Memorandum from Mary Kay Murphy
Mary Kay Murphy, Ph.D. District 3  School Board Member marykaymurphy@aol.com

November 17, 2005

2006 Legislative Priorities

   As the 2006 session of the Georgia General Assembly nears, the Gwinnett County Board of Education has developed priorities for consideration by the House and Senate members.

   We presented these priorities to the Gwinnett delegation at a joint meeting between the delegation and the Gwinnett Board of Education at the end of November 2005. Highlights of the discussion included the following:

   The Gwinnett County Board of Education shared with the Gwinnett Legislative Delegation the Board’s unanimous opposition to House Resolution 58. This initiative relates to the issue of how public education is funded. 

   A proposal now under consideration by the legislative, HR 58, would eliminate the property tax for education as a source of public school funding and replace it totally with a dedicated statewide sales tax. 

   The Board urges the General Assembly to reject efforts to approve HR 58 for the following reasons:

  • The sales tax is a highly volatile source of revenue compared to property taxes, which are more stable over time.
  • The Gwinnett County Board of Education has consistently offered Gwinnett County Public School students an education above and beyond what the state provides—locally funding extra programs, teachers, resources, and time—and would not be able to do so if its local revenue options were eliminated.
  • Funding education with a statewide sales tax would place education funding in the hands of the legislature and eliminate local control of public school systems.
  • The Governor has charged an Education Finance Task Force with defining what “excellence in education” means for Georgia, and with determining the proper way to fund it. The task force should be allowed to complete its work prior to any funding decisions.
  • The statewide sales tax would increase taxes for many Georgians who currently are exempt from property taxes to support schools, including senior citizens and disabled taxpayers.

   In addition to opposing HR 58, the Gwinnett County Board of Education endorses the effort by a number of organizations, including Georgia PTA and Georgia School Boards Association, as well as individual taxpayers who are working to ensure that the funding of Georgia’s public schools is not based on a single volatile and regressive source of revenue.

   Other positions that the Gwinnett County Board of Education brought to the attention of the Gwinnett Delegation included the following:

  • Maintaining local control of public education, including curriculum, discipline, school calendar, and local revenue sources.
  • Resisting efforts to provide contracts for classified employees.
  • Opposing collective bargaining in any form.

Also, the Board of Education discussed its positions related to State funding improvement requests, as follows:

  • Restoring the state funding lost due to four years of austerity reductions and
Protecting the K-12 education appropriation from any further austerity reductions.
  • Continuing to delay implementation of mandated class-size reductions.
  • Increasing state funding for facility maintenance and operations.
  • Funding at the $200 million level for Regular Entitlement and at the $100 million level for Exceptional Growth.
  • Increasing state funding to supplement the full cost of teacher salary increases, including benefits.
  • Increasing QBE funding to address instructional costs for consumable materials and supplies, textbooks, and replacement of instructional equipment.
  • Providing mid-term adjustments for training and experience of all certificated professional personnel employed by the system as of the most recent month for which data are available;
  • Increasing the existing amount of $150 per teacher per year to pay for substitute teachers to an amount that is commensurate to the actual cost of the local system...
  • Revising the current formula for state funding for transportation of students to include students who live outside a one-mile radius of school.
  • Consideration of increasing Teachers Retirement System benefits to employees who choose to continue to work beyond 30 years in order to help with the teacher shortage.

   As the District III School Board member of the Gwinnett County Board of Education, I appreciate the opportunity to share with residents in Peachtree Corners, Duluth, Norcross, and Berkeley Lake the positions that the Board is asking the Georgia General Assembly, through our Gwinnett Delegation, to support during its 2006 session. If you have questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

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