In today’s alert, get legislative updates and opportunities to take action on bills that will change Georgia classrooms for years to come.
You can find all the bills we’re tracking this session within IDRA’s Georgia Coalition for Education Justice bill tracker. These include troubling bills taking away the rights of trans students, potentially defunding our public schools, furthering the school-to-prison pipeline, and targeting immigrant students and their families.
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Legislative Spotlight: School Discipline & Funding
As we get closer to Sine Die (the last day of Georgia’s legislative session each year), which is April 4, we are focusing in on legislation that we think is most likely to pass. The main pushes seem to be school discipline and school funding legislation, and we’re largely in opposition to these bills.
HB 268 – School Discipline Omnibus Bill
House Bill 268 is a sweeping school discipline overhaul that would negatively shape school safety policy for years to come. It could intensify existing disparities and has concerning implications for student privacy, particularly regarding the statewide student behavior threat database it mandates. However, the bill does include some good ideas such as valuable police-interaction reporting requirements and mental health supports.
Currently, HB 268 is awaiting a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. IDRA’s Georgia team has been working hard to amend this bill and mitigate the harm it could cause, coordinating testimony and speaking with key legislators.
We recommend you reach out to the committee with your concerns, particularly regarding the database and the ease students could be added to it. The bill sponsor has been amenable to changes.
SB 61 – Tiny Terrorist Bill
Senate Bill 61 would increase punishments on certain children accused of “terroristic acts,” including felony charges and fines and moving their cases to adult court. Bills like these would criminalize children, whose brains are not yet fully developed. And it would expand the school-to-prison-pipeline. SB 61 is unnecessary when our existing school discipline systems, though flawed, already include progressive disciplinary procedures that are more effective at handling children.
We are hopeful that this bill won’t move forward, but we have heard mentions of the language in this bill being amended to HB 268 (the discipline omnibus). This would be devastating for all Georgia’s children and families, especially for students with disabilities and Black children who are already most affected by disproportionate discipline.
For this reason, we want to make very clear to the Georgia General Assembly that we oppose the language in SB 61 and do not want children to be criminalized because of mistakes that could and should be dealt with in a compassionate and proportionate manner.
SB 82 – Charter Bully Bill
SB 82 would punish school districts for denying multiple charter applications when those applications are later approved by the State Charter Schools Commission of Georgia by taking away districts’ strategic waiver privileges and charter certification for up to three years. This bill violates local control and undermines local elected officials who know what’s best for their students and their district, and it also pushes charters onto communities that may not want or need them.
This committee has passed this bill. It is now in the House Rules Committee, which means it could be added to the House Rules Calendar and come up for a vote any day now. This means we have to act fast to let representatives know that this bill is harmful for public schools and the students they serve.
HB 328 – Tax Credit Voucher
HB 328 is a tax credit voucher that would further defund our public schools and funnel taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools, which often have no guarantees of support for students with disabilities and students with disciplinary histories.
Right now, the bill is awaiting a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee. The best course of action is for you to contact them to voice your concerns and ask that they not move the bill out of committee.
We especially want to thank our Georgia Coalition for Education Justice members and other partners who advocated alongside us, from speaking with legislators directly, to testifying in committee, to mobilizing their communities against these bills.
Despite these wins, there are quite a few harmful bills that beat the buzzer and crossed over, which we’ll now have to follow through the rest of session. These include voucher bills that would defund public schools, regressive school discipline policies, legislation targeting trans students, and bills expanding and supporting charter schools.
SB 124 – Promise Scholarship Expansion
SB 124 would mandate implementation of U.S. Department of Education guidelines by the Georgia state education agency and expand the “promise scholarship” voucher to students with an active duty military parent.
Any and all expansions of this voucher program, which lacks guardrails, reporting requirements, and oversight, is bad for public schools. This is why we need to let the members of the House Education Committee know that we don’t want this bill to pass.
SB 152 – Foster (Not Foster Children) Voucher Expansion
SB 152 would expand the “promise scholarship” voucher that was signed into law last year to biological and adopted children of foster families but not foster children.
Any voucher expansion is a path to defunding our public schools, so we need to let the House Education Committee know that we oppose SB 152 and any and all voucher expansions.
Georgia Education Bills to Watch
Here is a sample of the education bills we’ll be watching for the rest of session, along with their assigned committee (so you know which hearings to watch for) and our stance. Each bill number listed below is followed by its assigned committee.
Education Bills to Watch in the House + Committee Assignments
- SB 1 (House Education) is an anti-trans sports ban. (Against)
- SB 61 (House Judiciary Non-Civil) would increase punishments on children accused of “terroristic threats,” including felony charges and fines. (Against)
- SB 74 (House Judiciary Non-Civil) would remove protections for librarians and libraries, potentially criminalizing librarians who display LGBTQ+ literature and causing libraries to proactively censor these texts for fear of fines. (Against)
- SB 82 (House Education) would expand and support charter schools, incentivizing school districts to approve them and punishing districts for denying charters. (Against)
- SB 124 (House Education) would mandate implementation of U.S. Department of Education guidelines by the Georgia state education agency and expand the “promise scholarship” voucher to students with an active duty military parent. (Against)
- SB 152 (House Education) would expand the “promise scholarship” voucher to biological and adopted children of foster families. (Against)
- SB 179 (House Education) is a school discipline bill that could intensify existing discipline disparities and has concerning implications for student privacy. It would establish a misdemeanor for parents and students who don’t adhere to its records transfer policy. In good news: it includes suicide awareness mandates for schools. (Against)
Education Bills to Watch in the Senate + Committee Assignments
- HB 38 (Senate Higher Education) expands an existing need-based aid college completion grant program. It is a step in the right direction for college access for Georgia students but does not go far enough. (For)
- HB 267 (Senate Judiciary) is a sweeping anti-trans bill including bathroom restrictions, a sports ban, and removing “gender” from the Georgia Code entirely. It is an attempt to legislate trans Georgians out of existence. (Against)
- HB 268 (Senate Judiciary) is a school discipline bill that could intensify existing disparities and has concerning implications for student privacy. However, it is less harmful than the other discipline bills we are watching and includes valuable police-interaction reporting requirements and mental health supports. (Monitoring)
- HB 328 (Senate Finance) is a tax credit voucher that would further defund public schools and funnel taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools. (Against)
For all of our bills, see IDRA’s Georgia Coalition for Education Justice bill tracker.
Tools & Resources
Learn more about IDRA’s policy recommendations for Georgia
How to Testify before the Georgia General Assembly – Infographic
Learn more about our statewide coalition, the Georgia Coalition for Education Justice
Keep up with bills using the Georgia Coalition for Education Justice bill tracker.
Keep up with all of the bills we’re keeping an eye on using the Georgia Coalition for Education Justice bill tracker, provided by IDRA.
See our Georgia Advocacy page, which links to everything our team produces from press coverage, to testimony, to issue specific advocacy tools.
