School Choice Heats up in Georgia While Lawmaker Calls for Investigation Into BLM-Inspired County BOE Chair – Opinion

It’s school choice week, and news out of Georgia is good for proponents of giving parents options as to where their children are educated.

BREAKING! The Georgia House Education Committee has passed a bill for students funding, and not system funding.

Rep. @wcantrell.)

— Jason Bedrick (@JasonBedrick) February 1, 2022

According to the AP, that measure — which never came to the floor for a vote the first time it passed the Georgia House last year — was passed at the same time a broader version of the bill passed a subcommittee.

The House Education Committee on Tuesday passed a revised version of House Bill 60, which passed the same panel last year, sending it back to the House for more debate. Meanwhile, a subcommittee passed House Bill 999, a broader version of the same bill that would provide $6,000 a year to any child who attended public school for as few as six weeks. That measure will still need to be approved by the entire committee.

It’s unclear whether a House majority would favor either proposal, especially after House Bill 60 never came to a floor vote last year. Rural Republicans are among the most opposed to many school-choice proposals.

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These new plans can help to subsidise homeschooling through tutoring and online classes.

“At the end of the day, I trust the parents to make the best decision for their child,” [Ga. GOP Rep. Wes] Cantrell [the bill’s sponsor] said.

Democrats and school groups opposed the bills because they divert public money to private schools.

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Holly Terei, a parent activist from Gwinnett County, said she benefited as a child from a voucher program in Ohio that was the “jump start” her family needed to afford private school tuition. She claims that her children were mistreated by the Gwinnett County schools during the epidemic.

“Our family is not in a position to move to a different county,” Terei said. “My family cannot afford private tuition. My family is unable to afford to be a one-income household, so that only one parent can properly homeschool. And so we are stuck.”.

It’s interesting the AP sought out a Gwinnett County parent for quotes, because that county — directly to the north and east of Atlanta — has been in the news lately for some strange goings on related to education. Most recently, as covered by The Federalist, Heritage Action revealed that the county was trying to hide that it was teaching critical race theory (born out of Marxism’s critical theory) at the same time one Georgia lawmaker is seeking to ban CRT in the state.

.@FDRLST EXCLUSIVE:

Heritage Action discovers one of GA’s largest public school districts DELETED an audit syllabus of an AP Language class from their website — which proves public school teachers are including the tenets of CRT in their lesson plans.https://t.co/oxEXCDarCU

— Heritage Action (@Heritage_Action) January 28, 2022

Source: The Federalist

Gwinnett County Public School’s apparent attempt to hide their left-wing agenda from public view comes after State Rep. Brad Thomas introduced a bill that would ban critical race theory in public schools.

[Heritage Action’s Executive Director Jessica ] Anderson explained her support for the bill, saying “This is exactly why State Rep. Brad Thomas’ bill is needed: HB 888 would require curriculum transparency, a commonsense tool that gives parents the ability to oversee their children’s education, and prevent state-sanctioned discrimination. The tenets of critical race theory, which divide students and Georgians on the basis of race, have no place in the classrooms of Georgia’s public schools.”

Tarece Johnson, the chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Public Schools Board of Education, has publicly endorsed CRT and openly displayed her hatred of white children. In one Facebook post, Johnson remarked that “there’s a killer cop sitting in every school where White children learn.”

Gwinnett County — one of the last stops for Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail before the 2020 election — has been elevated to national discourse after Johnson’s social media posts came to light in which she not only denigrated white children and called white people “socialized racists,” but was also seen in a bizarre video in which she hoists the BLM flag (an organization with its own ties to Marxist philosophy) and dances in the woods.

All the children of God, pray for them @GwinnettSchools. They have a new chair. This is their new chair. pic.twitter.com/wt5fLebEjF

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) January 24, 2022

The Georgia Republican Senator has now called for an inquiry into Johnson.

In a letter sent to the Georgia Board of Education this week, Republican Sen. Burt Jones requested a full investigation into Johnson’s ‘implemented policies, and administrative actions – and whether they violate any of the code of conduct policies or other statutes.’

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In Jones’ letter this week, he states that Johnson’s ‘actions severely undermine that mission and further divide our students and schools at a time when we need to united and come together.’

Jones, who is running for lieutenant governor this year, also highlighted Johnson’s comments about the district’s indication that one of its classes utilized critical race theory (CRT) as a reason for his request for the investigation.

Johnson’s book, ‘The Global Purpose Approach: A Multicultural Resource,’ reportedly describes CRT as part of multicultural learning, Fox News reported.

The syllabus, obtained by Heritage Action, a conservative think tank, reads: ‘Students will bridge the skills from AP Language to AP Research, analyzing the value of using different lenses in social criticism (Critical Race Theory, Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic) to aid their analysis across issues, and the class will discuss how these perspectives apply to the different methods used by research fields.’

Anderson told The Federalist that when the Gwinnett County school district tried to hide the CRT syllabus, it was a “clear admission of guilt.”

“Heritage Action is now submitting an open records request for all public documents and emails relating to why the syllabus was removed from the website and all documents containing the phrase ‘Critical Race Theory,’” Anderson told the news outlet.