Precedent has already shown us that lawsuits will be coming to this state.

People will sue as a result of these amendments being added to this bill.

Shall we pass it?

I strongly urge those of us in this chamber to stop these culture wars.

Stop making it feel as if there are some of us in this state that should not have the right to make their own decisions about their body.

It is not upon us to make these decisions.

Strong words in the Senate today as old wounds open up over the issue of transgender treatment.

After two contentious amendments are unexpectedly added to a bill.

Good evening.

Welcome to Lawmakers.

On this day, 16 of the Georgia legislative session, I'm Donna Lowry in Atlanta.

Education from K-12 through higher education is the biggest chunk of the state budget.

Each year.

There are also dozens of bills dealing with school issues during the offseason.

A Senate study committee examined why more than 21% of Georgia school students are chronically absent.

And we'll look at the question when should children start kindergarten?

And there is legislation to lower the age of compulsory school attendance 6-5-years-old, plus a bill to send a notice to parents if their child is not reading at grade level.

First, a look at the day at the Capitol from our Capitol correspondent Sarah Kallis.

Today at the Capitol.

Donna, some old bills came back from the dead in the Senate and sparked controversy.

Meanwhile, the House passed procedural bills updating Georgia's code in the Senate.

The day started with the recognition of Georgia Farm Bureau Federation Day.

Keep in mind that agriculture is the largest contributor to the economics of Georgia.

What we contribute gives you all, all the money you all get to spend.

Why are you sitting in this chamber and send back home?

The Senate then addressed two bills on the rules calendar.

SB 384 will allow motor vehicle owners to register their cars for a five year period, instead of the current yearly process, and the Georgia Development Authority under SB 435 would be renamed the Georgia Agricultural Development Authority.

And all this bill does is ask that we put agriculture back in the name, because our friends at the GTA are getting phone calls from mayors and county commissioners wanting to borrow money for infrastructure, and the Georgia Development Authority is for farmers and GPB is for our municipalities and counties.

Both were passed unanimously.

Then HB 54 not on the calendar was brought up in chambers.

It was originally a House bill that dealt with home health care professionals, but Senate Republicans decided to add some amendments.

The First Amendment added language that would prohibit puberty blockers for children under 17.

You may recall that prior we had a very long bill, several different pages that described other issues related to that that has already been passed into law.

And this is the only thing that lacks being put into law.

If minors are left on puberty blockers or put on puberty blockers, then they are close to 95% of going ahead and making their transition from male to female or female to male.

But the fact is, is that they do.

If they're allowed to go through a natural process called puberty, then they are much less likely.

Most do not go and transition to another sex.

A second Amendment would keep state medical plans from paying for gender affirming treatments.

Folks, that I know in my district and around the state, across the political spectrum, recognize public tax dollars shouldn't fund sex change drugs for people.

If they want to do that, they can do that themselves.

This bill does nothing to limit individuals funding that themselves.

It simply says state tax dollars can't be used for that purpose.

State facilities can't be used for that purpose.

And state paid and employed doctors can't be part of that with state money.

That's all this does.

Both amendments were part of an original Senate bill that was changed when it got to the House.

Democrats objected, calling it mean spirited in part of the divisive culture war politics of 2024 and, more importantly, out of touch with the concerns of Georgians.

This election year.

We had a normal health care bill at a time when people's enhanced subsidies have been ripped away, 200,000 Georgians lost their health insurance since the holidays in just a couple of months, hundreds of thousands more are expected to drop off the rolls.

So we had a good access.

Health care bill.

What happened today is that Georgia Republicans swooped in like fighter jets over the Super Bowl, dropping anti-trans amendments to make this entire debate about trans people.

This is not making food more affordable.

This is not lowering the cost of taxes.

This is instead telling parents that your child should not have the same rights as other children in this state, your child should be forced to live in a body that they do not feel comfortable with.

At some point, this has to stop.

I don't care how you feel about trans children in this state.

At some point we just need to leave them alone.

Both amendments passed along party lines 30-18 The bill now has to go back to the House.

In the House, lawmakers spent the day passing updates to Georgia Code with little opposition.

This bill is the one that set down from the federal government that for our safe operation of motor carriers, commercial motor vehicles and drivers, and safe transportation of hazardous materials, all we're doing here is changing the date, the annual date 2025-2026.

