by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Mar 2, 2015
Safe Harbor/Rachel’s Law Act – sponsored by Sen. Renee Unterman, R-Buford
Georgia legislators, led by Sen. Renee Unterman, R-Buford, are seeking to tighten Georgia’s existing sex trafficking laws. The combination of Senate Bill (SB) 8 and Senate Resolution (SR) 7 would help create a new Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund, using new $2,500 fines on convicted traffickers and an annual $5,000 fee on adult entertainment establishments to raise money for the fund. Explaining the purpose for charging adult entertainment establishments an annual fee to raise money for this fund, SB 8 says:
“The General Assembly finds that it is necessary and appropriate to adopt uniform and reasonable fees and regulations to help address the deleterious secondary effects, including but not limited to, prostitution and sexual exploitation of children, associated with adult entertainment establishments…The General Assembly finds that a correlation exists between adult live entertainment establishments and the sexual exploitation of children. The General Assembly finds that adult live entertainment establishments present a point of access for children to come into contact with individuals seeking to sexually exploit children. The General Assembly further finds that individuals seeking to exploit children utilize adult live entertainment establishments as a means of locating children for the purpose of sexual exploitation.”
SB 8 sets out the framework of the proposal while SR 7 seeks amendment to the Georgia Constitution by asking Georgians for permission to create the new fund. A governor-appointed commission would manage this fund and the effort. The money would be used to pay for physical and mental health care, housing, education, job training, child care, legal help and other services for sexually exploited victims.
In addition to the new fines, the Bill would require convicted traffickers be listed on the state sex offender registry – something which surprisingly doesn’t happen now.
Legislators are working together to merge Unterman’s version of the proposal with a similar House version, House Bill (HB) 244, with hopes to assure final passage. The Bill passed through the Senate on a 52-3 vote, and is now working its way through the House Committee for Juvenile Justice.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Jan 8, 2015
With Congress returning to work this week and the Georgia General Assembly doing so on Monday, many voters are watching to see what issues are tackled (or not) in the coming months.
A new poll released this week suggests Georgia lawmakers ought to carefully consider advancing school choice.
Georgia voters rank K-12 education as the most likely issue to motivate them to vote in 2016: more than jobs, more than taxes, more than pre-K, more than any other single issue.
It makes sense. People believe students deserve an excellent, effective, education. If a child graduates from high school, he/she is much more likely to have success in life, family, career and society. If a child doesn’t graduate, or graduates without the knowledge and skills necessary to pursue college or a career, that child is much more likely to struggle. It doesn’t mean they are doomed. It just means they’ve got a tougher road ahead, one more likely to lead to detours involving public assistance, incarceration, family instability and so on.
The instinct of voters (and humans, generally) is that every child deserves a shot at a great education that prepares them for success in life. The problem, if we are willing to be honest, is that far too many of Georgia’s students are in schools that aren’t meeting their needs. Maybe it’s a chronically poor-performing school. Maybe it’s a generally good school that just isn’t the right fit for that child.
Perhaps this is why more than two in three Georgia voters favor school choice (66%/29%). What’s more interesting is that support for school choice generally, and certain programs specifically, transcends traditional partisan political and demographic boundaries.
For instance, sixty-three percent (63%) favor the creation of the Georgia Opportunity Scholarship Program, which would “allow parents to use the money the state has set aside for their child’s education to send them to the public, private or church-run school of their choice”—even when told this is sometimes referred to as a “voucher,” traditionally a highly polarizing term (support is higher without including the “v-word” disclaimer).
Dig a little deeper in the poll’s crosstabs and the story gets more interesting. Seventy-one (71%) of GOP primary voters favor creating this type of scholarship program. That may not be a surprise. But it turns out almost two-in-three Black voters – regardless of partisan affiliation – support the program, even more than White voters (64%/61%). Support among female voters – again, regardless of partisan affiliation – is stronger than that of men (67%/59%).
Eight-five percent (85%) of Georgia voters support Georgia’s current Special Needs Scholarship, currently the state’s only K-12 voucher program, including a whopping 92% of Black voters and 81% of GOP primary voters.
If I were an elected official (mercifully, for everyone, I have no desire to ever hold public office), an issue that garners 60% or more support from every key demographic: men/women, White/Black, younger/older, would be a dream. Passing a law giving more students access to an effective education also happens to be a political winner.
Mom and apple pie, meet school choice.
As the pollster concludes in his official memo: “BOTTOM LINE: Georgians are showing a strong propensity to favor increasing school choice programs. Even in a highly polarized political environment, these policies garner support across many key voter groups. As the new legislative session approaches, lawmakers should be mindful of voters’ desires to increase educational options for students and parents and make scholarship programs more inclusive.”
