ATLANTA – Georgia’s high-school graduation rate increased to 84.1% in 2022, the highest it’s been since the state began using a federally required method to calculate the rate.
This year’s rate is just a bit higher than last year’s rate of 83.7%
Over the past decade, the state’s graduation rate has steadily increased. Back in 2012, the rate was a dismal 69.7%, according to a press release from the state Department of Education.
In 2022, over 100 school districts had a graduation rate of 90% or higher. And 41 districts even hit or exceeded the 95% mark.
“Teachers and students who persevered through the challenges of the last several years deserve credit for Georgia’s graduation rate increasing and other recent positive indicators, like Georgia students beating the SAT national average once again,” said State School Superintendent Richard Woods.
Republican Woods is seeking his third term as the state’s school chief. He will face Democrat Alisha Thomas Searcy in the November election.
Georgia uses a federally required method to calculate its graduation rate: The number of students who graduate from high school in four years is divided by the number of students who entered ninth grade. That ninth-grade enrollment number is adjusted to reflect the number of students who transfer in or out of a school over the next three years.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams raised $36.3 million over the last three months, surpassing the $29 million incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp raised in the same period.
Though Abrams outraised Kemp, the incumbent governor has $19.6 million in cash on hand as of this week while Abrams has $11 million.
With only one month until election day, both candidates have plenty of money for ad buys, mailings, signs and campaign events.
Most of Abrams’ campaign fundraising during the third quarter – $20.8 million – came from her One Georgia leadership committee.
Leadership committees can raise unlimited contributions on behalf of top statewide and legislative candidates. The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed legislation last year authorizing the committees.
Donations to the Abrams campaign have come from around 370,000 individual donors since the campaign started, with the vast majority of donations for amounts under $25, a campaign press release noted.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The state Supreme Court Thursday heard arguments about the power of local referendums to change county government decisions – such as Camden County’s decision to purchase property to build a long-planned spaceport – under the Georgia Constitution.
The case pits Camden County voters opposed to the spaceport against their own county government in a case that could influence both the future of the plan and voter oversight of local elected officials in Georgia.
Camden County leaders have sought to build a spaceport for years, claiming it will bring jobs and economic development to the southeast Georgia region. The county commission agreed to an options contract to purchase the land needed for the space-launch facility from Union Carbide Corporation back in 2015.
Earlier this year, local opponents successfully led a petition drive asking for a referendum on whether the county’s approval of the land purchase should be repealed.
In a March special election, about 4,100 people voted against the county’s plan to purchase the land for the spaceport and around 1,600 voted in favor. The county appealed a superior court’s ruling that the referendum could proceed, giving rise to the case the Supreme Court considered Thursday.
Lawyers for Camden County argued the Georgia Constitution limits the authority of such local referendums. That authority does not extend to allowing voters to veto a county commission’s resolution.
“[The] referendum in Camden County was a legal nullity … the constitution did not authorize it,” said Pearson Cunningham, one of the attorneys for Camden County.
In contrast, lawyers for the petitioners who pushed for the referendum argued the vote was valid under a plain reading of the state constitution.
“The Georgia Constitution says what it says – the right to repeal a county ordinance is explicit… [Camden County] wants the court to determine that the Constitution does not mean what it says,” said Phillip Thompson, one of the lawyers for the people who led the petition drive to hold the referendum.
Earlier this summer, Union Carbide, the land’s current owner, said it no longer intends to sell to Camden County and noted the referendum results invalidated the previous options contract the county held to purchase the property. Camden County is suing Union Carbide about its decision to back out of the property deal in a separate lawsuit in state courts.
Camden County has spent $11 million pursuing the proposed commercial spaceport on a 4,000-acre tract of land in southeast Georgia, which officials say will drive economic development in the region. The county commission approved an options contract to purchase the land from current owner Union Carbide Corporation back in 2015.
But opponents say firing small rockets from Spaceport Camden over populated areas of Little Cumberland Island, just off the coast, would pose a major safety risk. Earlier this summer, an independent consultant found the project would pose a low safety risk.
The National Park Service – which operates the Cumberland Island National Seashore – and environmental organizations worried about the spaceport’s impact on a fragile coastal ecosystem have also expressed reservations about the project.
