IDRA Georgia Education Policy Alert – March 5, 2025

This week’s Georgia Education Policy Alert includes legislative updates and opportunities to take action on good bills that would change Georgia classrooms for the better.

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 targeting trans students, impacting education funding, furthering the school-to-prison pipeline, and attacking immigrant students and families.

Make sure you keep receiving these notices by subscribing to IDRA’s Georgia Education Policy Alert!

And please tell your friends! Our alerts are available in Spanish too.

Legislative Updates

Thursday, March 6 is Crossover Day. This means that any bills that have not been passed by one chamber and sent to the other will be effectively dead for the rest of this year.

We have seen far more stacked hearings as legislators rush through bills they want to cross over. This means we have just a few days and often very little notice to try to block bad bills from passage and push our good bills over.

Take Action!

In the House: Ask your Representative to vote against the following bill if/when it comes up on the floor.

HB 602 – Rescinding state scholarships from student protestors

In the House: Ask Chairman Erwin of the House Education Committee, to hear the following bills.

HB 42 is a long-needed adjustment to support our public school transportation systems.
HB 245 adjusts the funding formula to allocate funding for students living in poverty.
HB 310 would provide grant funding to pay student-teachers who staff public schools.

In the Senate: Ask your Senator to vote against the following bill if/when it comes up on the floor.

SB 120 – Bans diversity, equity and inclusion in Georgia’s public ed institutions

Last Week with the Georgia Team

Last week, the Georgia team supported and participated in the Fund Georgia’s Future Advocacy Day with our Dunwoody Civic Action Cohort!

It was an action packed day, especially with 12 of our students from our Dunwoody High School Civic Action Cohort coming along for the ride. The purpose of the coalition’s advocacy day was to raise awareness for bills that would give fair funding for all Georgia students.

In the morning, our high school student Laila Erold gave a powerful testimony against SB 120, a sweeping anti-diversity bill which would set Georgia back and make schools less safe for all students. The bill has been passed out of the Senate Higher Ed Committee and could go to a vote before Crossover Day.

Later on, our students analyzed and discussed bill language, attended the Fund Georgia’s Future lobby day opener to hear from elected officials, and sat in the gallery to watch the legislators debate and vote on bills.

Our students participated in the Fund Georgia’s Future Press Conference, where we had two speakers!

DeAndrea Byrd, a parent and our Georgia Education Policy Fellow, spoke at the press conference about the importance of updating Georgia’s outdated funding formula. Additionally, Dunwoody high school teacher Angela Williams-Pitkonen, spoke at the conference with the program’s students standing behind them.

Later, high school student Victoria Georgia spoke with the media about her experiences growing up attending an underfunded school in Stone Mountain. She expressed that students living in poverty need additional funding. She asks that the Georgia General Assembly pass a Poverty Weight bill, three of which are currently sitting in committee and have yet to cross over, including SB 128 and HB 245.

We finished off the day at the Senate Education & Youth Committee!

We bring students to the Capitol to make sure they have the resources they need to advocate for themselves and their communities.

We’re working to expand our program, so if you know any teachers or students who might be interested, please email IDRA’s Education Policy Fellow Isabelle Philip at isabelle.philip@idra.org for more information.