Georgia’s School Funding Headed for Big Changes: A Talk with Two of the Legislature’s Budget Writers

  In the first weeks of the 2014 school year, WABE presented a series of reports on the challenges facing Georgia’s local schools.  In this final installment, we look at the biggest challenge of all:  money.  On September 4, 2014, the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, released a report, outlining the effects of years of state budget cuts and declining local property tax revenues.

State lawmakers appear ready to make major changes to the state’s Quality Basic Education formula, which determines how state money is sent to local schools.  QBE has been around since 1985, and there have been complaints about it since its beginning.  But if QBE is changed–or even replaced altogether–what should a new school funding plan look like?  WABE’s Denis O’Hayer spoke with two of the Legislature’s budget writers:  Senate Education and Youth Committee chairman Lindsey Tippins, a Marietta Republican, and Democratic Representative David Wilkerson of Austell, who sits on the House Budget Committee.