Georgia school board elections, 2017

Elections

Only one school district in the Georgia school districts among America's largest school districts by enrollment held elections in 2017 for nine seats. The election was scheduled on November 7, 2017.

The district below served 51,145 students during the 2014-2015 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Click on the district name for more information on its school board election.

2017 Georgia School Board Elections
District	Primary Election	General Election	Runoff Election	Regular term length	Seats up for election	Total board seats	2014-15 enrollment
Atlanta Public Schools	N/A	11/7/2017	12/5/2017	4	9	9	51,145

Issues

Atlanta Public Schools

See also: Atlanta Public Schools elections (2017)

Judge approves temporary tax collection order

On November 3, 2017, DeKalb County Judge Alan Harvey signed a temporary tax collection order allowing Fulton County to begin collecting taxes after the county had not collected taxes by its usual October deadline. The bills were sent on November 9, 2017, with a due date of December 31, 2017, for Atlanta residents and January 15, 2018, for Fulton County residents.

“All of us at Atlanta Public Schools are pleased by today’s court ruling, which begins the process of collecting the property tax revenues that are so critical to the safe and successful operation of our school system,” Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said of the decision. “At the same time, the initial delay in tax collections will still have a significant impact on our ability to operate as normal for the remainder of this calendar year."

Because of the delay in collecting property taxes, on November 8, 2017, APS announced 1,200 employees would be required to take furlough days on November 20, 2017, and November 21, 2017, when students had off for Thanksgiving. Those who were affected included hourly employees, part-time employees, and administrators, who were not paid for the two-days they could not work. The district planned to repay salaried employees for the two-day furlough on January 15, 2018, along with a $500 one-time bonus. The district also froze hiring, slowed outgoing payments, and negotiated defered payments to charters and unfunded pension payments.

Of the planned furlough, Superintendent Carstarphen wrote on her blog:

“	APS – and other affected parties – remain in a crunch. Therefore, our district will continue to do everything we can to ensure the continued smooth and safe operation of our school system. I can’t thank our colleagues and stakeholders enough for their commitment to APS and for their understanding of the steps we had to take to mitigate our short-term cash flow challenges.	”
—Superintendent Meria Carstarphen, November 12, 2017

Halted tax revenue creates funding uncertainty

According to Atlanta Public Schools (APS), approximately 62.5 percent of its $777 million 2017-2018 school year budget came from the Fulton County Tax Digest. In June 2017, Fulton County decided to freeze property value levels at their 2016 assessment values after residents said the assessed values were too high (of the 318,000 residential parcels in Fulton County, roughly half saw an increase in assessed property value of 20 percentage points or more from 2016 to 2017).

The decision to freeze property assessment values required state approval of the adjusted tax values before tax bills could be sent. This meant that the tax bills, usually posted in the summer and due in October, had not been sent as of November 1, 2017. Because of the delay in tax collection, APS had not received any funding from Fulton County taxes—which makes up roughly two-thirds of the district's budget—as of October 31, 2017. In September 2017, the district took out a $100 million short-term loan, called a Tax Anticipation Note, with repayment of the loan set for December 2017.

On October 25, 2017, the Georgia Department of Revenue rejected the property assessment freeze, saying it would lead to commercial and industrial property owners paying too large a percentage of total taxes. This delayed Fulton County's ability to collect taxes until a new tax digest was approved by the state. The decision delayed the sending of Fulton County property tax bills until November at the earliest, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As Atlanta taxes are due within 45 days of the bills being sent and Fulton County taxes are due within 60 days, the newspaper estimated that the due date would likely be in 2018, after the APS deadline for loan repayment.

APS, along with the Fulton County School District, filed a motion on October 27, 2017, asking the courts to approve a temporary tax collection order allowing the districts to collect property taxes despite the state hold on Fulton County tax collection. A hearing was scheduled for November 3, 2017.

The possibility of the courts not approving the district's request for a tax collection order led APS Superintendent Meria Carstarphen to hold a meeting on October 30, 2017. During this meeting, she said that should the motion not be approved on November 3, 2017,

“	We [would] have to furlough the entire staff because we will probably have maybe one more month to be able to pay our bills and our staff and then we’ll have to stop until something else happens which at the earliest would be January.	”
—Meria Carstarphen, October 30, 2017

Incumbent candidate Jason Esteves said the possibility of a furlough was one of the last options. He also commented on the Tax Anticipation Note, due in December 2017. “We are trying to determine how to pay back that loan. I can guarantee you we will because it’s required by law,” he said. “We are looking at various financial mechanisms to ensure that that loan is paid off.”

The property assessment freeze announced in June 2017 also caused the Atlanta Board of Education to reassess its 2017-2018 budget. The district planned to make up an anticipated $4 million budget gap by cutting program funding and offering non-teacher, full-time employees a one-time $500 payment instead of the previously expected 1.5 percent raise.

Academic performance

See also: Public education in Georgia

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Education terms
For more information on education policy terms, see this article.
School board elections portal Glossary of education terms School choice on the ballot Education on the ballot

NAEP scores

See also: NAEP scores by state

The National Center for Education Statistics provides state-by-state data on student achievement levels in mathematics and reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The chart below presents the percentage of fourth and eighth grade students that scored at or above proficient in reading and math during school year 2012-2013. Georgia's scores were below the national average nearly across the board in the 2012-2013 school year.

