ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers gave final passage Friday to a $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 state budget that prioritizes spending on education and prisons.
After the state Senate passed the spending plan 54-1, the Georgia House of Representatives followed suit 170-5.
A key line item the House and Senate had disagreed on before a joint conference committee crafted a final version of the budget was how much money to allocate to kick start Georgia’s private school voucher program, which the General Assembly created last year. In the end, the conferees approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s recommendation to fully fund the new program with $141 million.
About 10,000 students have applied for vouchers, although the program doesn’t begin until July, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, said on the House floor Friday. Of that number, 5,100 have been deemed eligible for the program, he said.
The budget also includes $300 million to fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education K-12 student funding formula. It contains $108.9 million in state grants to help local school systems pay for safety improvements on their school campuses, which will provide each school with $47,124.
Another $19.6 million is earmarked for a new program called “student support services,” which will include mental-health counselors for the schools, and $15.3 million will go to support economically disadvantaged students through a one-time pilot program.
The school-safety and mental-health services funding are in response to the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last September that killed two students and two teachers.
Also in the education arena, the budget provides $18.5 million to hire 116 literacy coaches who will work to improve reading scores.
State policymakers have made conditions inside Georgia prisons a top concern after a federal audit released last fall criticized the prison system for failing to protect inmates from violence. The fiscal ’26 spending plan, increases spending on the Georgia Department of Corrections by $200 million, $75 million above what Kemp recommended in the budget he presented to the General Assembly in January.
“(Corrections) Commissioner (Tyrone Oliver) has been a good partner, always picking up the phone when needed,” Hatchett, said.
That $200 million spending increase for the prison system includes $13.4 million to give correctional officers 4% pay raises and $45 million to hire an additional 700 guards to better protect inmates by lowering the inmate-to-staff ratios. Another $34.2 million is allocated for repairing deteriorating prison infrastructure.
The budget conferees were able to draw down additional funds for education and prisons at the 11th hour, when Kemp raised his revenue estimate for fiscal 2026 this week by $50.4 million.
In the area of health care, the budget includes $16.9 million to increase reimbursement rates for providers serving Medicaid patients and $7.4 million for graduate medical education to help address shortages of health-care providers, particularly in rural Georgia.
The budget now heads to Kemp for his signature. Fiscal 2026 takes effect July 1.