ATLANTA — Republican Jason Dickerson cruised to a strong finish ahead of a Democratic challenger in the special election Tuesday to fill a vacant state Senate seat in the northern suburbs of metro Atlanta.
Dickerson, a businessman from Canton in Cherokee County, took about 60% of the vote against Alpharetta lawyer Debra Shigley in the low turnout race, winning with a commanding majority that was still smaller than Republican margins last year.
Democrats held out hope that Shigley would turn the red bastion blue after a strong showing in the Aug. 26 special election.
She had taken 40% of the vote, well ahead of Dickerson, in second place with 17%. But Shigley was the sole Democrat while Dickerson was splitting voters with five other Republicans.
He consolidated those voters on Tuesday to deliver a solid victory in state Senate District 21.
The Senate seat was open because Brandon Beach, who hailed from Alpharetta, vacated it in early May after President Donald Trump appointed him to be U.S. Treasurer.
Dickerson’s win secures Republicans’ 33-23 advantage in the state Senate. It also maintains GOP control of the General Assembly given the party’s majority in the House.
“National Democrats and left-wing special interests threw everything they had at this race, but voters yet again rejected their out-of-touch radical agenda,” said Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, the Senate majority leader.
The outcome also secures the Republican bastion in north Fulton County and north Cherokee County, where Trump won two votes for every one for Kamala Harris in the November presidential election.
The turnout of about 30,000 was well below the 115,000 in November. The Republican margin was also smaller. Beach was re-elected in November with 70% of the vote, 10 percentage points more than Dickerson took Tuesday. Trump won 66% of the district’s votes.
The state Democratic Party saw Shigley’s loss as a victory of sorts, saying she “overperformed” compared with the outcome last year.
Harris won 33% of the votes in the district against nearly 40% for Shigley.
“Republicans having to play defense in a ‘safe’ district is a sure sign that they’ll continue struggling to defend their toxic agenda all the way through 2026,” said Charlie Bailey, chairman of the Georgia Democrats. He said his party will follow Shigley’s example, competing everywhere for working families whether the district is red or blue.
Anavitarte said Democrats lost because “liberal keyboard warriors were yelling into the void about flipping this seat” while Dickerson’s campaign focused on basics like lower taxes, the economy and safety.
ATLANTA — Georgia’s two public flagships for higher education placed in the top 100 again along with Emory University in the annual U.S. News rankings for 2026.
The Georgia Institute of Technology moved up a spot to 32nd. The University of Georgia remained at 46th and Emory at 24th.
Emory held the same spot as Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., also private.
Tech placed the same as two public universities in California and with the private New York University. UGA tied with four others (three private and one public).
The scoring is driven by up to 17 factors, such as graduation rates, first-year retention rates, faculty salaries and post-graduation earnings.
U.S. News offers more granular scoring for specific areas of study.
Emory’s nursing school ranked second, behind Duke University’s. Tech’s environmental and industrial programs both ranked No. 1, and its biomedical school was tied for the top spot with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. UGA’s insurance program secured the top spot.
Tech’s undergraduate engineering programs ranked third overall, behind the top-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology and second-place Stanford University. Both of those schools are private. Tech tied for third with the University of California, Berkeley, another public institution.
Price is an important consideration for many. Tech and UGA each charge in-state students just over $10,000 a year for tuition and fees and triple that for students from outside Georgia, the publication reported. Emory’s sticker price is nearly $70,000.
Literacy advocate Malcolm Mitchell tosses a football while warming up to read a children’s book he authored, as Atlanta Public School students gather to watch him at the College Football Hall of Fame on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025 (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
ATLANTA — Communities can now apply for $20,000 grants to promote literacy as the second round of the Georgia Reads program gets underway.
Super Bowl champion turned literacy crusader Malcolm Mitchell commemorated round one by reading to 400 Atlanta fourth graders at the College Football Hall of Fame Monday, in an event livestreamed by Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Mitchell the CEO and founder of the Share the Magic Foundation, read from his children’s book, “The Magician’s Hat,” with help from Dayle Burns, a retired educator and the wife of state House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington.
Mitchell, who struggled to read in college then made it his mission to learn and then promote literacy, said he attends about 75 reading events a year.
“I think in many places we’ve shifted the cultural narrative surrounding literacy, which is a huge piece of that formula,” Mitchell said in an interview before the event, as he was tossing a football around with the kids. “When I was growing up, I didn’t understand the importance of reading.”
He said he tells children that acquiring the ability to read can help them achieve their goals. He established his foundation in 2016, and now he’s encountering older teenagers who tell him they’re headed to college and still have the book — his book — he gave them when they were 8.
“Those moments are surreal,” he said.
Mitchell is partnering with the Georgia Council on Literacy, a state-backed organization established two years ago to address dismal performance on the state reading and writing tests.