Percent of students scoring at or above proficient, 2012-2013
	Math - Grade 4	Math - Grade 8	Reading - Grade 4	Reading - Grade 8
Georgia	39%	29%	34%	32%
Alabama	30%	20%	31%	25%
Florida	41%	31%	39%	33%
South Carolina	35%	31%	28%	29%
United States	41%	34%	34%	34%
Source: United States Department of Education, ED Data Express, "State Tables"

Graduation, ACT and SAT scores

See also: Graduation rates by groups in state and ACT and SAT scores in the United States

The following table shows the graduation rates and average composite ACT and SAT scores for Georgia and surrounding states during the 2012-2013 school year. All statements made in this section refer to that school year.

In the United States, public schools reported graduation rates that averaged to about 81.4 percent. About 54 percent of all students in the country took the ACT, while 50 percent reported taking the SAT. The average national composite scores for those tests were 20.9 out of a possible 36 for the ACT, and 1498 out of a possible 2400 for the SAT.

Georgia schools reported an average graduation rate of 71.7 percent during the 2012-2013 school year, lowest among its neighboring states.

In Georgia, more students took the SAT than the ACT in 2013, earning an average SAT score of 1452.

Comparison table for graduation rates and test scores, 2012-2013
State	Graduation rate, 2013		Average ACT composite, 2013		Average SAT composite, 2013
	Percent	Quintile ranking**	Score	Participation rate	Score	Participation rate
Georgia	71.7%	Fifth	20.7	51%	1452	75%
Alabama	80%	Fourth	20.4	78%	1608	7%
Florida	75.6%	Fifth	19.6	74%	1457	67%
South Carolina	77.6%	Fourth	20.4	51%	1436	64%
United States	81.4%		20.9	54%	1498	50%
**Graduation rates for states in the first quintile ranked in the top 20 percent nationally. Similarly, graduation rates for states in the fifth quintile ranked in the bottom 20 percent nationally. Sources: United States Department of Education, "ED Data Express" ACT.org, "2013 ACT National and State Scores" The Commonwealth Foundation, "SAT scores by state, 2013"

Dropout rate

See also: Public high school dropout rates by state for a full comparison of dropout rates by group in all states

The high school event dropout rate indicates the proportion of students who were enrolled at some time during the school year and were expected to be enrolled in grades nine through 12 in the following school year but were not enrolled by October 1 of the following school year. Students who have graduated, transferred to another school, died, moved to another country, or who are out of school due to illness are not considered dropouts. The average public high school event dropout rate for the United States remained constant at 3.3 percent for both school year 2010–2011 and school year 2011–2012. The event dropout rate for Georgia was higher than the national average at 3.9 percent in the 2010-2011 school year, and 3.9 percent in the 2011-2012 school year.

State profile

State profile

Demographic data for Georgia
	Georgia	U.S.
Total population:	10,199,398	316,515,021
Land area (sq mi):	57,513	3,531,905
Race and ethnicity**
White:	60.2%	73.6%
Black/African American:	30.9%	12.6%
Asian:	3.6%	5.1%
Native American:	0.3%	0.8%
Pacific Islander:	0%	0.2%
Two or more:	2.1%	3%
Hispanic/Latino:	9.1%	17.1%
Education
High school graduation rate:	85.4%	86.7%
College graduation rate:	28.8%	29.8%
Income
Median household income:	$49,620	$53,889
Persons below poverty level:	21.1%	11.3%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, "American Community Survey" (5-year estimates 2010-2015) Click here for more information on the 2020 census and here for more on its impact on the redistricting process in Georgia. **Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

Presidential voting pattern

See also: Presidential voting trends in Georgia

Georgia voted Republican in six out of the seven presidential elections between 2000 and 2024.

Pivot Counties (2016)

Ballotpedia identified 206 counties that voted for Donald Trump (R) in 2016 after voting for Barack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012. Collectively, Trump won these Pivot Counties by more than 580,000 votes. Of these 206 counties, five are located in Georgia, accounting for 2.43 percent of the total pivot counties.

Pivot Counties (2020)

In 2020, Ballotpedia re-examined the 206 Pivot Counties to view their voting patterns following that year's presidential election. Ballotpedia defined those won by Trump won as Retained Pivot Counties and those won by Joe Biden (D) as Boomerang Pivot Counties. Nationwide, there were 181 Retained Pivot Counties and 25 Boomerang Pivot Counties. Georgia had five Retained Pivot Counties, 2.76 percent of all Retained Pivot Counties.

More Georgia coverage on Ballotpedia

• Elections in Georgia
• United States congressional delegations from Georgia
• Public policy in Georgia
• Endorsers in Georgia
• Georgia fact checks
• More...

See also

Georgia	School Boards	News and Analysis
Public education in Georgia List of school districts in Georgia	School board elections, 2017 Georgia school board elections, 2016 Georgia school board elections, 2015 Georgia school board elections, 2014	School boards in session: 2015 in brief School board incumbency analysis: 2015 in brief Analysis of spending in America's largest school districts Ballotpedia's school board candidate survey

Footnotes

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