Sine Die Capitol Update

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Given two rounds of severe winter weather and the rush to early primary elections, the 2013-2014 session of the Georgia General Assembly seemed to fly by.  In case you were unable to keep up with the session, this edition of the Capitol Update offers a summary of some of the important legislation that survived to see the Governor’s desk, and some that did not.Legislative Recap

Bills sent to the Governor:

  • HB 60: This bill allows land owners/lessees in places such as bars and churches the final decision as to whether properly licensed citizens may carry concealed firearms on their premises, and removes restrictions on non-secure government buildings and public housing. This bill replaced HB 875.
  • HB 251: This bill prevents the sell of “e-cigarette” products to minors.
  • HB 697: This bill allows for the HOPE scholarship fund to cover 100% of tuition for students who have maintained satisfactory academic progress at a Georgia technical college.
  • HB 702: This bill allows for privately funded monuments containing the Ten Commandments, a portion of the Declaration of Independence, and a portion of the Georgia Constitution to be placed on the grounds of the State Capitol.
  • HB 714: This bill prevents contracted workers with the state government-school janitors, bus drivers, etc.-from receiving unemployment benefits during summer breaks.
  • HB 766: The “Work Based Learning Act” would permit schools – in collaboration with the Department of Labor and the Technical College System of Georgia – to award secondary credit for approved off campus work to students age 16 and over.
  • HB 772: This bill requires that adult applicants for and recipients of food stamps or benefits under TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) submit to drug testing if a state caseworker from the Department of Family and Children Services determines that there is a “reasonable suspicion” of drug abuse. Eligibility of children under both programs is not affected by this legislation.
  • HB 990: This bill would require legislative approval for any future expansion of Medicaid in Georgia.
  • HB 1080: This bill would allow for the placement of a privately funded monument dedicated to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to be placed on the grounds of the State Capitol.
  • SB 98: Prevents coverage for abortions under qualified health plans offered within the state, including any exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. This bill was amended to allow for consideration of an abortion if the mother’s life is at stake.
  • SB 281: This bill mandates that state employees and teachers be offered a high-deductible insurance option in the State Health Benefit Plan.
  • SB 365: This bill focuses on lowering barriers to employment for those returning from prison.  The legislation contains many of the recommendations from our Prisoner Reentry Working Group.

Bills that Failed:

  • HB 707: This bill prevents the State Insurance Commissioner from enforcing provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), local and state agencies and governments from spending money attached to the ACA, and prevents the University of Georgia from operating the navigator program that assists people who are seeking coverage under the ACA.
  • HB 885: This bill allows for the usage of medical cannabis derivatives for the treatment of patients who suffer from severe seizure disorders and encourages research on additional medical uses of cannabis. Despite many attempts at attaching this bill to other legislation, HB 885 was not passed.
  • HB 886: This bill would require the governing body of Charter Schools to hold a minimum of two public hearings to review their budget before its adoption each year.
  • HB 897: This bill would eliminate obsolete provisions, and update and clarify other provisions relating to elementary and secondary education. It is noteworthy that aspects of this legislation (Section 36) would directly impact the approval process for homeschooling. After Sen. Tippins and the Senate Education Committee drastically altered the content of this bill in relation to charter schools, the House and Senate leadership were engaged in a battle over the status of this bill.
  • SB 167: This bill calls for the creation of an advisory council to review Common Core Standards and propose changes that are “in the best interest of students, their parents, teachers, and taxpayers.” Following this bill’s “unfavorable recommendation” by the House Education Committee, Sen. Ligon attempted to add this bill to HB 897. All three amendments that would have imported this bill into HB 897 failed on the Senate Floor.
  • SB 350: This bill would begin a process of privatizing child welfare services through contracts with community-based providers.  Following the favorable recommendation of a more watered-down version of this bill by the House Judiciary Committee, Sen. Unterman attempted to attach this bill to other legislation. Shortly before Sine Die, Gov. Deal appointed the “Child Welfare Reform Commission” to further study this issue.
  • SB 397: This bill, known as Ava’s Law, mandates that state healthcare plans provide coverage children with autism. Following action in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, this bill was attached to HB 885-the Medical Marijuana Bill-and renamed the “Children’s Care Act.” Despite Sen. Unterman’s attempts to attach this bill to other legislation, SB 397 was caught in the battle between the House and the Senate and did not pass this year.

