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.
Peach State products on display in Madison, Georgia. (Photo courtesy Rural Voices USA)
ATLANTA – A group of rural Georgians outlined their policy priorities Wednesday, calling on state policymakers to prioritize rural agriculture, broadband and education.
“We are Georgians who are concerned that rural issues are too often ignored and rural residents are too often left behind,” said former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes. “We want to make sure these priorities are top of mind for Georgia lawmakers.”
Rural Voices USA is a national nonprofit focused on rural issues. Members of the organization’s Georgia steering committee developed a list of policy proposals they say Peach State policymakers should consider.
Top among them is bolstering rural economies by creating a rural economic development fund that would leverage measures like tax credits or seed funding to incentivize investment.
The aim would be to ensure that Georgia’s agricultural sector remains competitive by embracing cutting-edge developments, such as producing plant-based proteins, said Brian Kuehl, executive director of Rural Voices USA.
“The goal is to make rural Georgia a better place to live and an easier place to make a living,” said Kuehl, noting that rural communities already have assets such as hard-working people and great education systems. “There are all sorts of niche opportunities.”
The group also wants the state to ensure that 2021 federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act funds are delivered as soon as possible to boost rural broadband so that every Georgian has access to high-speed internet.
“For farmers, processing plants and manufactures, [broadband is] needed to advance their businesses,” said Susannah Maddux, a Macon publisher who chairs the steering committee.
“The investment Congress has made …. is larger in real dollars than the rural electrification push of the 1930s,” Kuehl added.
A third priority area is to address Georgia’s rural health-care shortfall by incentivizing health professionals to work in rural Georgia and stemming the tide of rural hospital closures.
Recent legislative efforts to address the workforce shortage are welcome, said Terry Coleman, a member of the steering committee and former Democratic speaker of the state House of Representatives. But Georgia still does not have nearly enough medical residency slots to meet its needs, he said.
“We’ve got to get busy,” Coleman said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, Wednesday announced that she along with other politicians and the NAACP have filed two federal complaints over Wellstar’s 2022 decision to close two Atlanta-area hospitals serving Black patients. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – The NAACP – along with state legislators and other politicians – has filed two federal complaints over Wellstar Health System’s decision last year to close Atlanta hospitals in majority-Black areas.
Wellstar’s decision to close two Atlanta-area hospitals, Atlanta Medical Center and Atlanta Medical Center-South, has damaged the health-care rights of Black patients, the complaints allege, and left patients south of Interstate 20 without a nearby emergency room and other medical services.
The first complaint asks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate Wellstar’s tax-exempt status. The second alleges the closures violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is being filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.
“They imposed great harm and that harm continues today,” Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, said Wednesday. The two hospitals in majority-Black areas closed, while Wellstar hospitals in majority-white areas have remained open, Orrock said. Along with Orrock and the NAACP, Rep. Kim Schofield, D-Atlanta, has signed on to the complaints.
Soon after Wellstar closed the hospitals, the organization announced that it would seek to form a partnership with Augusta University Hospital System. The potential partnership with the state’s sole public medical school could also include building a new hospital in Columbia County, which is 71.3% white, according to the complaint.
“As it abandons a minority community, leaving it in far worse straits regarding health care and access to care, there is some irony in Wellstar’s CEO’s statement about its current plans [that] ‘We would improve the health of the community … and expand access to quality care for all Georgians,’” the complaints note.
But Wellstar denied the validity of the complaints in a statement issued last night.
“The suggestion that Wellstar Health System in any way discriminated against patients and communities is outrageous and false,” the statement said. “We are the largest provider of charity care in the state of Georgia.”
“We are focused and committed to continue serving diverse communities throughout the region and providing them the specialized programs and resources they need,” the statement continued.
The federal government has an interest in Wellstar’s decision to close the two facilities because the system earns a significant amount of revenue from the federally funded Medicaid and Medicare programs.
Wellstar should have developed a plan to meet community needs instead of closing the Atlanta hospitals, the complaint alleges. The IRS requires tax-exempt hospitals to assess community needs every three years and implement a strategy to address those needs.
“Wellstar’s action deprives Black and other minority patients of crucial services,” the second complaint contends. “Wellstar should be held to account and required to repair the damage it has caused.
“We ask the Office for Civil Rights to investigate Wellstar’s actions, which have the effect of causing disparate harm to people of color.”
The complaints note that the Wellstar system had net assets of $2.67 billion in fiscal 2021.
The closure of the two Atlanta facilities also led the medical practices associated with them to either move to less-diverse areas or close, forcing patients to travel long distances to get outpatient care, the complaints state.
“Many patients who want to continue to see their own doctors now must travel across the large, traffic-congested metro area to reach them,” the complaints note, giving the example of a patient with diabetes formerly treated at Wellstar’s downtown Atlanta facility who now must take two buses and travel 20 miles to reach Austell, a suburb of Atlanta, for treatment.
