Protecting Public Education in Georgia Through Community People Power

A Review of the 2026 Georgia Legislative Session

Lawmakers Made Some Attempts to Erode Public Education – We Held the Line and Built for the Future

During the recent Georgia General Assembly, the IDRA worked with advocates and community members to protect public education and build a positive vision for Georgia students as the legislative calendar rolled into its second year.

Georgia’s legislature operates on a biennial schedule: the body meets twice over two years. Any legislation filed in the first year (2025) could carry over into the second year (2026) with the chance of becoming law.

All legislation from this year that did not become law by April 2026 is finished and will have to start again at the beginning of the process with a new bill number in January 2027.

This review will focus on legislation that may have carried over from 2025 but was predominantly active in 2026. For more information on bills that carried over, you can read our 2025 legislative session wrap-up.

Here are some key legislative terms to remember:

Amendment – A change or addition to a piece of legislation that must be supported by a simple majority of legislators either in a committee or on the floor of the chamber.
Substitute – A different version of a bill, following an amendment to a bill.
Vehicle – A bill which is amended to carry language from another bill. Combined bills typically must be “germane” to one another, which in Georgia is loosely defined as being from the same Title in the Official Code of Georgia.
Stripped – A vehicle bill where the original language is completely removed and replaced with the language from another bill.
Zombie – A bill which did not survive the crossover or committee process and considered “dead,” which is then substituted into a vehicle.
Omnibus/Christmas Tree – A vehicle bill with language from several other pieces of legislation, sometimes used interchangeably with a vehicle/zombie.

*An asterisk signifies a bill IDRA supported

**A double asterisk signifies a bill IDRA did not support

This email is a digest of the Georgia legislative wrap-up.

For more details, see the full article.

See Full Wrap-Up

School Funding and Privatization Policies

Funding the Future of Public Education

At about $19 billion, K-12 education spending makes up the largest percentage of the state budget. Even so, state funding has failed to keep up with students’ modern needs, increasing pressure on local communities in the form of property taxes.

Georgia’s education budget for 2027 reflects both historic investment and growing fiscal strain. While state leaders continued to tout record K-12 funding, Gov. Brian Kemp issued more than $300 million in line-item vetoes and budget “disregards” after signing the budget, citing concerns over a projected structural deficit tied to recent tax cuts.

Education programs were among the hardest hit, including roughly $30 million in reduced school transportation funding, cuts to school safety grants and the withholding of several one-time education initiatives.

These actions underscore increasing tensions between state tax policy, rising education costs and the growing financial pressure placed on local school districts to sustain core services.

Relevant Bills

HB 463** – Income Tax Cut (passed, with amendments)
HR 1114** and HB 1116** – Full Property Tax Repeal (failed)
SB 33** – Homestead Cap Mandate (passed as vehicle)
HB 1135/SB 446** – Federal Voucher Opt-in (failed)
HB 1164/SB 472** – School Board Financial Auditing and Oversight (passed)

Attempts to Expand School Privatization

This legislative session featured an aggressive push to expand privatization in Georgia’s education system through charter school growth and private school voucher programs.

Legislators introduced proposals to increase access to Student Scholarship Organization (SSO) vouchers, broaden voucher eligibility, and extend additional public financing mechanisms to charter schools, including facilities funding traditionally unavailable to most neighborhood public schools.

Relevant Bills

HB 328** – SSO Voucher Expansion (passed, with amendments)
HB 634** – Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Voucher Clean-Up (failed)
SB 445** – Georgia Promise Scholarship Voucher Clean-Up (failed)
SB 446** – Federal Voucher Opt-in (failed)
SB 475** – Charter E-SPLOST: Education – Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) Consideration (failed)
SB 498** – Charter Facilities Authority (failed)

Culturally Sustaining, Rigorous Instruction in Classrooms

This session included a mix of proposals focused on academic rigor, civil rights protections and the role of public schools in maintaining inclusive learning environments. Together, these bills reflect competing priorities that shape how schools serve diverse student populations.

HB 1030, the Math Matters Act, which passed, emphasizes strengthening foundational math skills in early grades. Its implementation will determine whether the policy expands opportunity or reinforces existing barriers to students receiving high-quality instruction.

HB 1363 and SB 523 create a Title VI civil rights coordinator role at the state department of education and university system level, responsible for protecting students and families from discrimination based on race, color and national origin under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Relevant Bills

HB 1030 – Math Matters Act (passed)
HB 1363* and *SB 523* – Title VI Civil Rights Coordinators (passed, with amendments)

Blurring the Line Between Church & School

During the session, we saw numerous bills filed to facilitate the encroachment of religion in public schools. Originally introduced as HB 133, this bill would have mandated that all public schools adopt policies on Religious Release Time Instruction (RTRI) courses, called “Release Time Courses” in the bill and defined as “courses in religious moral instruction provided by an individual or organization independently of a public school.”

These policies would have included mandatory excused absences to participate in these courses and an optional application of academic credit.

Relevant Bills

HB 133,** HB 451** and HB 1352** – Religious Release Time (failed)
SB 523* – Title VI Civil Rights Coordinators (passed, with amendments)

School Safety & Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Over the course of the biennial legislative session, Georgia leaders proposed measures that would impact the safety of Georgia’s students. Continuing the approaches championed by HB 268 in 2025, legislative leadership focused on surveillance and security technology instead of supportive interventions that can prevent school violence and make schools safer.

However, none of the major proposals in this area passed. We encourage policymakers to use the next biennial session to explore better options for school safety.

HB 1023 would have required every public school to have a weapons detection system at each main point of entry in the building. This approach would have cost local schools billions of dollars while promoting technology that has not been shown to be effective at preventing school violence.

The bill was passed by the Senate Public Safety Committee and the House, but it did not receive a final vote on the floor of the Senate.

Relevant Bills

HB 1023** – Metal Detector Mandate (failed)
SB 497** – Student Records Expansion (failed)
SB 513** – Chronic Absenteeism (Driver’s License Penalty) (failed)

Higher Education Access & Preparation

This session included targeted efforts to expand pathways to college. But several proposals raised concerns about a shift away from established, evidence-based measures of college readiness. Rather than strengthening alignment with widely validated, norm-referenced benchmarks, some legislation proposed to move toward alternative standards with less demonstrated reliability and comparability.

Relevant Bills

HB 1064** – Classical Learning Test for Georgia Universities (failed)
SB 556* – AP Fine Arts HOPE Credit (& DREAM Funding) (passed)

Looking Ahead

Despite an increasingly challenging legislative environment, this session demonstrated the growing strength, coordination and persistence of Georgia’s public education advocates.

Through coalition organizing, student testimony and rapid-response advocacy, partners across the Georgia Coalition for Education Justice (GCEJ) helped stop some of the most harmful anti-public education legislation, while elevating a positive vision for safe, welcoming, fully-funded public schools.

Looking ahead, our work continues. As many of these proposals are likely to return in future sessions, we remain committed to deepening our coalition, supporting youth leadership, strengthening community power and advancing policies that ensure every Georgia student has access to a high-quality public education.

We are thankful for our partners, students and community members for showing up to the Capitol to advocate for their school community.

A special thanks to our intrepid Georgia team: Mikayla Arciaga, M.A.Ed., Terrence Wilson, J.D., Makiah Lyons, J.D., and Isabelle Philip.

To learn more about our policy agenda, subscribe for alerts or contact IDRA’s Georgia Advocacy Director, Mikayla Arciaga, M.A.Ed.