James March-April 2024 online - Flipbook - Page 67
E D UCAT I O N
BY M AT T H E W S M I T H
ach year, Georgia’s Governor’s Office of Planning
and Budget estimates how
much tax revenue the state
will collect. Conservative
revenue estimates, coupled with higher-than-expected tax collections over
the last three years, have produced a
$16 billion budget reserve. As part of
its constitutional duties, the Georgia
General Assembly must pass two
budgets this session: the Amended
Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget, which
covers spending through June 30,
2024, and the FY 2025 budget, which
starts on July 1, 2024. During his State
of the State address in January, Gov.
Brian Kemp proposed investing 55
percent of the state’s reserves ($8.8
billion) across the two budgets.
The two budgets raise salaries
for teachers and state government
employees, invest in the state’s technology and transportation infrastructure, and ensure Georgia maintains
its AAA bond rating by using reserve
funds for capital projects.
For this article, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education
identifies three areas where the General Assembly can use reserve funds
to invest in the state’s future: behavioral health, childcare, and community and economic development.
BEHAVIORAL HEALTH
According to Mental Health
America, in 2020 Georgia ranked
50th in the nation in access to
mental healthcare services and 48th
in the size of the mental healthcare
workforce as a percentage of the
state’s population. The Georgia
General Assembly responded by enacting the Mental Health Parity Act
(House Bill 1013) in 2022. More recently, the Behavioral Health Reform
and Innovation Commission has
provided specific recommendations
related to addressing workforce
shortages and expanding access to
behavioral health services.
While the Governor’s budget
request increases the number of
state-funded mental health beds
and raises salaries for state agency
staff tasked with delivering behavioral health services, the Partnership
recommends the General Assembly
also focus supports on the expansion
of community-based strategies that
emphasize preventative care.
For example, the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and
Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD)
operates the Apex program, which
expands access to mental health
services for K-12 students across the
state. DBHDD also works with community service boards to implement
the co-responder model, a strategy
that pairs law enforcement officers
and mental health providers to connect individuals with mental health
supports and avoid involvement in
the criminal justice system.
The governor used federal
pandemic-relief funds to expand the
number of local school systems that
operate school-based health centers. These centers offer treatment
for chronic illnesses like asthma
and provide referrals for students
who need specialized physical and
behavioral healthcare. While education leaders and community health
providers are partnering to expand
access to mental health services,
increasing state-level funding for
the Apex, co-responder, and schoolbased health center programs will
ensure more Georgians, especially
teens and young adults, receive
behavioral health services.
CHILDCARE
For the last decade, economic
developers have named Georgia as
the number one state in the nation
for doing business. The state scores
well on several indicators, including
cost of living, workforce talent, and
the quality of public workforce development programs. However, the
average annual cost of childcare—
$7,644— remains a cause for concern.
The cost outpaces in-state tuition
rates for all but four of the state’s 48
public, post-secondary institutions
and contributes to parents and caregivers exiting the workforce.
Although the state currently
funds pre-kindergarten classes for
73,462 students, the program only
serves 54 percent of Pre-K eligible students. Moreover, while the
governor’s budget includes funding
to decrease class sizes and to raise
salaries for Pre-K lead and assistant teachers, the budget does not
address how to lower the parental
share of childcare costs for children
under the age of four.
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