Bills passed dealt with updates to workers compensation, annual property bills, and annual updates to transporting hazardous materials after adjournment, House Democrats unveiled their legislative package tackling affordability.

This session's buzzword.

Today, House Democrats are rolling out our affordability agenda.

As you can see, we believe affordability must be the standard by which we measure every policy.

If it doesn't make life more affordable for Georgians, then we're not interested in supporting it.

Affordability, for us is not a new buzzword.

That means more tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected.

For us, it means making housing more accessible by increasing the supply, protecting renters from exploitation, and ensuring home ownership is within reach for young families and working Georgians.

They said.

The bills will address health care, housing and child care costs.

More details will be released later this week.

Also today, lawmakers advocated for more regulations on homeowners and property owners associations.

We have to work together to protect and promote the American dream of home ownership.

We have to remember that this is a massive, massive problem and the misery alone is producing a lot of money for those who do not want to operate within the law.

Tomorrow, we can expect debate over name, image and likeness rights for high school athletes in the House.

That's my Capitol report.

Back to you, Donna.

Thanks, Sarah.

Our first guest know what it's like to stand in front of children in a classroom?

Democratic Representative Lydia Glaize of Fairburn is a former educator.

She serves on the House Education and Higher Education Committees.

Democratic Representative Bryce Berry of Atlanta is a current Atlanta Public Schools teacher.

His committee assignments include Economic Development and tourism, State Planning and Community affairs.

Welcome to you both.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

So, Representative Glaze, you would like to see need based scholarships for those who want to go to college.

And so talk about that a little bit and talk about your thoughts on the dreams scholarship that the governor talked about.

Well, first of all, I want to put it in context, okay.

It's in House Bill 973, which is the amended budget that we just approved in the House.

And in there is a little over $300,000 that are going to go into a trust fund for a dreamer scholarship.

Now, what the concern is, should this money just go to USG colleges or should they go to colleges and follow the student to whether it's a public or private college?

And so I say that what we've always done is if it's students stays in the state, let the money follow them to the public or the private university in the state.

So it's similar to hope.

In that sense.

It is.

Okay.

But it is totally need based.

Okay, well, we'll we'll keep following that.

And the bill number again.

It is actually in the amended budget, which is the House bill 973.

Okay.

Representative Berry, you're sponsoring HB 972, which would send written notice to update parents on whether a child is reading at grade level.

What's behind all of that?

You're in the classroom.

Yes.

So literacy is an issue of our time.

And if a child is not able to read, then they will face huge issues down the line.

Literacy is also economic issue.

It's a health issue for our state.

And so tackling literacy early is so crucial for us as lawmakers.

And so what the intent behind the bill is, is to increase collaboration and partnership between teachers, schools and parents.

I know the frustration is always when you tell a parent that their child is not proficient in literacy.

Parents often don't have anything.

We don't have nothing to show, teach parents how their child's performing.

So what the intent behind the bill is to provide a report to parents all the way through eighth grade.

We're currently doing that from K through three, setting that through eighth grade to let parents know where their child's performing and increase partnerships between schools and amongst parents.

I have to ask, since you are a middle school teacher, are you seeing students come in who don't have the proficiency in reading?

Yes, and it's unfortunate that, you know, right now we are just continuing to pass students along and they're not proficient in reading.

And so with this partnership, when parents come on board and we have teachers at the table and stakeholders that are at the table to put put their all behind the children, I believe we can increase literacy proficiency in this state.

Okay.

Well keep up with that.

You is there anything else with the amended budget that you'd like to see happen?

Well, first of all, we want to say that teachers are going to get a raise one time $2,000 for everybody in the building.

And we're especially excited about that.

We're going to put more money in early learning.

I'm excited about that.

But one thing that's going to help with chronic absenteeism is putting more social workers in schools, and that is where we're going to be able to, I believe, helped with some of the problems that are keeping kids out of their seats during the school day.

So we know that this budget has a lot of different price points and, and collaboration.

But overall, we want to make sure that kids leave learning and that they leave school more proficient in literacy and that they're safe.

And I do have a bill that I want to talk about, about safety.

Okay.

We'll get back to that in just a second.

Because, Representative Berry, I want to get into your you have HB 1052, which deals with student housing affordability.

