Georgia’s Students Deserve Better

It has been a difficult year for Georgia’s students. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the inequities that already existed in our state’s public-school system. Most public-school students in Georgia belong to families with limited income,¹ and those students have relied on schools to receive the resources, food, technology, and stability that they need to stay safe and continue learning.  Our schools have had limited resources to meet the needs of students and their families, so this has required considerable time, effort, and creativity from teachers and school officials.

Before the 2021 legislative session started, Georgia’s public schools faced $1 billion in budget cuts. This is in addition to the $100 million that is already diverted annually to private school voucher programs in our state. Earlier this month during the state of the state, Governor Kemp committed to working with the legislature to re-allocate over $600 million to Georgia’s Dept of Education given the new projections for state revenue. This would do a lot to restore the budget, but it is not clear that state legislators are ready to follow these recommendations.

Instead of focusing on providing additional support and resources for teachers, officials, and students, Georgia legislators introduced HB60² which proposes diverting hundreds of millions in public education dollars to expand private school voucher programs. Beyond the outrageous tax-payer giveaway to private school programs, this bill also punishes public schools that have not been able to restart in-person instruction by diverting funds for those public schools to private schools. This proposal was introduced as Georgia recently surpassed an astonishing 700,000 COVID-19 cases.³ The proposal would make it nearly impossible for the public to track the funds or hold these private institutions accountable to public school standards.

Not only does this proposal divert desperately needed public funds at a time when our public schools need these resources to safely reopen, but it relies on models that are unproven at best, and ineffective at worst.⁴ Only a handful of states have private school vouchers or Education Savings Account (ESA) vouchers. So far, courts have stopped two ESA voucher programs from going into effect following legal challenges. In the few states where this model has been implemented, it has been prone to fraud and abuse,⁵ including in Arizona where a state audit found rampant misuse of public funds.⁶ In Mississippi, a joint legislative committee found that one-third of funds for ESA vouchers for students with disabilities in the state were unused because parents either could not find a private school to meet their child’s needs or private schools refused to admit voucher students.⁷ Georgia’s existing tax credit voucher program has been found to fund discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ private schools,⁸ and a recent state audit found that the program lacks the necessary measures to ensure accountability and transparency.⁹

In addition to the challenges with this model, private schools are mostly concentrated in Georgia’s metro areas, so rural students across our state would be most adversely impacted by HB60. According to national data, over 90% of families in metro areas have access to private schools compared to 34% of students in rural communities, and if rural students manage to gain access to private schools, they usually endure long and costly commutes. HB60 seeks to further dilute public school funding in the very parts of the state where enrollment is expected to grow or outpace urban school districts, and where students facing hardship need real support.¹⁰ Georgia’s legislature should focus on funding its public schools that serve the vast majority of the state’s students, not expanding harmful private school voucher programs. HB60 would deal yet another devastating blow to public schools in a state that cannot afford it.

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