Tax-exempt hospitals are increasingly in the news for their alleged failures to meet community needs.
Recently, a Pennsylvania court denied property tax exemptions to four hospitals in the Tower Hospital system outside of Philadelphia after the local school district claimed the hospitals acted more like for-profit than non-profit entities. The decision was based in large part on what the court saw as excessive CEO pay.
Wellstar’s CEO, Candice Saunders, earned $2.5 million in 2020, according to the hospital system’s IRS filings posted on its website. The hospital system received a “B” grade in the Lown Institute’s social responsibility index, which measures hospital outcomes, value and equity.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
State Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, spoke Tuesday against an amendment proposed by fellow GOP Senator Colton Moore, Trenton, that would have gutted a bill aimed at increasing assistance to very low-income pregnant women.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate Tuesday approved a bill that would expand eligibility for the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program in Georgia to pregnant women.
Currently, federal law allows very low-income pregnant women to receive the cash assistance, but Georgia law does not. The new bill would change that, said Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, the bill’s chief sponsor.
“Expanding eligibility to pregnant women would continue to build on the steps Georgia’s taken to improve maternal health for low-income populations, such as extending Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months,” said Hodges.
There are 5,343 households in Georgia currently relying on TANF, with an average monthly benefit of $280, Hodges said.
“Georgia lawmakers have … taken an important step by expanding Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to pregnant women and eliminating the TANF family cap,” said Staci Fox, president and CEO of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
An amendment proposed by Sen. Colton Moore, R-Trenton, drew sharp criticism from Moore’s fellow Republicans, who argued it does not fit the GOP’s pro-life philosophy.
Moore’s amendment would have removed a provision from the bill that increases the amount of TANF aid if a woman becomes pregnant with an additional child while already receiving the assistance.
“I don’t feel comfortable [with] state dollars going to incentivize more children in that situation,” Moore said.
“You’re assuming someone has made themselves a baby factory to earn a minimum amount of money per month,” responded Sen. Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton. “In that dire situation, your solution is to take the money from them … to teach them a lesson?”
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, harkened back to the 2019 vote for Georgia’s Republican-sponsored heartbeat law, which prohibits most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
“This chamber’s already spoken,” Tillery said. “We spoke four years ago. We said that we believe that heartbeat began life, and if you still take that position or if you believe that you should support families, then you’re going to have to reject … the amendment.”
Moore’s amendment failed and the bill, which has already received House approval, breezed through 50-1, with the single no vote coming from Moore.
The bill now moves to GOP Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for approval. Kemp endorsed the proposal in his annual State of the State message to the legislature in January.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
State Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, spoke against a bill that would bar gender-affirming hormone therapy or surgery for transgender Georgia youth.
ATLANTA – The Republican-controlled state Senate approved a bill Monday night that would bar certain gender-affirming treatments for youths under age 18.
Sponsored by Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, Senate Bill 140, which passed 33-22 along party lines, would prohibit hospitals and doctors from providing either hormone-replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgeries to minors.
“This is simply saying … we’re asking for the children to be 18 years or older before they make a decision that will alter their lives forever,” Summers said.
The bill would allow the revocation of a hospital’s or physician’s license if the rules are violated, Summers said. It does allow for some exceptions, including for treatment of certain medical conditions and for those who are already on hormone-replacement therapy as of July 1, 2023.
“What we’ve tried to do is strike a really good balance,” said Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, noting that the bill would allow transgender youth to continue with gender-affirming mental health and puberty blocker treatments but not irreversible hormone-replacement therapies or gender-affirming surgeries.
Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, urged her colleagues to vote against the bill after describing the evolution of her thinking on care for transgender youth after learning that her then-daughter identifies as a male.
Harrell said the medical standards of care for transgender youth have been recently rewritten with a heavy emphasis on providing young people with individualized care and necessary counseling before starting hormone-replacement therapy or undergoing gender-affirming surgery.
“The problem I have with this bill is that It only addresses what we won’t do for our children,” Harrell said. “We need to focus on what we can do for these kids. … Doctors and mental-health professionals shouldn’t be in a hurry to treat with hormones and surgery. But banning them outright is not the answer, either.”
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, described the negative effects youths who want but cannot get gender-affirming care experience, citing a study that found that 56% of transgender youth have attempted suicide.
“This is about making sure that children can be well while they go through a season of transition,” Jackson said. “I ask you to vote ‘no’ on this not because you understand but because you have compassion in your hearts for what these children are experiencing.”
Medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, support gender-affirming care for transgender children when the physician and family deem it appropriate.
“There is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate,” Dr. Moira Szilagyi, then-president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote last year. “It can even be lifesaving.”
The bill now moves to the state House for consideration.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
