by Ty Tagami | Aug 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The closure of schools during COVID-19 caused a massive downshift in attendance as nearly one in four Georgia students simply stopped attending class, double the rate before the pandemic.
Fewer students are routinely cutting class now, but one in five were still deemed “chronically absent” last school year, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year, typically 180 days.
The problem has caught the attention of state lawmakers.
“That’s 360,000 school children in our public school systems in Georgia that are chronically absent, meaning they are missing 18 days or more of the school year,” said Sen. John F. Kennedy, R-Macon. “They’re not going to learn to read. If they don’t learn to read, they’re not going to be literate. They’re not going to graduate, and they don’t have a chance at the Georgia Dream and the American Dream.”
Kennedy is leading a study committee on this “quiet crisis,” as he called it. That illustrates just how serious the Senate thinks it is. Kennedy was until recently the highest ranking senator but stepped down as president pro tempore to run next year for lieutenant governor, the statewide officer who presides over the Senate.
And the Georgia House of Representatives has its own study committee on the issue.
Many states and school leaders de-emphasized attendance during the worst of the pandemic. By the 2020-21 school year, 31 states and the District of Columbia had reinstated daily attendance-taking, but Georgia was not among them.
The state required attendance to be taken but not on a daily basis, the non-profit initiative Attendance Works reported in 2021.
Hedy Chang, the group’s executive director, testified to Kennedy’s fact-finding committee Thursday about how students are affected by chronic absence.
“They’re less likely to read by the end of the third grade, have lower achievement, even disciplinary issues in middle school,” she said. “They’re more likely to drop out, but it’s not just the academics that are affected; it’s educational engagement, social emotional development, executive functioning.”
Chang said these students affect other students when they are present, creating distractions and making it harder for teachers to keep kids on track. And absenteeism appears to be contagious, she said, with more students missing class by the end of a school year if they start class with students who were chronically absent.
There is a wealth of data about the impact of missing school, starting with academic performance.
In 2024, nearly half of Georgia students who took a Georgia Milestones test in English and math scored at least proficient, but only one in four chronically absent students made that mark in English and just one in five in math.
Chronically absent students are at greater risk of dropping out, which leads to unemployment, lower lifetime earnings, and even a shorter life.
A landmark study published last year found that completing a dozen years of school — about the equivalent of finishing high school — was associated with a 24.5% reduction in mortality risk compared with no education. That translates to a reduced mortality risk of 1.9% per year of education, said the Norway-based study published in The Lancet.
Likely reasons for better health outcomes were higher earnings, better health care, more health knowledge and other “social and psychological resources.”
Lawmakers were given multiple reasons for the increase in absenteeism.
Students are tired because they are working a job to help the family or are effectively raising younger siblings, in some cases because a parent died or was incapacitated during the pandemic. They are falling ill and lack health care. They cannot see or hear well and lack resources for health screenings.
Often students just lack necessities, said Carol Lewis, president and CEO of the group Communities in Schools, a non-profit with the mission of keeping kids in school.
“In one of our communities, it was something as simple as clean clothes, hygiene products, and you can almost track it to the time of the month,” Lewis told the House study committee at its first meeting last month. She added that many kids are still traumatized by the death of a family member during the pandemic.
Garry McGiboney, a former official with the Georgia Department of Education who volunteered his time to lead a statewide attendance study group, said bullying and other contributors to poor school “climate” discourage attendance.
“If students want to be at the school, they will find a way to get to the school,” McGiboney told the Senate committee. “If they want to be at school, it’s because they feel engaged. They feel like somebody cares about them.”
To some, all of this sounds like excuses.
Absenteeism results from “pure unadulterated failure to perform parental duties,” said O. Wayne Ellerbee, a Valdosta lawyer who served four decades as a Lowndes County juvenile court judge. It was a big problem when he became a judge in the mid-1970s, he said, so he implemented a simple solution: he required parents to appear in court after their child had three absences.
“They’d have a 12-, 13-year-old kid and they’d say, ‘Well, judge, I can’t keep up with them 24 hours a day.’ And I said, ‘Well, why in the hell did you have them?’ They would look at me like I was crazy, but they soon learned and soon adapted,” said the former judge, who is not part of the legislative study process but has read about it.
Ellerbee, who retired from the bench in 2012, said that when some of those kids grew up, they relayed to him what their parents had told them: “You got to go to school cause I ain’t going to court.”
He also blamed the schools. Kids who skip can be disruptive when they do attend, and that can be a burden on teachers and administrators, he said. “So they’re not too unhappy when the bad ones don’t come to school.”
But that’s old-school thinking to everyone who has testified so far at the House and Senate hearings.
“We started off using the hammer, which definitely did not work,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods told senators Thursday. Instead, educators should focus on building positive relationships with students, so they can learn why they are skipping school, he said.
