The Georgia Center for Opportunity, an advocacy group pushing for school choice, has released a series of digital ads praising the thirteen state legislators receiving ‘A’ grades based on their legislative score-cards regarding their support for school choice legislation during the 2017 session.
School choice was a hot topic under the Gold Dome this year, and 2018 figures to feature more of the same as members of both parties in both houses seek to widen the range of education options available to Georgia parents. In 2017 four different House bills directly touched on the issue and were met with varying degrees of support.
HB 224, which allows children of military service members to freely choose to attend any public school in their district, passed the House and Senate with ease. Also passing was HB 430, which set the stage for charter schools to receive funding and set baseline standards in terms of quality.
On the failing end of the vote were HB 217 and the ESA amendment for HB 338, which would have raised the upper limit for the Tax Credit Scholarship Program and allowed for parents to choose how to use their children’s education tax dollars, respectively.
The legislators chosen by the Georgia Center for Opportunity, twelve Republicans and one Democrat, will be featured in digital ads praising their support of school choice. Each received an ‘A’ grade from the group based on their decisions on the six key votes on school choice legislation, (some bills were voted on multiple times.) While the GCO hails their mission as being non-partisan, many of the votes fell along party lines. For the most part Republicans scored higher than their Democratic counterparts, although some Dems, including Valencia Stovall who was honored by the group, shared their support.
Said Michael Hicks, President and CEO of the GCO, “We are truly grateful to those lawmakers who are making education a top priority. More importantly, constituents are now able to understand how their representatives are voting on education policy and see that this is not a party issue.”
Expect the Georgia Center for Opportunity to be back in full force come 2018 when education once again takes center stage as one of the key issues for the state legislature.