_____________________________________________________________________________ Thanks to Eric Cochling, our VP of Policy Advancement, Jamie Lord, our director of government affairs, and Jacob Stubbs, our legislative intern and John Jay Fellowship alumnus for their able contributions to this update.

Lamenting Missed Opportunities for Georgia Students

In the wake of the recently concluded legislative session, I found myself at a local charter school discussing school choice with a group of parents, teachers, and administrators.

While upbeat in many ways, the conversation was heavy with a feeling of barely-restrained desperation. It was in the air and occasionally expressed by a frown, joined with a shake of the head.

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The school’s staff explained the wonderful academic success of their students, nearly all minorities and all female, despite the statistical odds stacked against this school and others like it. At the same time they lamented how the treatment of charter schools in Georgia, which are public schools open to all students, results in their receiving much less funding per student than traditional public schools and forcing them to bear substantial additional costs.

Fewer dollars and higher costs mean that charters often must forego offering classes that are taken for granted in most public schools. Fewer dollars and higher costs mean students go without other, seemingly normal, parts of school life, like a playground, a sports field, recreation equipment, etc.

How much less funding? By my calculation, it amounts to nearly 20 percent less per student per year for state-approved charter schools. It’s that much less, yet charters – by definition – are held to a higher standard of academic achievement than traditional public schools. Unlike traditional public schools that linger forever regardless of their instructional performance or the academic success of their students, charter schools actually close for failure to meet targets. Despite the disparity in how they’re treated, charters typically perform well.

What about those additional costs? The big one for charters is the cost of renting or buying a school building, a cost that traditional public schools do not have to shoulder that can run into the many tens of thousands of dollars each month. Behind teacher pay, this is one of a charter school’s largest expenses.

For the parents in the room who were all unsatisfied with their local, traditional public schools, the issue was a lack of real alternatives. While Georgia can boast that it has some educational options, including charter schools and some private school scholarship programs, the reality is that those options are unavailable to most families.

Why? The answer is that charter schools are not present in every community and those in operation only have enough seats available for a small percentage of the state’s 1.8 million students. In a similar fashion, private school scholarships are severely limited by funding caps (this year, the cap on the tax credit scholarship was reached in the first 22 days of the year) or, by design, target only a very small group of students. The result is that waiting lists for these schools and programs often far exceed the actual number of students they are able to serve.

So what does this have to do with the legislative session, you might ask?

Well, if you were to just look at legislation that actually passed this session, you would be right to conclude that our legislature has little to do with or concern for the school choice needs of families in Georgia. You’d likely conclude that because, quite literally, nothing much happened to expand choice or to right the inequities in current education choice programs.

Now, if you followed the session from the beginning and paid close attention, you would know that the legislature had the opportunity to make serious strides in reforming the system and expanding choice, including adding more scholarships for private choice, allowing charter schools to use vacant public school buildings, and allowing charter schools to quickly replicate without unnecessary bureaucratic hoop-jumping, among others.

Yet, each opportunity ultimately withered on the vine. The unusually intense power struggle between house and senate Republicans, coupled with the active efforts of at least one committee chairman to kill school choice legislation, meant that nothing very meaningful survived to see the Governor’s pen.

So the children who desperately need a lifeline tossed to them are left to flounder another year in a system they didn’t choose and can’t leave. The powers-that-be and the protectors of the status quo win another round.

Who knew a prison could be so effectively

erected using only a zip code?

Some say that reform was mostly stopped this year because of election year politics; and we hear from some elected officials that next year will be different. After all, they say, we can’t do anything controversial in an election year; we can’t afford to anger the wrong constituency.

But wait, bills related to gun rights and abortion were hardly uncontroversial, yet they passed. Favors were called in and political capital was spent to insure their success. So being “controversial” couldn’t be the excuse….right?

Could it be, instead, that the parents of children most in need of rescue from failing schools vote neither often enough to warrant the risk, nor in the “right” way when they do? A skeptic – this skeptic – might answer “yes.” It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion. Of course, it doesn’t help that these same families are not typically campaign donors either.

It takes real courage to stand up to entrenched thinking in public education and I’m thankful for those few, brave elected officials who have done so, because they are truly standing up for our children. They recognize that few things in life offer an escape from poverty and a path to self-sufficiency as effectively as a quality education. But, what’s more, they understand that elections, holding office, and wielding power are not simply ends in themselves.

Here’s to hoping they receive reinforcements very soon because the children of Georgia can’t afford to continue to wait.