“We don’t want to just mask the symptom,” Woods said. “We have to address the real root of the problem.”
That approach appealed to Steven Teske, the former chief juvenile court judge in Clayton County. Teske, who retired from the bench four years ago, led an interagency task force to address absenteeism for nearly two decades.
“I wanted to stop the traditional stuff where there were limited resources, you were put on a diversion plan to go to school, telling kids who aren’t going to school to go to school, which is stupid,” said Teske, who moved to Arizona and has not testified in these hearings. “We know there are issues much deeper that are driving these kids to not go to school. They really don’t give a damn about what an adult is telling them.”
Teske avoided punishing absent kids and their parents, but he said “restorative justice” wasn’t enough. He said he was impressed by an approach that seemed to be effective at one high-poverty high school in Clayton: feeding the kids after classes ended.
“I was just so amazed about the passion of these teachers that were staying there and helping the kids with their homework and feeding them,” he said. “I mean, bringing in Chick-fil-As and stuff like that. Kids didn’t want to go home.”
People who did testify said the state should expect to spend money to address absenteeism. Georgia schools need more social workers, more nurses and other interventions, such as screenings for vision and hearing, lawmakers were told.
Dan Sims, the Bibb County School District superintendent, shared an anecdote with senators that crystallized the challenge. He visited a single mom of four whose fifth grade son, a “cherished” student, had gotten into trouble with the law.
During his 15 minutes with her, one child came down the stairs asking for food, another had a question about the next day and another interrupted the conversation, too, all before the boy, who was outside playing, had returned home.
“I sat and watched her face and the stress that was in her body in that moment,” he said. “And she even mentioned to me, ‘Dr. Sims, it’s just me.’ “
by Ty Tagami | Aug 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia students posted modest academic gains in most of the tested grades and subjects last school year except in one key area.
English Language Arts scores fell in all but two of the seven grade levels that were given Milestones exams, according to scores released by the Georgia Department of Education Friday.
Fifth and eighth graders posted the biggest drops in English proficiency rates. 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%.
The gains in the two grades that did not lose ground were not big: 2 percentage points in fourth grade and 1 point in seventh. In both grades, two out of five students scored well enough to be considered proficient in English.
Literacy has become a major focus, with the General Assembly requiring new methods of teaching reading in public schools.
Allison Timberlake, who oversees testing for the state education department, said all kindergarten through third grade teachers have now been re-trained in reading instruction and will be using research-backed methods.
“So that work is really getting started for this coming school year,” she said.
The agency sent literacy coaches to 60 of the lowest-performing elementary schools. There are more than 1,200 elementary schools in the state.
Scores in other subjects were generally flat or rising 1 to 3 points.
In math, every tested grade but one did better than the prior year. The biggest gain — 3 percentage points — was in eighth grade, where 47% scored proficient or better. Third graders fell back 1 percentage point, with 44% scoring at least proficient.
The biggest gain in any subject and grade combination was in high school physical science. The percentage of students who scored at least proficient was up 6 points, reaching 57%.
Overall proficiency rates indicate that most students struggle to master the material.
Fewer than half of test takers scored proficient or better in most subjects and grades. The results are generally worse than before the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, the test for U.S. history, a high school course taken by students who are not in Advanced Placement or other accelerated classes, showed 39% were proficient, the same as the prior year. That result is down 8 percentage points from the 47% who scored proficient in 2019.
by Ty Tagami | Aug 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Chris Carr, Georgia’s attorney general and a candidate for governor, is suing his Republican primary opponent in federal court over a campaign finance issue.
The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Atlanta filed Thursday follows a complaint by Carr against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones that was dismissed by the State Ethics Commission last month.
In the new case and the old, the complaints involve Jones’ use of a “leadership committee” to lend his campaign $10 million.
Jones started his WBJ Leadership Committee under a 2021 state law that allows him to collect unlimited sums due to his role as lieutenant governor.
“Mr. Carr has the right to enjoy the equal protection of the law, especially where, as here, unequal treatment under the law burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to free speech under the First Amendment,” says the lawsuit. The suit, filed by Carr personally and by his campaign, also alleges that Jones’ use of his leadership committee violates the 14th Amendment guarantees of freedom of association and speech.
“While other candidates are bound by strict fundraising caps, Jones is using a separate political entity with no accountability — effectively giving himself a second campaign committee bankrolled by special interests,” Carr’s campaign said.
“Leadership committees were never intended to be unregulated campaign machines,” Carr spokeswoman Julia Mazzone added.
The Jones camp accused Carr of hypocrisy.
“Georgia’s lackluster attorney general defended this law two years ago,” Jones spokeswoman Kendyl Parker said. “Now, he’s running for governor and wants to challenge the same law he once defended. If hypocrisy were an Olympic sport, he’d take gold.”
