Increased Education Funding Coming to Georgia Schools, Wilkinson Says

State Senator John Wilkinson says Georgia will be fully funding education for the first time in years.

Wilkinson spoke recently at Franklin County’s Policies and Pastries breakfast in Carnesville.

According to Wilkinson, the state is fully funding Quality Basic Education or QBE for the first time since the program was implemented.

“I do believe this is the first time in history the QBE has been fully funded. Some people would say it was fully funded in 2002. I was working for the state Department of Education when QBE was inacted and this is the closest to fully funded it’s ever been.”

QBE was adopted by the state in 1985.

Wilksinson said additional money has also been set aside for the State’s school safety programs.

“I know we’re all concerned about school safety and protecting our schools. There was $16 million put in the budget for school safety, bond money for school systems to make their buildings more secure. I think the way that’s going to be distributed, there are 180 school systems in the state and I think every system is going to receive a base grant of $25,000. The rest of it will be based on the FTE,” he explained.

The final education budget item Wilkinson talked about would not be distributed to the schools, but to the Regional Education Service Areas.

“There was also $1.6 million put in the budget to go to the RESA’s, the Educational Service Agencies around the state to do in-service training on the mental health of students to help faculty and administators identify students who are having problems with their mental health, because as we know, with a lot of the shootings, a lot of these are mental health issues, so there was $1.6 million put in there for that,” said Wilkinson.

All of the approved funding will go into effect in the 2018-2019 school year.