Education Elementary and Secondary School Education: Amend Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Relating to Elementary and Secondary Education, So as to Enact the "georgia Special Needs Scholarship Act;" Provide a Short Title; Define Certain Terms; Provide for Scholarships for Public School Students With Disabilities to Attend Other Public or Private Schools; Provide for Qualifications and Criteria for the Scholarship Program; Establish Certain Requirements for Schools That Participate in the Scholarship Program: Provide for the Amount of Scholarship and Method of Payments; Authorize the State Board of Education to Promulgate Certain Rules; Provide for an Annual Report on the Program; Provide for Related Matters; Provide for an Effective Date and Applicability; Repeal Conflicting Laws; and for Other Purposes
| Citation | Vol. 24 No. 1 |
| Publication year | 2010 |
Georgia State University Law Review
4-5-2012
EDUCATION Elementary and Secondary School Education: Amend Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Relating to Elementary and Secondary Education, so as to Enact the "Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Act;" Provide a Short Title; Define Certain Terms; Provide for Scholarships for Public School Students with Disabilities to Attend Other Public or Private Schools; Provide for Qualifications and Criteria for the Scholarship Program; Establish Certain Requirements for Schools that Participate in the Scholarship Program: Provide for the Amount of Scholarship and Method of Payments; Authorize
Recommended Citation
Georgia State University Law Review (2007) "EDUCATION Elementary and Secondary School Education: Amend Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Relating to Elementary and Secondary Education, so as to Enact the "Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Act;" Provide a Short Title; Define Certain Terms; Provide for Scholarships for Public School Students with Disabilities to Attend Other Public or Private Schools; Provide for Qualifications and Criteria for the Scholarship Program; Establish Certain Requirements for Schools that Participate in the Scholarship Program: Provide for the Amount of Scholarship and Method of Payments; Authorize the State Board of Education to Promulgate Certain Rules; Provide for an Annual Report on the Program; Provide for Related Matters; Provide for an Effective Date and Applicability; Repeal Conflicting Laws; and for Other Purposes," Georgia State University Law Review: Vol. 24: Iss. 1, Article 6. Available at: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol24/iss176
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the State Board of Education to Promulgate Certain Rules; Provide for an Annual Report on the Program; Provide for Related Matters; Provide for an Effective Date and /Applicability; Repeal Conflicting Laws; and for Other Purposes
Georgia State University Law Review
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EDUCATION
Elementary and Secondary Education: Amend Chapter 2 of Title
20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Relating to Elementary and Secondary Education, so as to Enact the "Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Act;" Provide a Short Title; Define Certain Terms; Provide for Scholarships for Public School Students with Disabilities to Attend Other Public or Private Schools; Provide for Qualifications and Criteria for the Scholarship Program; Establish Certain Requirements for Schools that Participate in the Scholarship Program; Provide for the Amount of Scholarship and Method of Payments; Authorize the State Board of Education to Promulgate Certain Rules; Provide for
an Annual Report on the Program; Provide for Related Matters; Provide for an Effective Date and Applicability; Repeal Conflicting Laws; and for Other Purposes
Code Sections: Bill Number: Act Number: Georgia Laws: Summary:
O.C.G.A. §§ 20-2-2110 to -2118 (new)
SB 10
117
2007 Ga. Laws 197
The Act creates a scholarship for students with disabilities who are dissatisfied with the services received in their resident public school. The amount of each scholarship depends on the special needs matrix, which currently dictates funding for public schools. Scholarships are transferable and may be used at another public school within the resident system, a public school outside the resident system, a state school for the deaf or blind, or a private sectarian or non-sectarian school.
To qualify for a scholarship, a student's parents must currently reside in Georgia and have been Georgia
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residents for at least one year. Furthermore, the student must have one or more of the listed disabilities. The student must also have attended a Georgia public school that implements the child's Individualized Education Plan (EEP), for one school year. Moreover, accepting a scholarship requires waiving rights available under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Effective Date: July 1,2007
History
School choice programs, once known as voucher programs, are government initiatives that allow "individual students and their parents to determine which school the student will attend and allocatef] a specific sum of money that can be used for part or full payment for the student to attend that school," instead of enrollment restricted by residency.1
Early Ideas and Programs
In 1955, Milton Friedman, a free-market economist, theorized a voucher system for public education. He proposed that education should not be the government's monopoly.3 However, a completely free market would be risky because education is a public commodity, to which wealthy and poor alike should have access.4 Thus, he posited that the government should provide parents with funds to offset the cost of education.5 This system would force schools to compete for student enrollment, causing schools to either excel by
1. 1 Ronna Greff Schneider, Education Law § 1:30 (2006).
