Hearing Scheduled on the Child Protection and Public Safety Act
Introduced at the end of the 2009 legislative session as SB 292, the Child Protection and Public Safety Act ("the Act") would comprehensively modernize and streamline O.C.G.A. Title 15. The bill rewrites Georgia's juvenile code to improve the manner in which courts and other systems interact with children. The bill's lead sponsor is Senator Bill Hamrick (R-Carrolton). Although SB 292 did not pass in the 2010 legislative session, efforts to move the Act toward passage next session continue. Last fall, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a total of five hearings on the Act, and then appointed a subcommittee to continue hearings during the 2010 legislative session. The subcommittee held one hearing in March, another in June, and has just announced its next hearing, which will be held on Monday, August 9th from 2pm to 4pm in room 450 of the Capitol. The planned agenda for this hearing is to review Article 6 of the Act, which deals with Children in Need of Services, a new approach for Georgia in dealing with status offenders or unruly children. READ MORE 
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2010 Youth Law Conference Coming in October
Save the date! The Georgia Association of Counsel for Children will be hosting the second annual Youth Law Conference on October 27-29th in Atlanta. The conference will cover a wide range of topics of interest to juvenile court practitioners in delinquency, unruly and deprivation cases. GACC is still seeking presentation proposals.
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 Georgia Appleseed Releases Report on Effective School Discipline
One of the Barton Center's JUSTGeorgia partners, Georgia Appleseed, has recently released a new report on Effective School Discipline. This report, Effective School Discipline: Keeping Kids in Class, is Phase I of an on-going process to objectively assess the state of public school student discipline in Georgia and to identify any changes that would benefit all of Georgia's students. Phase I includes: - An analysis of student discipline data collected from schools and school districts by the Georgia Department of Education;
- A review of the student discipline policies in place in sixty schools in fifteen school districts located throughout the state;
- An assessment of current state law concerning public school student discipline.
Phase II will use interviews with stakeholders in the school discipline process to identify additional needs for research or analysis, other areas of concern in the public school disciplinary system, and possible responses to any such areas of concern. Phase II is due for completion in December 2010. Download Phase I Report and Appendices here.
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