(Georgia Recorder) — Georgia lawmakers return to work Monday in Atlanta. January 13 marks the beginning of the 2025 legislative session. The session lasts for 40 non-consecutive days and is expected to wrap up around late March or early April. During that time, Georgia’s elected leaders will ponder everything from relief for people harmed by Hurricane Helene to protections for in vitro fertilization procedures.
With more than 1.7 million students in Georgia’s public schools – and with pre-K-12 education making up the largest single chunk of the state’s $36.1 billion yearly budget at 38% – how to educate young Georgians always inspires much deliberation and debate under the Gold Dome.
This year, expect school safety to take up a lot of the discussion, but education leaders also hope to tackle topics like lowering pre-K costs for Georgia parents and banning transgender girls from girls’ sports.
MORE 2025 legislative session to address range of issues from IVF to gun laws
School Safety
Speaking to reporters at a press event hosted by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education Friday, House Education Chairman Chris Erwin, a Homer Republican, said legislation will center around three focuses: providing mental health services in schools, fostering better communication between school districts and state agencies like the Department of Juvenile Justice or the Division of Family and Children’s Services to identify students who may put others at risk and trying to reduce caseloads for counselors, school psychologists and social workers.
“So again, priority number one, we’ve got to secure the schools 100%,” he said. “But those three areas surfaced in our discussion, and there ought to be plenty of discussion in both chambers about those.”
Gov. Brian Kemp has backed spending increases for school safety in recent years, but September’s deadly shooting attack at Apalachee High School in Winder has renewed calls for greater protections. Kemp is scheduled to discuss his education and school safety priorities Monday.
Transgender athletes
Following recommendations from a Senate study committee, House Speaker Jon Burns said Thursday that the House would support legislation aimed at preventing transgender girls from playing girls’ sports in schools.
“We want them to have the opportunity to excel and to win, to be first, but they need a level playing field, so the girls will participate against girls, compete against girls, and boys will participate against boys,” he said.
LGBTQ advocates say transgender people make up a small portion of the population, and transgender people who also excel in competitive sports are even more rare, and that such laws alienate vulnerable children for political reasons.
Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones has also listed a transgender sports ban as a priority. In his remarks to reporters, Burns seemed to downplay the importance of the legislation.
“That would be one of the things we’ll address during the early part of the session. It’s not our only priority, but it is one of the issues that we will address when it comes to how we’re addressing issues in our school systems,” he said.
Pre-K funding
Lawmakers from both parties agree that child care for the youngest Georgians is too expensive in many parts of the state and that high costs keep too many new parents from going back to work. Where they differ is what to do about it.
Some Democrats like Atlanta Sen. Elena Parent support tapping into Georgia’s $11 billion-plus surplus to create a trust fund. The idea would be to invest a billion-plus dollars into the fund and pay for pre-K programming with a portion of the fund’s yearly payouts.
“This one-time allocation from the undesignated reserve would be able to continually enhance the economy and the well-being of Georgia’s kids and families without additional investment, and it would truly be a generational investment and shift for the current, fairly inadequate and bleak landscape that we currently have,” she said.
House Higher Education Committee Chair Chuck Martin, an Alpharetta Republican, said he’s skeptical the math will add up.
“It is a good goal to have. I’m hesitant to sit here as a long-term House member or long-term member of the Legislature and say that we can drop X number of dollars over there and it’ll pay for it forever because if we’ve seen nothing else in state and local government, those things tend to get tapped, even if they have constitutional handcuffs on them, or you don’t get the return you thought you were going to get and you’ve ended up making promises to people we can’t keep.”
Jones has proposed implementing new tax credits to relieve high daycare prices.
Funding Formula
The formula that determines how much state money goes to pay for education is called Quality Basic Education. Lawmakers have been trying for years without success to update the 40-year-old formula in the hopes of spreading the money around more fairly. Education advocates have specifically called for the addition of a factor that would send more money to schools where a large number of students come from families dealing with poverty.
Erwin said he’s optimistic, adding that a poverty weight is likely, but he also wants lawmakers to consider ways to use QBE to address discrepancies in literacy and school safety.
“I do think there’s a very good possibility that we can pass some modernization of the QBE formula,” he said. “I also want to point out that it is a steep mountain to climb. We’ve talked about it, we’ve been working on this for a long, long time, and it hasn’t occurred to any massive amounts.”
But there’s only so many dollars to go around, and few politicians would likely to be happy to go back to constituents with a funding plan that delivers less money to their local schools.
“We have to really gather hands across party lines, across geographic areas, urban, suburban, rural, and understand that doing this, there may be some winners and some losers in terms of money, but it’s deploying the money in the best way to serve Georgia as a whole,” said Martin.
“We need to realize we’ve got to put the greater good ahead of a specific school system or school,” he added. “And Chris, I’ll work with you, but I wish you all the best with that because that’s a hardship to turn.”