The scores on the Milestones English Language Arts tests remain disappointing. They fell last school year in all but two of the seven grade levels tested, according to scores released by the Georgia Department of Education in August.
In fifth grade, 43% scored proficient or better, down 5 percentage points from fifth grade test takers the prior year. Eighth graders also fell 5 points, to 40%.
Georgia lawmakers, many of whom were present at Monday’s celebration, have put millions of dollars behind an effort to screen students for literacy and to retrain teachers in what’s called the “science of reading.” The effort appears to have driven gains in somelow-performing schools.
Scott Johnson, a former lawmaker and state school board member who now leads the literacy council, said he expects to see improved scores with the next round of Milestones tests. He said his group would like to see lawmakers put more money into hearing and vision checks for students.
“We’re hoping to focus on hearing and vision like never before in the coming year,” he said.
The first round of funding for Georgia Reads sent a quarter million dollars to 10 communities.
Dalton is using the money to teach parents about literacy, said Suzanne Harbin, who is collaborating with Believe Greater Dalton, the local organization under the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce that was entrusted with a $25,000 grant.
Augusta is also training parents, said Angela Prince, operations director for RISE Augusta, another 2025 recipient. The partnership between the Richmond County School System and several other organizations is teaching parents in the evenings as they wait for their kids to be released from aftercare programs.
Comer Yates, who has been advocating for the science of reading for years, said Mitchell has been an effective voice for the effort.
“He understands this is a social justice issue and an urgent one,” said Yates, who leads the Atlanta Speech School in Buckhead, which has consulted with the state on its literacy initiative.
The application window is now open for this year’s $20,000 grants. Learn more at the Georgia Reads website.
ATLANTA — Efforts to make Georgia schools safer are exacerbating student absenteeism, a major problem that lawmakers have been studying since this summer.
Many students who are awaiting a tribunal for an alleged disciplinary infraction may be out of school for several weeks before they get a hearing on their guilt or innocence, Darlene Lynch told lawmakers at a hearing Monday
Kids get long-term suspensions or expulsions for minor infractions and wind up in alternative schools that do not offer busing, said Lynch, who is with Georgia Appleseed, a legal advocacy group. If their parents cannot get them to school, she said, they drop out.
“A lot of our cases involve vapes right now — being suspended for three semesters,” said Lynch, who was among about a dozen advocates, experts and officials who spoke at this latest hearing on the problem of chronic absenteeism, a hearing that combined members from study committees in the House and Senate.
Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of a school year, which in Georgia is typically 180 school days.
Lynch told lawmakers that their own efforts to make schools safe are contributing to absenteeism.
Earlier this year, the General Assembly passed House Bill 268, a bipartisan state law to enhance school safety after last year’s mass shooting at Apalachee High School.
It has many elements that were broadly popular in both parties, such as funding for more mental health services.
It also contains a provision that Lynch asked lawmakers to revisit. It requires schools to collect information on students who skip class, misbehave or display other problematic behavior and to quickly transmit those records when a student transfers to a new school.
The law has added layers of bureaucracy that are slowing new student enrollments, Lynch said, leaving kids languishing outside the classroom.
“Schools around the state are demanding a really wide range of records and evaluations before they’ll admit a child to school,” she said, describing an instance when a first grader was denied enrollment until the parent could secure a psychological evaluation and a risk assessment.
“We’re hearing a lot of stories of schools asking for child abuse records and all sorts of legal records and medical records that are potentially protected by other laws,” Lynch said, “and those enrollment delays are causing kids to be out of school for sometimes weeks while they’re dealing with the denial and the dispute.”
Chronic absenteeism has long been a problem, but it grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not settled back to lower levels, with one in five deemed chronically absent last school year.
Experts and officials describe it as a crisis that will affect the earning power and even the lifespan of the population of students who drop out as a result.
“They have worse health outcomes: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, lung disease,” Chief Judge Ann B. Harris of Cobb County Superior Court told the lawmakers.
“On average, the life expectancy of someone who has dropped out of high school is eight years less than someone who completed high school. That’s a staggering statistic,” she said, adding that a 2019 study projected that dropouts from the class of 2019 would cost the nation $337 billion.
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp’s upcoming trip to the Republic of Korea was planned “well before” the federal immigration raid on Georgia’s Hyundai electric vehicle battery plant west of Savannah, his office said, indicating the two are unrelated.
“Governor Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp will travel to Japan and the Republic of Korea this fall on a mission focused on strengthening economic ties with two key partners,” Kemp’s office said Sunday. “This travel, as with any economic development mission, was scheduled well before the events of Sept. 4, with the logistics required to organize such a mission taking months to finalize.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security executed a search warrant after investigating allegations of unlawful employment practices at the battery plant, detaining 475 workers Sept. 4.
The action provoked complaints from the Republic of Korea, a major economic partner with Georgia.
