24 hours and/or until the symptoms improve before venturing outside, she said.
The CDC also has recommended that those who have been vaccinated with the most recent COVID booster get a second dose.
Drenzek said cases of flu are down significantly in Georgia after peaking in January.
“About 5% of outpatient visits are due to influenza-like illness,” she said.
Flu season this winter has been similar to the 2019-20 flu season, when the virus peaked in January and peaked again during the spring, Drenzek said.
“Whether we have another spring flu peak remains to be seen,” she said.
Drenzek said the highest number of outpatient visits by flu patients are occurring in school-age young people ranging from the ages of 5 to 24.
“School settings and university settings are high-risk areas for flu and other respiratory viruses as well,” she said.
RSV cases in Georgia have fallen to the point of being “virtually minimal,” Drenzek said. She said RSV season started early, peaking last October before falling off.
Almost all hospitalizations for RSV have occurred among infants less than a year of age, she said.
Meanwhile, two cases of measles cropped up in Georgia in January for the first time since one case was reported in 2020. The Peach State saw 18 cases in 2019 of a disease the CDC declared in 2000 had been eliminated in the United States.
Both of this year’s cases of measles occurred in a pair of siblings from metro Atlanta who had traveled internationally, Drenzek said.
“Our containment efforts were successful,” she said.
