- Republican leaders in the Georgia House of Representatives are looking to boost funding for the state’s prekindergarten program by over $100 million.
- Lawmakers are also considering higher teacher salaries and further funding for classroom infrastructure.
- “We’ve got to continue to up our game,” Republican state House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones said of Georgia’s education endeavors.
Top Republicans in the Georgia House want to boost funding for its prekindergarten program by more than $100 million, raising teacher salaries, providing money for building classrooms and spending more on operations.
“We’ve got to continue to up our game,” House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, a Milton Republican who led a study of Georgia’s prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds.
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington and Jones said Tuesday that they would seek to implement recommendations in the current legislative session, although Gov. Brian Kemp didn’t budget for most of them. Jones said leaders would ask Kemp to increase spending or they would seek money from elsewhere in the budget.
GEORGIA GOV. KEMP PROPOSES $11.3M TO OVERHAUL LITERACY EDUCATION
The governor’s office declined to comment.
It’s one of a series of proposals nationwide to boost spending on child care and early education, months after a pandemic-era federal boost in subsidies expired.
Georgia uses lottery money to offer preschool to any 4-year-old whose parents want it, funding classes for 84,000 children statewide. Enrollment has only partially recovered since the pandemic, to about 73,000 last year. But officials say it’s a struggle to hire teachers, in part because of low state-paid salaries.
“We have a lot of providers or even public schools that have the kids, they’re ready and willing, they want to enter our pre-K class and they can’t find a teacher,” said Early Care and Learning Commissioner Amy Jacobs, who oversees the program.
About 2,700 children are on waiting lists statewide, though Jones said she…
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