Yes.

So with that bill does is companion bill to the bill I introduced last year, HB 716.

The Hunger Free Campus Act, and both create grant programs.

Hunger Free Campus Act creates a grant program for students to be able to afford food.

When we look at the school day, students could have classes and they go to sports practice and the cafeteria closes by 4:00.

How student able to afford food.

So this is a grant program extension for them.

Be able to afford food housing affordability again if their student is in some campuses where there's not enough housing available, this provides grants and says that the financial aid has to match the cost of off campus housing rent.

Okay.

Is this something you experienced or you just have constituents have talked to you about.

It, constituents have talked about it.

I had to stay off campus my senior year because of the lack of housing at Morehouse, stable housing, not stable housing, enough housing at Morehouse.

And so this is an issue that are facing students all across our state.

And shameless plug that tomorrow.

I'm having a College Affordability Advocacy Day, where I'm bringing students from across the state to the state Capitol to talk about all things affordability and how we can make life better for them.

What time is that?

It starts at 1030, and then we'll be going to the ropes at 11:00 and talking to members of the Higher Education Committee about what we can do for college students.

Affordability is the buzzwords.

So we're going to talk about college students.

On that.

Yeah, that's not a shameless plug.

That's something we need to know okay.

Tell us more about the bill you mentioned.

So safety is not just making sure that kids come to school without any kind of guns.

Safety is also the water in the school.

So we've got a bill 12 69 that just talks about how Georgia schools need to utilize state and federal funding to go in and make sure that our pipes and fixtures are lead free.

Lead is known to be one of the carcinogens that causes learning loss.

Learning deprivation.

And so one thing we need to do is use federal funds.

It's free to make sure every school in Georgia is free of lead, and we should be using it.

I'll have to.

Shameless plug.

Gwinnett County is doing it for all of their schools.

Okay, I know this has been an issue for quite a few years now, so you want to see more done with that?

Yes.

Never a shameless plug.

You guys are allowed to do that here.

Let's talk about something else.

What HBCUs you'd like to see help for HBCUs in the in the budget.

Yes.

I mean our HBCUs are I feel the backbone of our state.

I'm a proud Morehouse graduate.

I come from a family of HBCU graduates.

Fortunately, they're not all Morehouse, but they're HBC graduates.

And so we have to do more for HBCUs.

Our HBCUs have seen increasing threats over the past few years.

Myself, I saw we had a bomb threat when I came back from spring break in 20:22 at Morehouse.

And so these threats have consistently happened over the past few years, and the state has not provided any money to HBCUs to secure their campuses.

Even as we talk about school safety in a wider standpoint, I also want to talk about the Hope scholarship, where schools like Morehouse and Clark Atlanta, because they're private institutions, they access less money, less dollars from the Hope scholarship.

Well, our USG students have full access to Hope scholarship.

I think we should make it fair across the board, and I want to see increased investment into the Hope scholarship for HBCU students so that they can have a chance to get ahead as well.

Okay, I want to get to one more bill with you, and that deals with it's a health bill, actually.

HB 373 saving saving men's lives bill deals with prostate cancer.

Absolutely.

It is an issue in the state of Georgia.

Over 11,000 men every year will get prostate cancer.

Over 1,100 will die every year from prostate cancer, which is 100% preventable.

And so what we're asking is early screenings with early support, if we can get that, we can save men's lives.

So on February 19, we're having prostate day at the Capitol, and we're going to teach men through Grady, coming in and doing PSA tests how to make sure they keep their prostate health healthy.

And that's February 19th.

February 19, 12 to 3:00 P.M.. Okay.

Well, thank you both for coming in and talking about these bills.

And we'll keep up with them.

Thank you.

Well, coming up, curbing chronic absenteeism and getting more children enrolled in kindergarten.

Senator.

Senators from both sides of the aisle join us to continue our focus on education.

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It's a Georgia thing.

Welcome back to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry.

Education issues are more likely to bring Republicans and Democrats together more than almost any other issue.

Everyone wants young Georgians prepared for the workforce.

Joining me is the vice chair of the majority caucus, Republican Senator Clint Dixon of Gwinnett County.

He's chair of state and local government relations and vice chair of transportation.

He's also on the education and Youth Committee.

Also joining us is Democratic Senator Derek Mallow of Savannah.

