On the morning of this thirty-eighth day of the 2009 session of the Georgia General Assembly, the Senate Appropriations Committee finally unveiled what will be (as of Wednesday) the Senate version of the FY2010 Budget.  Differences with both the House and the Governor were scattered throughout the document, and education was not spared any of those "differences of opinion."  After the Senate approves their version on Wednesday and sends it to the House, the House will formally disagree, insist on their position, and send it back to the Senate.  The Senate will insist on their position, and the conference committee of three representatives and three senators will be appointed to work out the differences and support the compromise that then will be offered before the membership of both chambers.  If this sounds like a time-consuming process, it well can be just that, and with time winding down and sine die set for Friday of this week, the negotiations will need to move quite rapidly for the budget to be finalized by Friday night.  [Editor's note:  It is the time of the session for the rumor mill to crank up, and one of the "hot" rumors on this day was that the General Assembly would not adjourn on Friday, but would "save" that last day and come back later to finalize the budget and other "hot button" topics that might get tied up in last-day confusion.  Of course, another rumor was of a special session in the not-too-distant future, and of the two rumors, it appears this last one has the best chance of coming true.]  In their version of the budget, the Senate:

• Agreed with the Governor (and, disagreed with the House) to transfer graduation coaches into the QBE program;
• Agreed with the House to provide funds needed for 2,000 more virtual courses ($1,135,240);
• Decided to charge Governor's Honors Program participants at $250 fee;
• Agreed with the House to keep RESA's as a separate line item in the budget to the tune of some $12 million;
• Eliminated $3.7 million for ETTC's and the Georgia Virtual School, but added $1.77 million back to RESA's for technology training;
• Agreed with the House (and, disagreed with the Governor) to add some money back to the budget for paying a supplement to teachers who hold the National Board certificate, but decided to include only enough money to pay each of those teachers a 10% supplement on the base pay for a teacher with a T-4 certificate and no experience (more on this later in this report);
• Left untouched (and, agreed with the House and the Governor) the $112 million in cuts to equalization grants;
• Agreed with the House to provide funds for vouchers for students with special needs to the tune of $6 million;
• Agreed with the House to eliminate classroom gift cards (saves the state $11.5 million);
• Applied a 3% cut to the already-badly-underfunded pupil transportation program, a savings to the state of over $5 million;
• Agreed with the Governor (and, disagreed with the House) on funding for dual enrollment:
• Reduced by $65 million, from $400 million to $335 million, the amount of ARRA funds to be used to mitigate the impact of state austerity cuts to local systems;
• Agreed with the House to fund grants to charter systems, a cost to the state of $1.7 million;
• Agreed with the House's decision to continue to fund the school nurse program, but cut the funds by 3% ($900,000);
• Disagreed with both the House and the Governor and cut the Technical and Career Education program by $853,000 (operations cut by $503,000 and vocational supervisors cut by $350,000); and,
• Saved $1.5 million in the school construction bond package by creatively "recalculating" the amount needed for debt service.

These are not all the changes, but they certainly represent the "highlights" and "lowlights" of the Senate version.  Needless to say, all this will change by the end of the week (assuming sine die on Friday night) and is subject to even further change if, as expected, a special session of the General Assembly takes place before the end of the calendar year.

Both the Senate and the House tackled lengthy calendars on this day (and, in the case of both, adding bills to which they decided to agree or disagree with changes made by the other chamber), but the House's 35 bills included none that have been closely tracked by education-watchers.  That was not the case across the hall in the Senate, though, as their 37-bill calendar did include several bills of interest to the education community.

The Senate's treatment of a couple of education bills was typical of what Capitol observers have come to expect in the last days of a session.  Every bill is viewed by lawmakers with a keen eye toward how it might be creatively amended to add language or topics of importance to those lawmakers.  HB 193 provided just such an opportunity when the Senate addressed this bill intended simply to change the 180-school-days-for-students requirement to an equivalent number of hours.  Senators literally lined up with amendments in hand, and in the end, the following action was taken:

• Added, at the suggestion of Senator Bill Hamrick (R-Carrollton), the language from his SB 250, which seeks to clarify in Georgia code that interfering with the operation of a public school is criminal behavior;
• Added most of the language from SB 160, which requires that schools be closed on Veteran's Day each year (but, amending this amendment to provide, as is already in the law, that schools simply "may" be closed on this day); and,
• Defeated by an overwhelming 45-9 vote a proposed amendment by Senator Judson Hill (R-Marietta) that would have prohibited school systems from starting school before the third Monday in August each year (The calendar folks just never give up, it seems!).

This much-amended bill now goes to the House for their consideration.

The remaining two education bills were the focus of intense debate and extremely close votes.  First up was HB 243, the bill calling for the continuation of the ten percent supplement for current teachers who have earned National Board certification (but proposed to be amended by Senator Dan Weber, R-Dunwoody, so as to make that ten percent applicable only to the base pay for a beginning teacher and, thus, make it consistent with the funds recommended in the Senate version of the FY2010 Budget mentioned earlier).  As is known by those who have kept up with this bill, it calls for the eventual elimination of this supplement, and it was no surprise to see and hear intense debate by senators.  At voting time, the bill only received 28 "yes" votes, thus falling short of the 29 needed to attain a constitutional majority.  The Senate did vote to "reconsider" their action, and this will happen on either Day 39 or Day 40.

Also contentious was the debate and discussion over HB 251, a House bill from Representative Alisha Thomas-Morgan (D-Austell) which, in its original form, sought to require local school systems to offer within-district school choice to students on a space-available basis.  To no one's surprise, Senator Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) offered an amendment to this bill when it appeared before the Senate Education and Youth Committee, said amendment seeking to add to this bill language from his SB 90 (the voucher bill) providing for school choice across district lines.  While none of the education groups object to such school choice (As a matter of fact, most have positions supporting such choice options.), virtually all do object to the funding mechanism included in the amendment.  That funding mechanism, drawn almost word-for-word from the funding portion of last year's HB 881, sets out a provision that, should a local school system accept transfer students under the provisions of this legislation, the funds following the student to his/her new school system would include not only QBE funds, but also local funds, federal funds, equalization grant funds, etc., from his/her home system!  In the opinion of this author and others, this simply tramples local control and puts the General Assembly in the position of telling locally elected (and, constitutionally authorized) boards of education how they can spend local taxpayers' funds.  At the same time, this comes as no surprise to many who have observed the passage of this type of legislation in recent years.  What is surprising is to see how some senators voted on this bill (which received only the minimum 29 votes needed for passage), particularly some who have purported to be supportive of local school systems and of their constitutional authority.  Click here to see how senators cast their votes on the amended version of HB 281.

The House started early and ended their work in the early evening.  The Senate started after lunch and went on into the night.  The days are long, Lord.....

Day thirty-nine is set for Wednesday, April 1.