ATLANTA – From icy roads on wintry mornings in the Appalachian foothills to dirt roads that wash out in heavy rains, it’s not always easy getting to and from school in Georgia.
This year, rising fuel prices are making it more expensive as well.
But help is on the way from the federal government. A new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program aims at providing school buses an alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel by funding bus electrification.
The agency will award around $1 billion annually for the next five years to school districts that want to purchase electric, propane, or CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles.
The funding comes from the infrastructure spending law Congress passed last year. The awardees will be announced in October. Some of the funding can also be used for setting up electric charging infrastructure.
The EPA says that reducing or eliminating pollution from buses helps improve children’s respiratory health. The agency also says alternative-fuel buses also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and maintenance and fuel costs.
Joe Meadows, transportation director for the Ware County Schools, said the county is the largest by area in the state. The district’s fuel expenditures have nearly doubled, Meadows said.
He runs about 73 routes every day. About half of his buses run on diesel and the other half on gasoline, he said. Rising prices on both types of fuel are hitting the district hard, he said.
Meadows said he’s had to double up on some routes to save money. Nevertheless, three days into the school year, the buses are running smoothly.
“We’re working through this day by day,” said Meadows, who must ensure that students who live on dirt roads on the border of the Okefenokee Swamp can make it to and from school each day.
Those long distances and treacherous conditions rule out electric vehicles for his district, Meadows said. He’s considering propane and CNG-fueled bus options, however, as a way of keeping down costs.
Georgia’s second-largest county by area, Burke County, has succeeded in using propane-fueled buses to rein in costs.
The district began converting its buses to run on propane fuel in 2013. It has converted about two-thirds of its fleet so far, Burke County Public Schools spokeswoman Amy Nunnally said.
She said that though diesel prices rose this summer, the district is able to purchase propane at just $1.10 per gallon after a federal rebate.
“Just this year alone, we will save almost $700,000 in fuel costs,” Nunnally said.
Nunnally said the district has started considering electric buses but – like Meadows in Ware County — has questions about whether they are up to the task.
“We are unsure how an electric bus will perform on the many miles of dirt roads we travel daily and how this will impact the traveling range of the vehicle,” Nunnally said. “We are also unsure how long the batteries will last before they must be replaced and the cost to replace them.”
On Wednesday, Macon-based school bus manufacturer Blue Bird announced that it may have a solution for this quandary: buy now, convert to electric later.
The new program will allow school districts to retrofit gasoline- and propane-fueled buses with electric technology.
“Blue Bird customers can future-proof their school bus fleet by purchasing gasoline- or propane-powered vehicles and converting them easily and cost-effectively to zero-emission electric buses later,” the company stated in a news release.
The retrofitting process can be completed within 30 days, the company said. Once retrofitted, the buses will be able to travel up to 150 miles on a single charge, depending on battery configurations.
According to Blue Bird, the program will allow districts that may not have electric-charging infrastructure in place yet to convert later, once charging stations are built.
Blue Bird’s had more 500 orders for electric buses in 2021, according to the company’s latest annual report. Although that’s only a small fraction of its close-to-10,000 total order, the company aims to make electric vehicles half of its bus production by the end of this decade.
That push should get a jumpstart from the new EPA bus electrification program. School districts have until Aug. 19 to apply for the funding.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA –The Georgia Department of Revenue issued new guidance Tuesday explaining how the state’s new abortion law will affect taxes.
The so-called “heartbeat law” bans most abortions in Georgia after about six weeks of pregnancy. It also redefines “person” to include an unborn child, with implications for a number of areas of Georgia law, including taxes.
“The department will recognize any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat … as eligible for the Georgia individual income tax dependent exemption,” the department said in a news release.
Any taxpayer who is carrying an unborn child with a detectable heartbeat can claim the child as a dependent for the current tax year. The exemption is $3,000 for each unborn child.
For the 2022 tax year, the law applies to any taxpayer carrying an unborn child with detectable heartbeat between July 20, 2022, when the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Georgia abortion law, and Dec. 31, 2022.
The revenue department said taxpayers could be asked to provide medical or other supporting documentation to prove the presence of an unborn child.
The department said it will issue additional guidance on the new law later this year.
Abortion opponents in Georgia see the new definition of personhood as a key victory and innovation.
“Personhood … is extremely important because we are the first in the country to get this passed and … upheld,” said Martha Zoller, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance.
But others contend the new definition of person may have unintended consequences. It could result in higher insurance expenses for pregnant women, said Carliss Chatman, an associate professor of law at Washington and Lee University.
“What stops an insurance provider from declaring that there are now two separate people?” Chatman asked. The insurer could charge two deductibles (for the mother and unborn child) from six weeks of pregnancy, she said.
The new law could also have implications for immigration and birthright citizenship, Chatman said.
“If one can claim the child on Georgia state taxes when there is a fetal heartbeat, is Georgia also acknowledging the citizenship of that fetus at six weeks?”
Although the abortion law was upheld by the federal circuit court last month, it is now being challenged in state court on privacy and other grounds. The next hearing in the matter is set for Monday in Fulton County Superior Court.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The state ethics commission voted Monday to move forward with a full hearing on whether a group founded by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and its affiliated action fund violated campaign finance laws.
At the center of the dispute is whether the activities of the New Georgia Project and an affiliated fund were sufficiently political in nature to require registering as campaign and ballot committees under Georgia law.
