Georgia Legislative Black Caucus members are supporting a bill that would increase public education funding for kindergarten through 12th-grade students living below the poverty line throughout the state.
If enacted, advocates say HB 668, aka the Georgia Educational Opportunity Act, would amend Georgia’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) funding formula to include a $1,500 per-pupil weighted supplement for students living in poverty.
That’s money teachers and administrators could use to provide resources to students whose needs aren’t being met at home. It would be up to schools and teachers to decide how the additional funds are used, which could include educational supplies, facilitating needed tutoring, and even addressing food insecurity.
The funds would provide a much-needed financial boost to struggling schools in disproportionately Black rural and urban communities, addressing troubling disparities in educational achievement. That, in turn, could yield long-term benefits for both the state and the students, since research indicates that better educated kids are less likely to live in poverty or commit crimes as adults, and more likely to secure higher-paying jobs and contribute positively to society as a whole.
State Reps. Phil Olaleye, D-Atlanta, and Lydia Glaize, D-Fairburn, are among the lawmakers advocating for passage of the bill.
During a related hearing inside Atlanta’s Gold Dome on Jan. 31, Glaize and Olaleye pointed out that Georgia is one of just six states that doesn’t designate funds to K-12 students living in poverty.
An estimated 44% of Georgians living below the poverty line are Black, according to 2020 U.S. census data cited by the Urban League of Greater Atlanta. In 2021, Georgia’s public education performance disparity between low-income and high-income students ranked 49th among 50 U.S. states and Washington D.C., according to EdWeek Research Center.
“You can probably imagine that has very real and dire impacts on the learning opportunities and outcomes that our children are experiencing,” Olaleye said during the hearing on Wednesday.
Glaize said HB 668 is one alternative to a private school voucher policy backed by Republicans. GOP policymakers have been advocating for the enactment of a statewide private school voucher program to help address educational disparities in Georgia since they failed to gain enough support to pass the measure last year.
Critics argue voucher programs mostly benefit private school students in wealthier and whiter communities while pulling tax revenue out of public schools in poorer districts where more Black people live and have kids enrolled in school.
“If we get QBE with a plus funding for poverty, we immediately attack the root of the problem,” Glaize said. “If you get to the root, you have an opportunity to grow the tree properly.”
Glaize said HB 668 won’t pass without more GOP support, since Republicans have majority control in both state legislative chambers. Right now, state Rep. Gerald Greene, R-Cuthbert, is the lone Republican sponsor of HB 668.
Glaize said the measure will receive a hearing in the state House Committee on Education in the coming days, though as of Jan. 31, a date hasn’t been scheduled.
Glaize and other Democratic lawmakers are asking constituents who support public education to contact their elected leaders and tell them to back the measure. Supporters can also attend the Committee on Education’s hearing on the bill to advocate for it in person once a date for debate has been scheduled.
“We’ll ask for our supporters to come back into that particular committee session and to stand up for [the bill],” Glaize said. “They can sign up to speak on behalf of the bill.”
Public school officials and reform advocates say HB 668 needs to be passed this year to address funding disparities and achievement gaps across the state for underprivileged public school students, who are disproportionately Black and brown.
The quality of Georgia’s public schools ranked 35th in the nation last year, according to a WalletHub study released in July. Average math test scores for Black eighth-grade students in the state in 2022 were 28 points lower than their white counterparts, according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress.
Average reading scores for the same group were 25 points lower than white students, the NAEP found.
Clayton County Board of Education member Jasmine Bowles spoke in support of the bill Wednesday on behalf of students in her district, which is majority Black and Hispanic.
She suggested the legislation would benefit underprivileged white students living in rural areas as well.
“I think it’s really important to emphasize that the blessing in this bill will impact scholars from north, south, east, and west Georgia, who actually have demographics similar to ours when you look at just income,” Bowles told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday.
