ATLANTA – State Representative Dave Belton (R-Buckhead) was recently honored at the 2017 National Summit on Education Reform in Nashville, Tennessee, for his work on House Bill 139 during the 2017 legislative session of the Georgia General Assembly. HB 139, which was recently signed into law, is a school fiscal transparency measure that requires Georgia schools to report their expenditures.
“More than $25 billion is spent in Georgia on education every year, but taxpayers know very little about where that money actually goes,” said Rep. Belton. “Over the past few years, the Georgia General Assembly has given local school boards historic levels of flexibility. Local control and flexibility are wonderful, but transparency is essential in a constitutional republic to ensure quality and accountability and so that the public feels confident that their money is not being wasted. As a result of this legislation, parents and stakeholders can now access financial information needed in order to ask their school boards pertinent questions.”
The new law requires school districts to report basic expenditures at the school and district level in a uniform manner to the Georgia Department of Education (DOE). The DOE then compiles the summited data and publishes it to an online database. The data is furnished to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, and the office publishes that data as a “Scorecard” on its website. Additionally, schools that maintain a website are required to post a link in a prominent location to the DOE’s database.
“This is data these districts already have,” said Rep. Belton. “Most districts already publish this information, but many districts do not. Since there was no standardized way to report these numbers, it is nearly impossible to compare one school to another.”
This bipartisan legislation passed overwhelmingly in both the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia State Senate, making Georgia one of only three states that has such legislation. Rep. Belton hopes this legislation will serve as a model for other states to follow.
The 2017 National Summit on Education Reform is a nationwide convention sponsored by the Excellence in Education Foundation. The Chairman of the Excellence in Education Foundation is the former Governor Jeb Bush, and the board includes many notable national figures, including Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Charles Schwab, former Congressman Eric Cantor and the current Secretary of Education Betsy Devos. The goal of the foundation is to encourage educational reform in areas such as fiscal transparency, school choice, charter schools, improved standards and competency based learning.
For more information on House Bill 139, please click here.
Representative Dave Belton represents the citizens of District 112, which includes all of Morgan County and the eastern side of Newton County. He was elected into the House of Representatives in 2014, and currently serves as the Chairman of the Military Affairs working group. He is also a member of the Economic Development & Tourism, Education, Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications, and Interstate Cooperation committees.
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