Not All Voices Have Choices… But They Continue to Advocate for More

Too often, parents in Georgia who have access to great school choice options fail to take advantage of them because many parents do not know that they exist. This is a constant dilemma that the school choice movement faces. To help address this, we partnered with all-girls charter school Ivy Preparatory Academy in Norcross to host a School Choice Lunch & Learn last month. Most of the parents, surprisingly, knew of their individual school choice options for their students. Some shared stories of how their pursuits were failed attempts because they lacked charter school options in their districts or because the financial assistance they were eligible for from the special needs scholarship left them with a remaining tuition balance far beyond what they could afford.

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Though we have choice options (i.e. public school transfers, special needs scholarship, tax credit scholarships, and charter schools), this event helped to confirm for me that Georgia still has a long way to go to ensure that families are not limited in access to quality education because of their lack of income or the zip code in which they live.

 

“Georgia still has a long way to go to ensure that families are not limited in access to quality education”

 

Together, we can make a difference in the school choice movement and expand available options for students in need of better education or learning environments. I am so proud of those who attended and shared their personal stories and challenges in pursuing school choice. These parents also expressed their strong desire to stay engaged in the movement because they know too well how it feels not to have access to viable choice options and they want to remove these barriers for generations to come. Will you join them in this movement?

If you are interested in learning more about school choice or would like to become an advocate, please visit the Georgia Parents Alliance.

Fellowship Friday: An Evening Under the Stars Boosts STEM Learning

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This week the Atlanta Science Festival offered a variety of events scattered across the city to indulge the curiosity of students young and old. As a self-admitted nerd, I was delighted to attend an event last night with the company of my 9 year old brother.

Prompted by his 3rd grade studies of space, my brother and I took full advantage of the festival by attending an open house at Agnes Scott College’s Bradley Observatory. The evening was hosted by the Astronomy Department, and visitors were able to learn about moon phases, view a planetarium show (my favorite part!), and tour the telescope tower amongst other science activities.

As we worked our way through the activity stations, I was thrilled to see my brother enhance his knowledge of the cosmos through such a fun community-based event. It is not every day that a student gets to engage professionals who work in unique areas such as astronomy. My brother really seemed to benefit from the opportunity to ask the professors as many questions as he could. Likewise, conversations with the undergraduate tour guides were a highlight for me. Hearing one student’s aspiration to work for NASA and another student’s study of life in space, I secretly hoped this experience planted a seed of interest in my brother.

Beyond looking through a telescope, my evening at the observatory emphasized the continuing need to spark interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). In the context of the College and Career Pathways initiative, this is particularly vital as America’s economy becomes more rooted in technical and specialized industries. Events such the Atlanta Science Festival are incredibly important as they not only offer early exposure to the careers of the future, but also facilitate partnerships that benefit schools, businesses, and families alike.

(If you would like to take part in Atlanta Science Week yourself, don’t miss Exploration Expo at the Georgia World Congress Center!)

Courtesy of Georgia Public Policy Foundation — Eric Cochling, Kyle Wingfield Dissect 2014 General Assembly

This week GCO’s Eric Cochling spoke at a “2014 Legislative Roundup” event hosted by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, their summary is included below:

Good enough on some levels but not good enough across-the-board.

That was their analysis of the 2014 General Assembly from Eric Cochling and Kyle Wingfield at our sold-out policy breakfast on Wednesday, March 26.  Cochling is vice president of public policy at the Georgia Center for Opportunity and Wingfield is the conservative voice on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial pages.

“You saw a lot of excitement about certain ideas whether it was welfare reform or new school choice concepts coming through that made it through a chamber with vast majorities voting in favor of it but then it goes on to die in the other chamber,” Cochling said.  “I would characterize the session as some positive things happened but many missed opportunities for a truly conservative policy movement forward.”

“Thirty-seven constitutional amendments were introduced and two will be on the ballot this fall,” Wingfield said.  “Several would have been very good and would represent great progress for Georgia.  They are not going to be there and the prospects of getting them on the ballot I would argue will only get worse in future years.”

Issues discussed in this YouTube video include criminal justice reform, federal balanced budget constitutional amendment initiatives, child welfare and foster care, transportation investment, tax credit scholarships and school choice, state income tax and pension reform, and Medicaid expansion and improved access to health care for all Georgians.

This content is courtesy of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, and can be seen in its original form HERE.