Abrams, Elementary

In Georgia, the race for Governor between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams is suddenly all about who will for paying teachers more.

Democrat Stacey Abrams proposed raising the minimum salary for Georgia public school teachers to $50,000 a year if she’s elected governor, part of a four-year plan that would hike the pay of K-12 educators by $11,000.

Abrams said Sunday she would finance the estimated $412 million annual cost over each of the next four years by relying upon revenue from Georgia’s budget without increasing taxes or imposing new fees. She framed the $1.65 billion plan as essential to retain teachers and improve the state’s education system.

“When our pipeline is thinning and our exodus is increasing, we are losing the fight for our children’s future,” said Abrams. “We need a governor who does not see education as an election-year gimmick but sees our responsibility as a guarantee for the strongest future for our people.”

The Democrat’s proposal would more than double Gov. Brian Kemp’s pledge in 2018 to hike annual teacher pay by $5,000, a promise he made weeks before the election that became a central part of his appeal to a broader set of voters after a bruising primary.

At the time, Abrams derided the Republican’s proposal as a “gimmick” and said he couldn’t be trusted to carry it out. Kemp signed a record $30.2 billion budget earlier this year that included the final installment of the promised pay hike.

In a scathing response, Kemp’s campaign predicted that Abrams was understating the price tag of her proposal and asserted that she would have to levy new taxes to pay for it.

“Following the lead of her pals in the Biden administration, Stacey Abrams’ latest Hail Mary proposal for over $2 billion in new state spending annually joins an ever-growing pile of pie-in-the-sky plans that would make inflation worse and require higher taxes on Georgia families to pay for it all,” said Kemp spokesman Tate Mitchell.

Abrams rolled out her proposal in tandem with the endorsement from the Georgia Association of Educators, an influential advocacy group that represents roughly 23,000 teachers. Lisa Morgan, the association’s president, assailed a Republican-backed school policy overhaul that Kemp engineered.

“Adjusted for inflation, our educators are making less now than they did in 1999,” Morgan said outside the group’s headquarters, adding: “It’s not just about salaries. It’s about educators being treated as the professionals they are.”

 

So if I'm reading this right, Kemp used COVID relief money that Republicans voted against to raise minimum teacher salaries from $34k to $39k, and he wants a gold medal for it.

I can't imagine why Georgia, like just about every other red state who refuses to pay teachers more money because they don't want public education at all, continues to have a critical teacher shortage.

Please note Kemp's response is not that teachers shouldn't earn more than $39k, it's that somebody has to pay for it.

Here's an idea. Maybe move around some of those billions thrown at policing every year to buy surplus military gear to use against Georgians, particularly Black Georgians.

Again, just an idea.