ATLANTA (CN) — Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a series of education related bills into law on Tuesday, including a controversial measure that establishes a new publicly funded private education subsidy for K-12 students.
Senate Bill 233 provides a $6,500 school voucher to families with eligible students in low-performing public school districts to use for private school tuition or to homeschool.
Kemp, a Republican, signed the legislation at a ceremony in front of the Georgia State Capitol.
“This legislation has always been about one thing: providing every Georgia child the opportunity to get the education that they deserve,” he said, adding that it “breaks down barriers and opens doors” for students.
The bill caps the state's investment into the program at 1% of the state’s Quality Basic Education formula budgeted for K-12 public education, which comes out to $141 million annually to cover tuition for about 21,500 students.
Although students are required to spend at least two semesters at a public school in order to qualify, kindergartners are qualified automatically. Families can only use the voucher if their child's school is ranked by state accountability measures in the bottom 25% of schools.
Opponents of the bill, however, say that low-ranking public schools should trigger an investment of support from the state and not a divestment of funds.
The bill not only diverts tax-payer funds from public schools, but also benefits wealthier families and neglects the most impoverished, as the grant does not cover all the costs associated with attending a private school, Mikayla Arciaga, the Georgia Advocacy Director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, said.
Opponents of the bill argue that by giving state-funded vouchers to families who already have access to and can afford private school, homeschooling, and other educational costs, revenues that states could have spent on public education and other critical services are reduced over time.
Tracey Nance — a Georgia elementary school teacher who was awarded the state's 2022 teacher of the year — said a vast majority of parents and educators do not support voucher programs.
Nance noted that while public schools must adhere to federal civil rights protections, students using vouchers to attend private schools can be explicitly or implicitly denied opportunities or face disciplinary action based on their race and ethnicity, gender presentation and disability.
Many private school policies explicitly waive students’ protections and rights under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to have additional services for their learning needs, resulting in students with disabilities likely being denied access to the voucher program.
Heather Scalzitti, legislative chair of the Georgia Parent Teacher Association and parent of a child in public school, said lawmakers should divert funds into more critical, underfunded and neglected areas of education such as nutrition and mental health services instead.
"We've been advocating for over 60 years that healthy, nutritious meals help stimulate the brain and help students perform better," Scalzitti said.
During the 2023 legislative session, Kemp vetoed a bipartisan measure that would have funded free and reduced-price meals to K-12 students in the state. However, the state school board approved $6.3 million in federal funds to revive the initiative, allowing a family of 3 children to receive free lunch if they earn less than $32,318 annually, and a reduced-price lunch for families between 130% and 185% of the federal poverty level.
Under the bill, vouchers will be prioritized for families with household incomes below 400% of the federal poverty level, amounting to $120,000 for a family of four.
"Families at 400% of the poverty level are allowed to divert funds, while families below 130% are denied a free school lunch," Nance said.
There is also still no wide scale data to show that students are better off from an academic achievement standpoint with the use of vouchers, said Fred Jones, the Senior Policy & Advocacy Director at the Southern Education Foundation.
Jones also noted the prejudicial origins of public funds being used towards private schools, instead of public schools that continue to serve a disproportionate share of Black students.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Southern states enacted as many as 450 laws and resolutions attempting to evade the desegregation of public schools, many of which expressly authorized the systematic transfer of public assets and monies to private schools.
In 1961, Georgia passed a bill to provide tax-funded scholarships and grants for students to attend any non-sectarian private school, doling out roughly $218,000 — equating to about $3.6 million in terms of relative income value — to finance the scholarships of more than 1,500 students in private schools.
While none of the new laws specifically mentioned “race” or racial segregation, each had the effect of obstructing Black students from attending all-white public schools.
"This system wastes tax payers' money. I would rather our public dollars be channeled into learning items that actually show a difference in improving academic achievement and findings ways to strengthen our public school system," Jones said.
Different versions of so-called school choice proposals in Georgia failed over recent years as a number of Republican legislators from rural areas sided with Democratic lawmakers in criticizing the expansion of a voucher program that local school officials contended would cost them funding.
While the law goes into effect on July 1, Kemp said the program would first be available in the fall 2025 school year.
Kemp signed a half-dozen other education-related bills on Tuesday.
House Bill 409 will impose a $1,000 fine for passing a stopped school bus. Senate Bill 351 mandates schools teach about the risks of social media, with $2,500 fines for platforms that don’t employ efforts to verify users are at least 16 and $10,000 fines for porn sites that don’t confirm users are 18.
Senate Bill 395 requires schools and government buildings to have overdose-reversal drugs like Narcan on site, while also banning the use of puberty blockers for Georgia youth.
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