2. Milton Friedman, The Role of Government in Education, in economics and the public Interest 123,143-44 (Robert A. Solo ed., 1955).
3. See id.
4. See id.
5. See id.
2007] LEGISLATIVE REVIEW 97
catering to student's needs or to go out of business by losing enrollment and funding.6 In short, vouchers would use competition and choice to create more successful and innovative schools than those created by a bureaucratic government monopoly.7
Though Milton was the first academic to formalize this system, Maine and Vermont were actually the first states to adopt school choice programs out of necessity in the late 1800s.8 Beginning in 1869, Vermont allowed a school district to pay another school district or independent school to take its residents in lieu of opening and operating its own system.9 This was a financially attractive option because some school districts had a small number of sparsely dispersed students.10 In 1902, Vermont expanded the program to allow school districts to pay for students' out-of-state private tuition.11 Today, 95 out of 246 towns still pay tuition for some or all of their students to attend another public school, a non-sectarian private school, or an out-of-state school.
Similarly, in 1873, Maine passed the Free High School Act, a precursor to the present choice program.13 Since then, the Maine has allowed a school district to pay another school district or independent school to take its resident students in lieu of opening and operating its own school system.14 Students may choose public schools in other districts, private non-sectarian schools, or out-of-state schools, if their local district does not operate its own school, operates a school that has fewer than ten students, operates a school that offers insufficient courses (e.g., not enough foreign languages), or if the students live too far from the school.15
6. See id.
7. See id.
8. Christopher Hammons, Friedman Found., School Choice Issues in Depth: The Effects
of town tuitioning in vermont and maine 5 (2002), available at http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/downloadFile.do?id=61.
9. Hat7.
10. Id.
11. Mat8.
12. Id. at 9.
13. Hammons, supra note 8, at 8.
14. Id. at 9.
15. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 20-A, § 5203 (1993) (giving elementary students the right to attend school in another administrative unit); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 20-A, § 5204 (1993) (giving secondary students the right to attend school in another administrative unit).
98 GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 24:95
The Maine school choice system included sectarian schools until 1980 when Richard S. Cohen, Attorney General of Maine, issued an opinion advising the legislature that including sectarian schools within the school choice program violated the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.16 Consequently, in 1981 the legislature amended the school choice laws to comply with the Establishment Clause by excluding sectarian schools.17 In 2003, parents desiring to use vouchers at private sectarian schools challenged the law on grounds of Free Exercise and Equal Protection.18 The Supreme Court of the State of Maine upheld the exclusion of sectarian schools from the school choice program.19 In regard to Free Exercise, the court held that "[s]tates have some leeway to choose not to fund religious education even if a choice to fund religious education indirectly might not violate the Establishment Clause."20 Regarding Equal Protection, the court held that the "concern to avoid excessive entanglements provides a rational basis to maintain the funding limitation."21
Ultimately, "small towns in Vermont and Maine often found it less expensive to ship students to existing private academies rather than
99 •
build public schools." Thus, school choice has been in practice for more than 100 years.
The Milwaukee Experience
Milwaukee was the first city to implement Friedman's theory in an effort to fix educational woes.23 In 1989, Wisconsin created the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) in an attempt to
16. See Me. Op. Att'y Gen. No. 80-2 (1980), available at 1980 WL 119258. This opinion was based on Comm. for Pub. Educ. v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756 (1972), which invalidated a New York statute authorizing a tuition tax-break for parents and funds for maintenance and repairs at schools. See id.
17. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 20-A, §§ 5203-5204 (1993); see also Bagley v. Raymond Sch. Dep't, 728 A.2d 127, 130-31 (Me. 1999).
18. Anderson v. Town of Durham, 895 A.2d 944, 944 (Me. 2006), cert, denied, 127 S.Ct. 661 (2006).
19. See id.
20. Id. at 959.
21....
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