Change would forbid Clayton students from transferring to any public school ; vote expected Tuesday on House floor

If local legislators have their way Tuesday (April 1), Fayette County public schools won’t be forced to accept students from Clayton County should the district lose its accreditation as expected this fall.

A proposed amendment to Senate Bill 458 would forbid Clayton’s students from transferring to any public school systems outside their county, said Sen. Ronnie Chance (R-Tyrone). Instead the bill would only allow them to transfer to any private school.

The bill is due for debate on the House floor sometime Tuesday, and because of a technicality the only amendment that can be accepted to the bill is the one Chance is advocating, which would allow students from a de-accredited county to seek a state-paid voucher for private schools only.

Ramsey said Monday afternoon that he’s optimistic the amendment will be accepted. He added that the bill's previous requirement, adopted by the Senate after the initial bill was passed by the Senate, has been changed by removing the word "shall" and replacing it with the word "may" in reference to whether school systems could decide to accept students from de-accredited schools in another county.

Ramsey said public schools “never should have been part of the equation” of the bill. He added that language in the bill allows a student to transfer from one public school to another school as long as the accepting school is within the same school system. That would address problems if one particular school, and not the whole school system, lost its accreditation, Ramsey said.

The bill’s current language drew a firestorm of criticism last week, with more than 15,000 phone calls to the Capitol and more than 1,500 emails reaching Ramsey himself last week in opposition to the bill. Opponents worried that the bill would require Fayette and other school districts to host an unlimited amount of students from Clayton County, which has more than 53,000 students currently enrolled.

Sen. Valencia Seay (D-Riverdale), who represents part of northeast Fayette County, and much of west Clayton County, said she prefers a different solution entirely to Clayton’s pending school crisis. She wants to create an option for a “unified school district” in which Clayton County students could remain at their current schools, which would be operated by other school districts under contracts until the Clayton County School Board can regain accreditation.

Seay, who supported the initial amendment to SB 458 that would have forced other school systems to accept student transfers from districts that lose accreditation, said she was merely “trying to make a bad bill better.”

Seay added that she was elected to represent “all the students,” and she felt allowing all students to attend their same school is the best idea.