Founded in 2013, the New Georgia Project is registered as a 501(c)(3) organization under Internal Revenue Service rules. The New Georgia Action Fund is registered as a 501 (c)(4) group.
The two groups focused on registering voters in Georgia and getting voters to the polls.
Such charitable and social-welfare groups are not required to disclose detailed information about donations and expenditures. There are limits on their political activities.
A complaint filed with the ethics commission alleges the two groups crossed the line into political activity and failed to register as campaign committees under Georgia campaign finance law.
Campaign committees must file public documents listing details of their donations and expenditures.
The groups advocated for electoral candidates, namely gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams and other Democrats, in 2017 and 2018, said Joseph Cusack, staff attorney for the commission.
Cusack pointed to campaign literature that called on people to vote for Abrams and other Democrats distributed by New Georgia Project canvassers.
The materials were labeled as being supported by the New Georgia Project. Cusack also pointed to scripts canvassers used asking people to vote for Abrams and identifying the New Georgia Project.
The groups were operating as independent committees, should have registered as such, and should have filed detailed campaign disclosure reports, said Cusack.
Aria Branch, one of the lawyers for the New Georgia Project, said the groups had contracted out their canvassing operation to another group, PowerPAC. When the canvassers were handing out these materials, they were acting on behalf of PowerPAC under that organization’s contract with New Georgia Project, said Branch.
Branch also argued the ethics commission had not provided sufficient evidence to directly tie New Georgia Project’s spending to advocacy for certain candidates.
Cusack went on to maintain the two New Georgia groups should also have registered as ballot committees during their work in Gwinnett County in 2019. They encouraged Gwinnett voters to vote for MARTA expansion in a referendum that year, he said.
Monday’s preliminary hearing sought to establish whether there are reasonable grounds to proceed with a full hearing.
The commission determined that there were reasonable grounds, meaning a full hearing will be held in the future, although it may not be for months.
The case has been pending since 2019.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – With the recent mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas as a backdrop, Georgia schools are beginning to open their doors for fall with school safety top-of-mind for parents and teachers.
Every public school in Georgia is required to have a school safety plan and conduct drills on that plan, the state Department of Education (DOE) said in July.
Safety plans address school violence prevention training, mental health awareness, school security measures, and partnerships with public safety officials.
In July, the DOE and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) announced a new school safety clearinghouse website that will distribute school safety resources and updated training to Georgia schools and community partners.
The shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has caused law enforcement agencies to work more closely with schools to plan for emergency responses, said Gainesville Police Chief Jay Parrish.
“Our school resource officers have been working all summer to better understand [schools’] safety plans for various situations,” Parrish said. “When we understand the behaviors of school staff and students in response to different emergencies, we have a better idea of what kind of scene we are responding to.”
School officials usually do not share all the details of the safety plans, and the plans are not subject to open records requests, said Angela Palm, director of policy for the Georgia School Boards Association.
Palm said school boards have to balance the need to keep the plans private with the need to inform the community about their plans.
Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest district in the state, has its own licensed and accredited police department, with 98 school resource officers, said Bernard Watson, the district’s director of community and media relations.
Gwinnett is retrofitting 19 schools with security vestibules – a feature 15 already have – to help administrators control access to the building, Watson said. The county has other measures for collecting tips about troubling behavior in schools, he added.
Another large metro-Atlanta county – Clayton — will require all students to carry clear backpacks this school year. The school district will provide backpacks to the students.
But these measures don’t necessarily address the concerns of students.
“Safety in our schools has been a concern since I was in kindergarten,” said Lily Littrell, who recently graduated from Parkview High School in Gwinnett County and is a member of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition, an advocacy group made up of high school and college students.
“Adding police and other school-hardening policies will not make our schools safer or fix the systemic problem,” Littrell said. “[Schools should] invest in counselors, social workers, and restorative justice that will actually make our schools safer and reduce violence.”
In stark contrast, others argue for arming teachers or other school staffers.
The General Assembly passed legislation in 2014 allowing school boards to authorize certain staffers to carry guns on school campuses.
The policy prohibits teachers from carrying guns but authorizes the superintendent to choose other personnel who can carry guns at school or school events after approved training.
“I think it’s a great policy,” said Jerry Henry, executive director of Georgia Second Amendment (GA2A), a gun-rights group.
“Schools are a soft target. … [But] once people understand that there’s someone there armed, no one’s going to go in there [and shoot]. … Had one of those teachers [in Uvalde] been armed, then they could have stepped in.”
But some teachers think such proposals go too far.
“The problem of gun violence is much larger than our schools. You can’t solve the issue of someone coming into a school armed with a weapon … until you solve the issue of gun violence that we have throughout our society.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Education (DOE) announced Thursday that it is establishing new Career, Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) training courses for the elementary school grades.
“These elementary Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education courses will build into our middle- and high-school CTAE opportunities and give students the chance to learn about the many options they have for a successful future,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said.
The elementary-grade programs will be available for school districts to pilot starting in the fall of next year. Eventually, elementary-grade programs will be part of all the career pathways the state offers.
Georgia’s CTAE program offers 17 career pathway clusters, which train and prepare students for more than 100 career options ranging from finance to manufacturing to arts and audio-visual communications.
Georgia students who completed the CTAE Pathway graduated at a rate of 97% in the 2020-2021 school year.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
