The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked educators, policymakers and advocates to share what they deem the most important priorities for the upcoming 2025 General Assembly. Their answers are included in a collection of guest columns. This is the latest of these columns.
Education-related issues will be among the most important debated this year by the General Assembly. But new laws are often are considered without the voices of those most impacted.
Educators and students are in their classrooms when Legislature is meeting and are almost never consulted. We often hear that educating the state’s 1.74 million students is expensive and almost half the state budget. But this investment in our students and our future is necessary.
As usual and as has Gov. Brian Kemp proposed in his last several budgets, fully funding the Quality Basic Education formula is a priority. But simply providing the funding based on a formula older than all our public school students and a great many of their teachers is not enough.
Here are five other ideas from the Georgia Association of Educators:
Fund enough to lower class sizes to recommended levels
Now, only two Georgia systems are required to follow the class size maximums. Because of waivers and the General Assembly’s lack of appropriate funding, high school core classes in some schools have a student-teacher ratio of 35-1 even though state regulations sets a limit of 32 students.
Consider those class sizes from the perspective of students. If it takes a teacher 20 minutes to grade and provide feedback on a particular assignment, the time necessary for 24 students is eight hours. Add nine more students to the class and the task required a total of 11 hours.
Educators face a choice of taking less time with each student’s work and provide less specific feedback or taking the necessary time from another task. Either way, students are impacted by less or delayed feedback, both of which may result in lost opportunities for student growth.
This is the reality of larger class sizes for our public schoolteachers — the proverbial rock and hard place. No matter which choice is ultimately made, students bear the impact of fewer opportunities.
Increase funding for schools with more students in poverty.
The correlation between economic status and graduation and academic achievement is undeniable. The lowest-performing schools in the state are also the poorest schools in the state. Georgia has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the nation. Despite this, Georgia is one of only a handful of states that does not provide additional funding and resources to schools where students are experiencing poverty.
Instead, under the recently enacted private school voucher program, tax dollars will leave these districts and flow to wealthier districts, usually in the metro Atlanta area. Meanwhile, educators across the state are writing grants, seeking donations and, in some cases, spending their own money to try to meet the needs of students. From food pantries to clothes closets and from school supplies to college application fees, educators work to fulfill the needs of students.
Some will say that these are not educational necessities. Teachers and students will tell you otherwise. A student who is hungry, cold or tired is a student who will be unable to learn until those needs are met.
Improve funding and retirement benefits for bus drivers, cafeteria works and custodians.
Among the lowest-paid public school staff are school bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria and maintenance workers. Yet we trust and depend on these educators to take care of our children. They transport our children safely, feed them and clean up after them.
Salaries in some school districts for these positions are about a dollar more than the minimum wage. In addition, the state provides a bare-bones retirement for these workers, which, until July 1 of this year, averaged $290 a month.
The state’s 2024-2025 budget provides for a 50-cent increase in the formula used to determine retirement benefits for bus drivers, food service personnel and janitorial staff. To determine retirement benefits for these support professionals, the state uses a formula: years of service multiplied by $17 equals monthly benefit. For example, a bus driver working 30 years would receive retirement benefits of $510, up slightly from $495 a month before Senate Bill 105 eliminated the cap on benefits for these employees.
While this system was created under the assumption that these positions would be part time, they are now full time for most of these workers. Legislators need to continue to raise the multiplier to provide these educators a retirement with dignity and the means to survive their later years.
Address teacher shortage
Every year, college students who undertake a curriculum to become a schoolteacher drop out — sometimes late in their schooling — because of the financial impediments to becoming a teacher. Aspiring educators are required to “student teach” for a full school year and for many, the financial burden is simply too high.
Georgia should follow the example Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee and provide compensation for aspiring educators during the time they are in the classroom as “student teachers.”
Continue to increase teacher pay
Despite Kemp’s pay raises for teachers — $7,000 since 2020, which the Georgia Association of Educators applauds — inflation has brought us to a place where Georgia teachers are making less than they were 15 years ago.
If lawmakers are serious about ending the teacher shortage, they will continue to increase salaries and expand the state salary schedule for those with more than 20 years of service. Now, teachers with 21 years or more of service are ineligible for any further increases for the remainder of their career.
We must also look not at the average teacher salary — Georgia typically ranks high there — but at the beginning teacher salary. Average teacher salary is skewed by the number of educators who have remained in the profession. If we want to ensure that early career teachers make it to the 10-, 15- and 20-year levels, we must make their first five years less of a challenge.
We hope legislators look to these ideas with an open mind and enact legislation that benefits our public-school students, teachers and schools. We encourage everyone to review the recommendations from the teacher burnout report led by 2022 Georgia Teacher of the Year Cherie Bonder Goldman.
The voices from the classroom have spoken and provided a road map. We need the decision makers to listen and act accordingly.
Lisa Morgan is a kindergarten teacher and president of the Georgia Association of Educators.
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