He is secretary of the Senate Ethics Committee.

Some of his other committees include Children and Families and Economic Development and Tourism.

Welcome to Lawmakers to both of you.

I appreciate this as we get into a discussion on absenteeism, I want to give some background.

Georgia's 2020 for chronic absenteeism rate is 21.3%, and students are considered chronically absent for missing 10% or more days of school.

Now, chronic absences negatively affect instruction.

According to the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, or Page.

It lowers academic achievement, leads to social disengagement, increases risk of dropping out, and leads to higher poverty.

Poverty rates in adulthood.

A recent study found nearly two thirds of teachers say chronic absenteeism negatively affects their ability to teach children who are present.

Nearly 69% of teachers report spending less time on remediation for chronically absent students.

And I know both of you have heard these figures and all, so let's dig into them a little bit.

You've studied we had that study committee on this topic.

What did you hear from people who testified that really stuck out?

Yeah, we heard from many folks from across the state.

We had four meetings with that study committee.

A lot of information came out of it, as you and I spoke about earlier.

And but, you know, I tell you that end of the day, you know, it's, you know, getting school districts out of silos.

You know, we need to get the state school board.

They need to get involved and update their truancy reporting you know, and also notifications to parents and teachers as well.

What about you?

What's causing this problem?

There's so many things, right?

One of the things that we've identified is the school counselor to student ratio is funded in the QBE formula.

We absolutely know that we have to update and modernize that, because many students face a lot of issues.

And the other issue that we found is something that I've talked to Senator Dixon about is our children in need of service, which are chins cases which are handled by FACs and the juvenile courts.

And there's a myriad of issues that we have to work through to address those issues.

Yeah, I know you you spoke earlier about parents withdrawing students from schools for a reason.

We may not think about just they do it.

Yeah.

They do.

You know, and it could be for, you know, a number of reasons, but, you know, one of the findings was because of avoiding, you know, the chronic absenteeism or having to to deal with that or report that is one of the reasons that parents are withdrawing kids from school, unfortunately.

So let's talk about the recommendations.

Among them is, you know, dealing with high school students is to take away their driver's licenses.

Talk about that.

Yeah.

Yes.

Some some penalties.

That would be very severe to my two, two teenage kids at home.

If you lost your driver's license, that would be very detrimental.

That or maybe the cell phone might be might be worse, but that would be a severe penalty for for teenagers, you know, for enforcement of attending school.

Also, there was talk of adding in where they would not be eligible for sports or any extracurricular activities with the school.

So those students who are chronically absent and still play sports, probably.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what was reported in the findings of the study committee.

Wow.

What are what are what sticks out for you in terms of what to do?

This was my predecessor, Senator Lester Jackson, who served before I got to the state Senate and state House.

Focused on raising the dropout age 16-17.

We feel that students don't know exactly what to do at 16-years-old.

They don't know exactly what decision to make.

But we think by raising that one year will help also address some of those chronic absenteeism is because students say, well, I'm 16, so I can just drop out and go through the process to drop out.

And some parents who may be in a tough spot may want that student, that child, to go into the workforce, but that's not what's going to be in that child's best interest.

Studies have shown us that children who have a high school diploma versus those who do not make over $1 million more in their lifetime.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about parents.

Isn't there something to maybe punish parents who are part, sometimes part of the problem?

Yeah.

There is.

That was one of the as far as the recommendations from the study committee, not only, you know, punishing students, but also holding parents accountable as well, because you're dealing with minor children.

So at the end of the day, it's the parents responsibility to make sure the child makes it to school.

So there were measures put in place from up to 30 days of imprisonment fines exceeding over $1,000.

I mean, it was pretty stiff recommendations coming out of that study committee.

Yeah.

So some of this will be in the form of legislation, but some of it sounds like it's part of a fiscal note.

You know, at this point.

I think some of some of the issues might be, as we talk about holding parents accountable.

I also think that there's a portion of parents that work jobs that may have attendance policies and a point system, and the parent doesn't want to leave their job to go enforce why this child is not at school.

And so they may lose their job, which they may have other children to take care of.

And that's a major factor in that.

But we can't hold the parent accountable if the parents are doing everything they can with the child.

We've got to make sure that there are other services to ensure that that child has success, because we have many parents who are surrendering their children at juvenile court and saying, you take them.

