Policy Report Reveals Trouble For Georgia School Districts – Part 1

That’s the conclusion of the new report from the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute.

Of 180 school districts that were sent a survey, 150 responded.

Taifa Butler, the deputy director of the institute, says many districts are under stress.

“We found two and three school systems report cutting the calendar and that those days range from six days to thirty-six days.”

Class sizes also increased for many of the state’s districts.

Six in ten of the districts reported an increase.

A reduction in school days is just one of the factors that can impact Georgia students, according to Butler.

She says state funds to Georgia school districts have been in decline longer than the country’s most recent recession.

“But over time, since when we’ve done our budget analyses since the implementation of No Child Left Behind, the state and local revenue per pupil spending is down 12 percent.”

Now that the state has mandated common core standards, Butler wonders how districts will meet them with continued cuts.

“As Georgia makes the great ambitious goals about graduating more students on time and elevating the academic rank of our students, we have some serious challenges to meet those goals funding cuts if we continue this course of budget cuts.”

The other key finding revealed the number of Georgia teachers in the classroom fell by more than 85-hundred since the 2008-09 school year.

Taken from the report, Survey Says:  Trouble for Schools, Cuts in Education Spending Mean Fewer Schools Days and More Crowded Classrooms

The Damage Done

The Georgia Budget & Policy Institute (GBPI) surveyed Georgia’s 180 school districts on the impact of state funding cuts. The 150 districts that responded educate more than 1.53 million students and represent 92 percent of the students in Georgia public schools.

Key findings from the survey include:

Fewer school days for students:  Two in three school districts reported cutting the calendar for the current school year.

Larger classroom sizes:  Six in 10 school districts reported an increase in average classroom size from the prior school year.

Fewer classroom teachers:  The number of classroom teachers in Georgia decreased by more than 8,500 since the 2008-09 school year, even as the number of students increased.

Pay cuts for teachers:  Three in four school districts reported they would reduce teacher workdays resulting in pay cuts.