Powerful state lawmakers to recalculate Georgia’s politically fraught school funding math

When Georgia lawmakers created the formula to pay for its public schools, President Ronald Reagan was celebrating the start of his second term, Purple Rain cassettes were flying off of the shelves, and children were monopolizing family TVs with their state-of-the-art Nintendo Entertainment Systems.

The White House has changed occupants six times since then, and the average high schooler now carries around more computing power in their pocket than any computer of the day, but the 1985 Quality Basic Education Act continues to guide the state in distributing nearly $11 billion to the state’s 1.6 million public school students. Georgia’s total population has roughly doubled to 11 million since 1985.

While the formula is long-lived, it is not universally beloved. Even in years when the formula is fully funded — and it went underfunded between 2002 and 2017 — critics say the formula denies flexibility to administrators and unfairly sends resources to wealthier districts. Past attempts to modernize the formula were abandoned in the face of political turbulence.