Both the House and the Senate worked well into the evening on this thirty-eighth day of the 2010 session of the Georgia General Assembly, and at the end of that long day, the issues of transportation funding and ethics reform dominated the debate in both chambers.  After heated and lengthy debate, the transportation funding bill passed both chambers overwhelmingly, and the much-ballyhooed ethics bill was in its final stages of discussion as this report was written.

In the world of education, the Senate addressed four education-related bills as part of its 46-bill calendar.  Passing muster with that chamber were:

• HB 907, the bill that originally sought to do nothing more than remove the requirement that a local system organize its middle school(s) in a grade 6, 7, and 8 configuration in order to receive the middle school grant.  The bill was amended by the Senate to add some notification requirements related to the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship (aka, voucher) program, so the changed bill must now go back to the House for their agreement or disagreement.
• HB 923, which extends the deadlines by which already-enrolled graduate students must complete leadership degrees and still be "grandfathered" in and be paid for them.  This bill was also amended in the Senate and must return to the House for agreement/ disagreement.
• HB 980, which permits school board members to be in the bail bond business.
• HB 1086, protecting a certain group of teachers' personal information from unnecessary disclosure.

The House of Representatives tackled two separate calendars plus a number of agree/disagree motions, and among the education bills passing that chamber were:

• SB 340, requiring school systems to adopt a method of reporting student grades to the GSFC for purposes of determining HOPE scholarship eligibility.
• SB 457, setting up a method by which a local board of education may/must consider a petition for charter status for an entire high school cluster.

In their agree/disagree stage, both the House and the Senate agreed to the conference committee report on the FY2010 Amended Budget, and there were few surprises in it.  With few exceptions, after all the wrangling, the House and Senate conferees agreed with Governor Perdue's original recommendations in the education arena;the budget document now goes to the Governor for his consideration.  Among the few changes sought by lawmakers were:

• An additional cut of $50 thousand to the curriculum development line;
• A plan to cut an additional $1 million from school nutrition;
• The restoration of some $17 million that the Governor had recommended cutting from the already-underfunded equalization grant;
• No action on bringing Local Five Mill Share in line with state law mandating that this be no more than 20% of the QBE total (The amount in the budget exceeds it considerably.);
• A small ($16 million) increase in the austerity cut line; and,
• A reduction by 50% to the Governor's recommended $1 million cut to RESA's.

Also in their agree/disagree motions, the House agreed to the Senate version of HB 908, the much-discussed "flexibility bill" giving systems some wiggle room with class size, expenditure controls, etc.  This bill now moves to the Governor for his consideration and likely signature.

SB 84, the school board governance bill, continued its ride back and forth between House and Senate, with the major bone of contention still being the nepotism provisions and whether there should be opportunities for potential board members to receive "waivers" to make them eligible to run (if they are otherwise ineligible according to the provisions of the law).  While the bill received final passage at about 9:30 on this night, it is interesting to note that, late on this afternoon, a federal judge ruled in favor of the challenge to the already-enacted nepotism provision that had been mounted by a Bartow County school board member (including requiring the state to reimburse the Bartow Board of Education for its legal expenses related to the case).  This writer does not know the grounds upon which the judge's decision was based, but it is bound to have an effect on how the nepotism provision in the final version of the bill eventually is interpreted; will it be sufficient to avoid another legal setback?  We shall see.....

Day thirty-nine of the 2010 session is set for Tuesday, April 27.