Last month, the ethics commission dismissed a Carr complaint about Jones’ use of his leadership committee to lend himself $10 million, noting that Jones filed a financial disclosure in 2022 reporting his $12 million net worth but only $700,000 in liquid assets.
The ethics committee responded that the three-year-old financial disclosure report “does not form a factual and legal basis to investigate an alleged false or incorrect filing” about Jones’ recent loan to his campaign.
by Ty Tagami | Aug 6, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Another Democrat has entered the contest to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia’s highest elected office, a candidate with a history of winning statewide, albeit a while ago.
Michael Thurmond, who has held a wide variety of local and state elected positions, announced his bid for the governor’s office Wednesday.
He said he will be running on “a record of competence and service to the people in the state.”
Several Democrats are running for governor, but the biggest names are former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and current state Sen. Jason Esteves, who is also from Atlanta and was previously an elected school board member there.
Unlike them, Thurmond, 72, has appeared on ballots across the state.
His political fortunes rose from a foundation as a state representative decades ago when Democrats led the General Assembly. Then-Gov. Zell Miller, a Democrat who would later become a Republican, appointed him to lead the state Division of Family and Children Services.
Thurmond would parlay that into statewide electoral wins as a Democrat for labor commissioner in 1998, 2002, and 2006, leading the office during the Great Recession. He was a lonely successful statewide Democrat when Republicans, including then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, were sweeping the ballot.
Once out of statewide politics, Thurmond shifted to local office. The DeKalb County school board hired him as superintendent in 2013 to handle a governance and financial crisis. He would later win two terms as CEO of DeKalb County, leaving office this year after term limits prohibited another run.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary will face a statewide electorate that has continued to skew Republican, although the state’s two U.S. senators have won as Democrats.
Two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates are state Attorney General Chris Carr, who entered the race last year, and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who joined it last month.
Both are campaigning on issues such as immigration that appeal to President Donald Trump’s base of voters.
Thurmond said he hopes to get beyond “hyper-partisan” politics and sees an opening on issues such as education and medical care, noting that Georgia has among the worst records for infant and maternal mortality in the country.
Georgia consistently ranks as a top state for business but has room for quality-of-life improvements, Thurmond said, adding that he thinks his relationships with lawmakers in the GOP-led General Assembly would help him as a Democratic governor who wants to do things like expand Medicaid.
“I believe Georgia is underachieving,” he said. “We can do better, but we can’t do better when we are basically imprisoned in this world of hyper-partisan politics.”
by Ty Tagami | Aug 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — In Georgia, people can be held responsible for false imprisonment if they get police to arrest someone who did nothing wrong.
A former DeKalb County commissioner learned that costly lesson Monday in federal appeals court when judges sided with two women who are seeking $100,000 in damages and legal costs.
The story almost writes itself.
“This appeal is about a man who lost his wallet and, shortly after, his solvency. We begin with the wallet. We then turn to his bankruptcy,” starts the opinion of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. It continues: “On July 12, 2012, Stanley Watson, a DeKalb County commissioner, entered the Tanqueray Lounge in Decatur, Georgia, and saw Shenekka Bradsher sitting at the bar.”
Things went downhill quickly.
He bought her drinks and asked her to go home with him. She felt insulted and called him “big” and “greasy.”
When Watson couldn’t find his wallet, he accused her and her friend Zarinah Ali of stealing it.
He then got an off-duty police sergeant who was providing security to arrest Bradsher, the opinion says. Watson, whom the opinion says was “intoxicated,” “belligerent,” and “irate,” then briefly drove away despite the officer’s concerns about his condition. Watson returned, then a lieutenant arrived and called a major who told the lieutenant to tell the sergeant to let someone take Watson home. Watson wanted them to arrest Ali, and they told her to remain on the scene.
The sergeant wrote in his incident report that “circumstances beyond his control” prevented his arresting Watson, adding that he did not “feel right” arresting Bradsher, whom he released with a warning.
A video of the incident shows Watson threatening to call the police chief and threatening the bar with the loss of its food certification.
The next day, Watson found his wallet in his car.
The women sued, Watson filed for bankruptcy, the case got hearings in bankruptcy court and district court, then made its way to the appeals court.
The appeals court concluded that the bankruptcy court did not err in finding Watson had “willfully and maliciously” caused the confinement of the women.
The women also received a judgement against Watson for slander, but the bankruptcy court determined that Watson didn’t have to pay that $50,000. However, he remains liable for the $100,000 stemming from false imprisonment.
The moral of this story: it’s safe to relay facts to an officer and share an opinion that a person should be arrested. But one may be held liable for false imprisonment if one “actively instigates or procures” an arrest.