And the state has no ability to care for all of these children.

So we have to figure out what we need to do as a state.

Yeah.

As bad as that, 21% sounds, some states you said are worse than Georgia.

Yes.

Yeah.

They were.

It was reported over 20 states had over 30% of chronic absenteeism.

And that when you talk about chronic absenteeism, when you talk about truancy, that kicks in 5-10 days, plus days that are absent.

Chronic absenteeism is 10% of the school year, missed 180 days is 18 days.

So that's quite a bit of school that to miss.

And it could be an array of issues you know, with a child from being at home or issues at school.

So it's really good that you guys looked into this.

So I look forward to hearing more about some of the things you're doing.

I want to get into something else with you.

You have a bill dealing with mandatory kindergarten.

Tell us about that.

Where did where did it start for you?

Kindergarten is not a grade that we mandate compulsory attendance.

But one of the ways that we know what's happening with children is when they show up and report to school.

And if you have a kindergartner, your pediatrician may not report anything or send anything to the school system because you don't have to put your child in kindergarten.

One of the things that we found is that when employers are looking to come to Georgia, they're looking at the education level of the workforce.

And if we're only preparing students in the first grade students, if you don't come into kindergarten, you have to test into first grade.

And majority of all students that test in have to be remediated and caught back up because they don't have some of the basic foundational skill levels.

And so we want to just make sure that children are being educated and that they are enrolled in school, because if they're not, it's usually an indicator of a much larger issue.

The Senator Dixon spoke about earlier, we had a case in Effingham County where this family, the Crockers, basically murdered their two children and they withdrew them from school to homeschool them and to subvert the mandatory attendance policy.

And those children were being abused at home, and no one knew about it because they were homeschooled.

Okay, so what would your bill do?

It would basically just allow parents to enroll their children into kindergarten.

As a state, we already funded.

And QBE, we fund K-12 education.

We just don't require that you send your child to kindergarten.

And this would then require an all day kindergarten program, because we technically pay for an all day kindergarten program.

And we will ensure that every child that comes into kindergarten has a K-12 teacher on the K-12 teaching salary schedule, and that children are starting as early as possible.

Not because we want to take your children and put them in school, but we know that as a state, we cannot grow an economic development if children don't know how to read, they're not prepared for success.

And if you want to see a reduction in criminal justice, you want to see reduction in poverty, you want to see reduction.

And social entitlement programs.

Make sure children in kindergarten.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on this?

No, I agree with Senator Milo you know, and you see it across, you know, any reports dealing with education earlier?

You get kids in school, the better off they are.

That head start at any age.

Preschool.

You know, is growing even before kindergarten.

And you hear a lot of parents say that's a must have to make sure that they're on track to be in kindergarten.

So if we're not requiring kindergarten, could potentially be putting a sector of kids behind.

So yeah, I would fully support that.

How unusual is Georgia with not having mandatory kindergarten?

Georgia Falls among several other states that don't require kindergarten.

But we've seen shifts like in Oklahoma and other states that are conservative, that they're moving to kindergarten and they're moving actually a little further and moving into pre-K because they understand that if we don't get children in school and educated earlier, we'll spend more money on the back end trying to address other issues.

And if we have those children educated much sooner.

Yeah.

You're from the Savannah area.

You've got the military bases around there, and you've got people coming in whose kids have maybe been in kindergarten before they come to the state.

That's right.

And I talked to school principals throughout my district.

And they tell me, Derek, we have kids that come and show up and parents just don't even know that their child is supposed to be in kindergarten.

And it started off because maybe they signed up for pre-K on the lottery.

They didn't get a slot in pre-K, and so they didn't come back.

They just know, okay, well, you got to go to school at first grade.

That's what the pediatrician will tell you.

Hey, you have to enroll your child in first grade.

Well, that kid just missed out on two years of education because they didn't get on get in on pre-K, on the lottery.

So they were just sitting at home watching TV.

Somebody was babysitting.

We don't know what the issue is.

Parents struggle to afford child care right now.

So this is one way that we can incentivize our workforce to show up.

Okay.

Well, we'll keep an eye on all of these bills.

Thank you both for being here.

That does it for Lawmakers today.

We'll be back tomorrow for day 17.

Have a good evening.