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---Effect of Austerity Cuts---

Action Alert for the 10th District (Fulton County)

Georgia PTA has received many questions specific to Fulton County and this message is directed to PTA members in that school system. PTA members now realize that the Fulton County Board of Education’s current deficit is directly attributable to actions taken by the Georgia General Assembly over the past four years.

Since 2002, the QBE funding formula has been cut for all systems, totaling over $1.4 billion in lost funds for Georgia’s schools. This is money our school systems have earned under the state education funding formula per student.

Even though revenues were up in FYO6, the General Assembly only restored half of the austerity cuts, making this year’s austerity cut equal $163 million. It also restricted local school’s flexibility on class size, requiring more teachers to be hired and more portables to be purchased.

The cut to Fulton County in FY06 is $7,529,652. But that is only one year: the cumulative cost to Fulton County schools

SPAN style="mso-prop-change: Comparison 20060421T0850"> over the past 4 years is a whopping $56.5 million— money the county earned under the current state funding formula and could have used to fund new classrooms, textbooks, school nurses, teacher raises and to otherwise prepare for future growth.

Now that many valued programs are on the chopping block in Fulton County (including ES band/orchestra, ES foreign language, ESOL, school nurses, counselors, psychologists and school resource officers) it is important to co

/SPAN>mmunicate with your school board. Your voice is also needed on the state level. Please ask your state representative and senator to restore Fulton

SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">County’s $56.5 million in the FY07 supplemental budget from the newly acquired surplus. At a minimum they shoul

d

restore this year’s austerity cut of over $7.5 million

fully fund the state formula in the future, and

stop handing down unfunded mandates to the local level.

You can click below to contact both of your state legislators. In addition, please also take t

he time to contact Representative Jan (House Education Appropriations) janjones38@... ,Representative (House Education Chair) ammcbc@... ,and Senator Dan Moody (both Senate Education and Senate Appropriations-Education Chair) danmoody@...