Georgia PTA strongly supports charter schools and parent choice. Every parent has the right and responsibility to choose the best education environment that will meet the needs of their individual child. But PTA also believes in local control and the idea that the school board that you elect must be answerable to you on the way they spend the property tax dollars they raise from you. If HR 1162 is approved, the state could create their own state charter schools then use your local tax dollars to fund them. The state would not answer to you if you didn’t like how those dollars were being spent. Period. There would be NO accountability attached to those local dollars that you could address.

Now is the time to stop this constitutional amendment. When a modification to this bill was proposed to expressly prevent the state from using local dollars to fund these state schools, the amendment was rejected. The state wants access to your local dollars. When it was requested that the process be slowed temporarily so the legislation detailing how these schools would be funded could be seen and discussed, the request was also rejected. The state wants the ability to authorize the schools without revealing how they will fund them. Where’s the transparency in that?

A simple phone call to contact their office, talk to their assistant and tell them you oppose a bill can make a big difference. The whole process can literally be accomplished in a minute or two. During the session, a phone call is far more powerful than an email. CALL TODAY!