Nathan Deal to state school boards: Governance matters | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Both candidates for Georgia governor, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter, were scheduled to speak to the Georgia School Boards Association at its Savannah conference this weekend. Carter delivered his remarks Friday, and I am waiting for a transcript to share here.

Weather prevented Deal from getting there, but here is the speech he would have given:

By Nathan Deal

Doubtless many of you enjoy your jobs and see a sense of purpose in them, as I do with mine. And much like my own, you get your greatest publicity in your communities when something is perceived as having gone wrong. In those moments, you have concerned parents and invasive news outlets on your doorsteps wanting to know every detail.

Unfortunately, the past several years were difficult on all of us, and our local school boards were not exempt. During the Great Recession, state revenues dropped 19 percent, leaving each of us with fewer dollars to distribute. Yet despite difficulties, we have continued to spend around half of our state budget on education each year. To this purpose, we picked the low-hanging fruit early, increased efficiencies, consolidated agencies and made difficult cuts, all while doing our absolute best to hold the line on K-12 education spending.

But there’s good news. Forty-four out of the past 47 months have experienced year-over-year revenue growth, which over time has allowed us to devote more funds to the essential functions of state government, with education foremost among them. In fact, this trend let us increase K-12 funding this year by over half a billion dollars—the largest such increase in seven years!

When we announced the additional funding, we noted that it should as much as possible be used on eliminating furlough days, restoring instructional days and increasing teacher salaries. Well, I have a document that tells me exactly what each district has done with their allotments, and I want to commend the many here who have used this opportunity to get students and teachers back into the classroom where they belong, earning a salary that they deserve.

I hope that you have had parents and media knocking on your doors thanking you for that!

Now, as we see revenue coming back, I want to encourage you to resist falling back into old patterns and to be willing to embrace the innovations that will carry Georgia classrooms into the 21st century.

In partnership with the Georgia Department of Education, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement and the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, we have allotted up to $39 million in grant money for our “Connections for Classrooms” initiative. We hope through this process to make high speed internet and digital learning available to every public school classroom in the state. Faster internet will require appropriate infrastructure to receive, and I encourage all of you to apply by the August deadline. With the capabilities of today’s technology, certainly we must bring our students up to speed!

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