SR 388, a constitutional amendment that is meant to prevent discrimination in the public funding of social services by allowing religious or faith-based organizations to receive public funding will be heard and voted on by the Senate tomorrow. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Bill Heath (R-Bremen). 

 

In reality, this controversial amendment would open the door for full-scale school vouchers by allowing public dollars to go directly to religious organizations and houses of worship for public health and social service programs -- including private schools. During the committee process, Sen. Heath mentioned both K-12 and Pre-K education as the types of services these programs could offer. PAGE requested that Heath's legislation be amended in subcommittee to exclude the possibility of vouchers, but Heath and two others on the subcommittee voted down the amendment offered by Sen. Elena Parent (D-Decatur). Therefore, the legislation moved forward without those critical changes. There have been several attempts to pass this type of legislation in recent sessions.

Even with a partial austerity restoration of $300 million in FY 2017, Georgia still underfunds the Quality Basic Education formula that funds public schools by $166 million.  This legislation would prove detrimental to the progress made in restoring these critical funds.