The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision within the next six months.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Industrial facilities released more than 5 million pounds of toxic chemicals into Georgia’s waterways in 2020, putting Georgia in 13th place nationwide, according to a new report released by Environment Georgia.
Georgia is also one of the top 10 states with the highest pollution loads for chemicals linked to cancer as well as developmental and reproductive health risks, according to the report.
“All too often, polluters use our rivers as open sewers with no repercussions,” said Jennifer Duenas, public health advocate for Environment Georgia.
Some of the pollutants in Georgia’s waterways come from traditional sources, such as runoff and wastewater from factories.
But long-lasting particles such as micro plastics and PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances) are also a serious problem in rivers and lakes, said Duenas. The EPA first required companies to report PFAS data in 2020 and much less is known about these pollutants.
Such chemicals are difficult to track and regulate because they are found in many common consumer goods, from plastics to fertilizers, said Amy Sharma, executive director of Science for Georgia, a group that seeks to make science accessible to the public.
“We also need to upgrade our definitions and legal limits. [They] should reflect current knowledge, not 1970s science,” Sharma said. “We need to double down on accountability, enforcement and infrastructure.”
The Clean Water Act, a landmark federal law that took effect 50 years ago, helped improve the country’s water health, Sharma said. The act had far-ranging effects, from ensuring clean drinking water to putting limits on industrial polluters.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about the law earlier this week. If the plaintiffs in that case are successful, the federal government’s ability to regulate waterways and wetlands would be reduced.
Though federal regulation is important, state policymakers can take steps to help protect waterways, Duenas said.
“On the state level, you can create policies, legislation, that reduce the amount of PFAS actually produced as part of manufacturing systems,” she said. “You can also strengthen permits that protect waterways.”
“The state issues permitting in respect to agricultural waste,” said Georgia Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, who serves on the House Science and Technology Committee and is a board member of the Altamaha Riverkeeper.
Oliver noted there is currently an effort to set up Georgia’s first national park around the Ocmulgee River basin and that clean water would be essential to that effort.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Lawyers for a voting rights group founded by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Monday they will likely appeal last week’s federal court ruling upholding Georgia’s election laws.
Fair Fight Action challenged a long list of Georgia election policies as unconstitutional in the lawsuit filed after the 2018 general elections.
The lawsuit said Georgia’s requirement that voter records exactly match driver’s license records was too aggressive and prevented thousands of Georgians from being able to register to vote properly. And state processes caused problems when verifying that potential voters were citizens and not former felons.
Those problems, and others, disproportionately impacted voters of color, making it more difficult for them to vote, lawyers for Fair Fight argued.
But U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled last Friday that Fair Fight had not sufficiently proved a disparate impact on voters of color in the lawsuit, which he said was the longest-running voting rights case in the history of the court.
“Obviously, this decision was not the decision we were hoping for,” Fair Fight’s lead lawyer, Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, said Monday during a press conference held in response to the ruling.
“A federal court has found that there are severe burdens on voters and constitutional violations in our election system,” Lawrence-Hardy said, noting the judge’s opinion identified many problems in Georgia’s elections policies. “Yet the court has only issued recommendations instead of mandated relief.
“It’s baffling that Secretary [of State Brad] Raffensperger or Gov. [Brian] Kemp could read this court’s findings … and celebrate them because this court has found severe burdens on voters of color in Georgia.”
Despite the legal defeat, Lawrence-Hardy said the lawsuit had achieved some important successes and raised awareness about problems with Georgia’s system.
The lawsuit led Georgia to make changes to ensure some voters were not purged from voter rolls, to update election-worker training materials, and to change the law on absentee ballot cancellations to make it easier for people to vote.
“Because of this suit, the election system in Georgia has changed,” Lawrence-Hardy said.
State Republican leaders called the decision a victory, saying it vindicates their approach to Georgia elections.
“This is a win for all Georgia election officials who dedicated their lives to safe, secure and accessible elections,” said Raffensperger, who is running for reelection in November. “Stolen election and voter suppression claims by Stacey Abrams were nothing but poll-tested rhetoric not supported by facts and evidence.”
“In Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat – and I’m going to continue to work to keep it that way,” said Kemp, who served as secretary of state until defeating Abrams in the governor’s race in 2018.
Abrams is running against Kemp for governor again this fall.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
