Thousands of local parents phone, email governor, legislators to protest school voucher bill

Nobody ever said language was easy. That certainly proved to be the case beginning nearly two weeks ago when Senate Bill (SB) 458 surfaced and set up the potential for Clayton County schools’ students to attend Fayette, Henry and other school systems if the Clayton system loses its accreditation in September.

Addressing the tsunami of public outcry over that possibility, Sen. Ronnie Chance held a hastily called town hall meeting Saturday in the Fayette County Commission chambers. Chance was joined by Rep. Matt Ramsey (R-Peachtree City), who intercepted the bill in the House.

Residents were told Saturday that the language in SB 458 had been changed from “shall” attend if space is available to “may” attend, and that it was likely that Fayette was off the hook for the educational fate of Clayton students.

The possibility of Clayton students attending Fayette public schools created a spontaneous maelstrom amounting to tens of thousands of phone calls to local legislators and Gov. Sonny Perdue from Fayette County residents concerned that the ongoing mess with the public school system in Clayton County would filter over into Fayette.

If that were to happen, it would have potentially allowed an untold number of Clayton’s 53,000 students to access the Fayette school system.

In its wake would be looming questions of classroom overcrowding and other questions on how Fayette taxpayers would foot the bill.

At a town hall meeting Saturday morning Chance and Ramsey provided an overview of the routing of bills through the sometimes cumbersome legislative process and gave an update on the current status of SB 458 in the Georgia House.

At the outset of the meeting, Chance said Rep. Valencia Seay (D-Riverdale) and Rep. Virgil Fludd (D-Fayetteville) had been made aware of the town hall meeting. Chance said both legislators told him they had previous commitments that would prevent them from attending.

Both Chance and Ramsey were optimistic that the revised wording and the unfolding legislative process would preclude a requirement that Fayette take Clayton students.

A portion of the 158 residents in attendance included Fayette County School Board member Janet Smola, Assistant Superintendent Sam Sweat and a wealth of elected and appointed officials from Fayette County and its municipalities.

By their statements, those attending appeared to have their fears or concerns allayed.

Both Smola and Sweat addressed audience questions and concerns over taking out of county students, the system implemented by the school system to prevent that attendance and the cost to local taxpayers to educate students in Fayette County schools.

“We already have a policy on out of county students,” Smola said. “We will not take out of county students unless we are mandated. We’ve made tremendous efforts on this in the past couple of years. We already have a system of check and balances. That’s what the community said it wanted.”

Smola and Sweat outlined what they called a long and laborious ongoing process to ensure that students enrolled in Fayette schools do live in the county. That process, they said, includes hiring detectives, if needed, to confirm residency.

Responding to other audience questions, Smola said the school system cannot run license plates. Such activity lies in the domain of law enforcement agencies and is applicable to circumstances relating to the commission of a crime.

Following up on other audience questions on the apparent impasse in Clayton County, Sweat said the burden of proof rests with the Clayton County School Board. He said across the county line in Fayette, the school board and school system have gone to great lengths to provide a high quality education for its residents.

“(Fayette) is not a county of arrogance,” said Sweat, pointing to the monetary price paid by Fayette taxpayers to fund public education. “The state funds about 50 percent of the money needed to educate students. It takes another $3,500-4,000 per student in local dollars.”

In statements to the audience, Ramsey said SB 458 may become a final product of the House Rules Committee.

He said the chairman has been asked that, if it survives the committee process, the bill be considered a Structural Rule which would prohibit another amendment that would put “shall” back in the language. Ramsey said the chairman has agreed to that request.

Chance and Ramsey responded to audience questions about the possible fate of SB 458. Chance said that, as of Monday, the legislative session has only four days remaining with a large number of bills still in the pipeline. SB 458 must make it out of committee within that time frame in order to survive at all.

The remaining few days of a legislative session is often the occasion for the presentation of “big bills” from the governor.

“This is not a big bill,” Chance said, adding that the bill would be dead if it does not make it out of committee.

Following up on other audience questions about the potential fate of SB 458, Ramsey said he had heard that the Rules Committee where the bill currently resided might alter it in such a way that takes public schools out of the equation.

“I’ve learned that the Rules Committee might strip public schools out of the bill and make it private schools only,” Ramsey said.

Another question superseded the words “may” and “shall,” with the resident asking if the term “space available” might need to be refined.

“We need to make sure the school system can say ‘no,’” Ramsey said. “As long as the bill stays as it is the school system can say ‘no.’”

Toward the beginning of the meeting Chance and Ramsey gave a chronological outline of how the bill originated, how the ambiguous language involving “shall” and “may” had been substituted and, ultimately, how the issue had been resolved.

Chance said SB 458 in its original version months ago was a private school voucher bill from which language relating to public schools was later added. Authored by Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), the bill was intended to allow students from schools that had lost accreditation to accept a voucher to go to another school, he said.

“This was before the Clayton County thing got as bad as it is currently,” Chance said. “The whole point was that the kids who graduated from a school that’s not accredited cannot qualify for the HOPE scholarship. So that was the point behind the intent of the original bill.”

Chance said an amendment was added on the Senate floor that took out the phrase “a school system may accept students based upon space availability.”

“It took out the word ‘may’ and put in the word ‘shall,’” Chance said. “After much discussion, legislative counsel assured us that there was enough leeway in that language to allow the school system to accept or decline. Current law already says a school system can accept a student from another system if they so choose. So we were under the impression that it was the same issue.”

Chance explained that the amendment was not voted on or debated and was passed by unanimous consent because it was not considered a controversial amendment, based on the recommendation of legislative counsel.

“After the fact, clearly, we realized last week that there was some ambiguity in that phrase,” Chance said.

With SB 458 having moved over to the House, Chance said he met with Sen. Johnson and others to address the language.

On March 21 he received a call from school board member Janet Smola. It was then that Chance and Ramsey began discussions with members of the school board on how to address the problem.

“Rep. Ramsey and I (on March 24) spoke with the bill’s author and Senate leadership and we decided we were going to attempt to amend this bill in the House committee and replace ‘shall’ with ‘may,’” Chance said. “’May’ is a very innocuous term that doesn’t typically have any teeth in it.”

Ramsey told the audience he met with the chair of the House Technology & Science Committee and called all its members. Both Ramsey and Chance contacted Superintendent John DeCotis to advise him of their attempt.

“The problem was that the House didn’t meet again until Wednesday. So between Monday and Wednesday, Matt and I got thousands of emails and phone calls and Gov. Perdue got 17,334 phone calls from Fayette County,” Chance said as many in the audience chuckled. “The process has to play itself out and we couldn’t do anything any quicker. And true to our word, as soon as the House committee met, the amendment was offered to strip that language out. So now it reads ‘may’ again, based upon space availability. Those qualifiers provide room for the various systems to accept or deny students from other systems.”