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Dec 16, 2014
With your support, we have been working hard to make Georgia a state where ALL have a real chance to prosper.
In recent months GCO has:
• advocated for ideas and policies that will expand access to quality education, particularly for those for whom such access is severely limited
• recommended alternatives to Medicaid expansion that would increase Georgians’ access to quality healthcare. These recommendations have been presented to Georgia’s lawmakers and to many of our nation’s governors
• produced prisoner reentry policy recommendations—now signed into law and adopted by the Governor’s office — that increase the likelihood of ex-offenders finding and maintaining work, a key to successful reentry and public safety
• incubated Breakthrough Ambassadors, a community-based, mostly student-led program that prepares students for success both academically and professionally
But our work can’t stop here. Georgia continues to have high dropout rates, unwed childbearing rates, incarceration rates, and unemployment rates. Our obligation is to identify the barriers that stand in the way of human flourishing and remove them so that the men, women and children of today and tomorrow have a real chance to prosper.
We cannot seize opportunity on behalf of other individuals and families; but we can create a social, economic and even spiritual climate in which individuals and families are more likely to seize opportunity for themselves – to receive a great education, to find a steady job, to develop healthy relationships, and to form a healthy and stable family life.
The impact we’ve had – and the success we will have – is tied to your investment in our work. Simply put, we stand on your shoulders. But more importantly, so do people like
• the tens of thousands of other kids benefitting from better access to a quality education;
• the hundreds of kids we’re working with in public schools who are seeing a clearer path to prosperity;
• the thousands of former prisoners who will safely and peacefully reenter society, reconnect with their families, and find jobs; and
• the tens of thousands of families that will have access to quality healthcare through healthcare charities.
In other words, your impact is big!
A significant portion of our annual budget – and therefore our impact – is determined by gifts that are received during December. Will you consider a gift of $50, $100, $250, $500 or more? A gift of any size will make a difference. You may make a donation online here.
As always, please know that we are thankful for you and your generosity.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Nov 7, 2014
Below are some of the items, donated by many of our generous community members and businesses, which you can bid on at the Breakthrough Showcase event on November 15th. All funds raised will go to support Breakthrough Norcross and its partner organizations.
Click here to see more about the event.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Oct 14, 2014
Join us at the College Football Hall of Fame on December 4, 2014
to celebrate the life and legacy of the late Jack Kemp.
Register to Attend
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Jul 1, 2014
Breakthrough Norcross, after nearly two years of working toward establishing a collective impact project to improve educational outcomes for Norcross students, partnered with Beaver Ridge Elementary to offer a Robotics camp for their rising fourth and fifth graders. Students who are interested in the subject of Robotics were able to sign up for a weeklong day camp over the summer, and, as a part of my summer internship with Georgia Center for Opportunity, I had the opportunity to check out what was going on at the Robotics Camp – dubbed Beaver Bots – last Thursday.
Environmentally, the robotics room is a collection of the parts, programs, and challenges for the robots that would be the primary tool of the weeklong camp. Two teachers facilitate the camp for approximately 30 students, who all spend most of their time in the robotics room. The Mindstorms, as the machines are officially named, are designed by Lego with the capacity to carry out a series of complex tasks. Various challenge courses are then set up in order to test the robots and their human operator through a diverse array of task completion.
The teachers lead each of the kids through the tasks at a very basic level that eventually handed over full reign of the robots and their programming to the kids. In fact, the teachers made it their mission to equip and not baby their students, and the kids loved it. The kids would cheer each other on through their successes and encourage each other through their missteps. Both boys and girls were learning to wrestle with the complex tasks assigned to them, and this development of perseverance – or grit as some call it – served as the crux for success in future tasks for the club.
One of the students was so excited about her experience there that she couldn’t help but exclaim how much she loved working with her friends and other students. She remarked that it wasn’t about winning or losing, although that was a component of the camp; but it was about trying your hardest and having fun with friends.
Of course, there were winners and losers, but the winners encouraged the losers, and the losers cheered on the winners; and everyone was having fun. Furthermore, and most significantly, the kids were not criticizing each other for their initial shortcomings on the challenge field. In fact, they outright refused to submit to failure, consistently returning to the drawing board until they found success.
Kids are playing with robots, encouraging each other, and carving a pathway into higher learning. It sounds utopic and in some regards it really is. It’s the start of something great, albeit unfinished. It’s just one small part of a larger story that’s unfolding through Breakthrough Norcross, and I have a feeling that the best is yet to come.
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This blog was written by Patrick DeMartino. Patrick is pursuing a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia. This is his second summer interning with GCO working to support our Solution Delivery work.
