On Monday, a Democratic lawmaker from Georgia, Lydia Glaize, claimed during the Georgia House Education Subcommittee on Policy meeting that parents are unqualified to motivate and give directions to their children for better education as the majority of them “did not finish high school.”
This week, the subcommittee affirmed the Georgia Scholarship Act with a 7-5 vote.
This act will form a state-funded $6,000 annual stipend that could be utilized to enclose education costs for every student.
The Senate has already passed the legislation in a 33-23 vote.
The stipend amount will be in an account from where the parents can pick the best place to utilize it for better education of their child.
Only those students studying at public schools and positioned in the lower quartile of statewide academic performance are qualified to get the scholarships.
In the subcommittee meeting, Lydia Glaize informed the legislation’s sponsor, GOP Sen. Greg Dolezal, that the majority of the schools in metropolitan districts could not take part in the scholarship program.
She stated:
“I’d like to offer just some friendly advice too. As an educator, I helped start the first charter school in Fulton County, I’ve been a homeschooler, and I worked in private education. The majority of our metro school districts would not be able to take advantage of this.”
She added:
“I do know that in private schools, there is a requirement on who can get into the school. I see access as a problem. I see parents being able to direct their child’s education, and they’re already in the lower 25 percentile. … A lot of those parents did not finish high school.”
She claimed that she is “extremely concerned” with the decision to hand over the scholarship funds in the hands of the parents “who are not qualified to make those decisions.”
She added further:
“And they don’t have the money to put in the difference that their child would need to attend a private school if there were one already in their region.”
Glaize also revealed that her children study at a private school.
She stated:
“I am for private schools. All of my children graduated from private schools. But I am not for them if we take public school dollars and use them for private schools. We paid for it. And we were able to.”
