School voucher bill es in Ga. House by a narrow margin
ATLANTA, Ga. - Your tax dollars could be used to put some Georgia students through private school.
The Georgia House narrowly ed a controversial bill to use state dollars to pay for a portion of a private school for kids in low-performing schools.
Speaker Jon Burns threw his weight behind the legislation at a House Committee meeting on Monday.
“We are going to empower our parents to make the best educational decisions for their children and give them the tools to succeed for generations to come!” the Screven County Republican said in a statement after Thursday’s vote.
Gov. Brian Kemp has stated publicly he wanted to see school choice legislation ed this year.
The bill ed the House floor by one vote. The bill needed a two-thirds majority and the bill received 91 votes.
Senate Bill 233 called The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act would give $6,500 vouchers to students already attending public schools that score in the lowest 25% in the state.
People who want the vouchers feel it gives parents a choice. Those against vouchers feel it pulls funding away from public schools that need resources
Republican Representative Mesha Mainor switched parties last year. She felt differently from a lot of Democrat lawmakers who opposed the bill.
“In District 56 some of these schools have 2-3% reading and math proficiency, which means 97-98% can’t read or do math, but yet some of our colleagues want to tell you that it is okay,” said Mainor.
Democrat Representative Debbie Buckner is concerned about funding for already struggling schools.
“Because funding is based on the number of children in the desk and if the desks are empty because children went elsewhere with the voucher, there will be less money for the schools,” said Buckner.
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ers like Jacquelyn Harn with Americans for Prosperity say the bill could open doors for students and provide them with a better education.
“We believe that funding should follow the student, in a sense, to where if a student is trapped in any type of school that’s not suiting their individual needs, since all children are different in that aspect, they should have the right to be able to take that funding and go to whichever school best fits their system. Or best fits them as a child,” Harn said.
But critics, like Democratic House Rep. David Wilkerson from District 38, say this means taxpayer dollars from all across Georgia will likely only end up benefiting kids in larger metro areas like Atlanta, Macon and Savannah.
“If it would , it would probably be the biggest redistribution of wealth from rural counties to the metro area,” Wilkerson said. “These rural counties don’t have private schools. And so, what’s going to happen is all the private schools in the metro areas are going to get a brand-new batch of students, or the students that are already there are going to get money.”
Republican lawmakers are hoping to get the bill pushed through by the end of the current legislative session, which will wrap up March 28.
The Georgia effort is part of a nationwide GOP wave favoring education savings s following the pandemic and fights over what children should learn in public schools. But school choice hasn’t been a given in all Republican states. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s yearlong voucher push foundered after being sunk by rural GOP opponents. Like in that state, most Republican opponents in Georgia represent rural areas, where public schools are centerpieces of their communities.
The core of Georgia’s plan remains the same as last year, but it’s been combined with provisions proposed in other bills. Those include writing current teacher pay raises into Georgia’s K-12 school funding formula, letting public school prekindergarten programs qualify for state aid to construct and furnish buildings, letting students enroll in other public school districts that will accept them and increasing tax credits for gifts to public schools.
The language on the teacher raises is partly symbolic — lawmakers have been increasing pay using budget bills in recent years.
ers argue vouchers for private school tuition, home schooling supplies, therapy, tutoring or even early college courses for high school students will help those in poorly performing schools.
Opponents say the program would divert needed public school funding and subsidize institutions that discriminate against people who don’t share their social and religious views. They also argued that at $6,500, poor recipients wouldn’t get enough to pay private school tuition. Democrats tried unsuccessfully Wednesday to amend the measure to require private schools to accept all applicants, and to require all teachers at participating private schools to be state-certified.
“I’m upset that we can’t create even a bottom-level standard of quality for private schools,” said Stephen Owens, the education director at the liberal-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. “Otherwise, this feels overly deferential to private schools, not kids.”
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