ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia could allocate extra money to educate poor public school students for the first time under a House budget approved on an 171-4 vote Tuesday.
However, the $28 million proposed is far less than what advocates argue is necessary.
House Bill 68, which would spend $37.7 billion in state money and $73.1 billion overall in the year beginning July 1, advances to the Senate for more debate. It would further boost spending on prisons, provide another bonus payment for some state retirees and raise judges’ salaries.
Georgia’s 40-year-old K-12 school funding system provides extra money to school districts with low property wealth that can’t collect much in property taxes. But Democrats and others argue that the state needs to spend more on poor students themselves.
“Every low-income student that comes to school is coming from a household that has additional needs,” said Rebecca Sibilia, who has long been active in efforts to realign school funding. Sibilia, the executive director of Ed Fund, was an advisor on former Gov. Nathan Deal’s failed attempt to rewrite Georgia’s funding formula in the 2010s.
About 36% of Georgia’s public school students — 625,000 of the state’s 1.75 million students — come from impoverished households, according to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett said lawmakers aren’t sure yet how they will distribute the money. But $28 million is only about $45 per low-income student.
Sibilia and other experts say schools need to spend at least $1,000 extra per student to begin seeing results or $625 million statewide. And more money may lead to bigger improvements. Democratic Sen. Jason Esteves of Atlanta, who made his own proposal earlier this year, said he’d like to see a funding boost of about $2 billion.
Hatchett suggested more money could follow in later years.
“This is the beginning of a need that has been heard,” Hatchett, a Republican who represents the high-poverty school district of Dublin, said Monday.
While 45 states and the District of Columbia spend more money on poor students, according to Sibilia, Georgia is one of five states that do not. The others are Alaska, Idaho, South Dakota and West Virginia.
Poor children typically come to school behind those who were born to wealthier parents. That means districts need to intervene to improve academic achievement. And districts can spend more on transportation, meals and after-school programs for low-income students, Sibilia said.
Overall, the House plan spends an additional $98 million on public education over what Gov. Brian Kemp recommended, for total spending of $16 billion.
Budget writers earmarked $25 million to create a database on troubled students, the centerpiece of a school safety bill the House passed last week.
There’s also $19.6 million to provide a $20,000 mental health counseling grant for every public middle school and high school. Schools could hire their own employees or contract with others.
The state would spend another $10.8 million to hire literacy coaches to help teachers improve reading instruction in kindergarten through third grade. Georgia would also spend $2 million to research standards for literacy coaches.
There’s $10 million for Georgia to pick up part of the tab for afterschool and summer enrichment programs, replacing some federal pandemic relief money. The House also wants to spend $5 million to expand the number of school social workers, in part to bring frequently absent students back to class.
The House proposal would have Georgia borrow money to pay for some capital projects after borrowing nothing this year. Selling bonds to borrow $321 million, plus cutting another $75 million in capital projects would help give lawmakers room to spend elsewhere. Georgia lawmakers can’t spend above the $33.7 billion in state revenue that Kemp has forecast for the budget. That means that to increase spending somewhere, they have to cut spending elsewhere.
The House would also cut the amount that Georgia would spend on a new voucher program to $46 million from the $141 million Kemp had proposed. House lawmakers said they don’t project more than $46 million in demand in the first year of the program for the $6,500 vouchers, which can be spent on private schools or home-schooling.
