About 13,500 students started this school year with public money to pay for private education, up from about 8,700 recipients last fall when Georgia’s version of private school vouchers, the Promise Scholarship, debuted.
About 800 of those 2026-2027 students are from Chatham County, according to numbers from the Georgia Education Savings Authority, the state agency that administers the program that provides $6,500 per year for students to subsidize private or home school. Approximately 200 are from Liberty County, and fewer than two dozen each come from Bryan, Glynn and McIntosh counties.
During the 2025-2026 school year, families spent about $27 million on private school tuition, according to year-end figures provided by GESA.
About $22 million of that money — or 77% — was spent at parochial schools, according to an analysis by The Current GA, which counted any school with a religious affiliation in its name or prominent mention of faith-informed education on its website.
Of the 326 private schools that received voucher payments, about 70% are affiliated with a Christian denomination, while 2% are Muslim. Almost 100 further schools that had websites made no religious statement.
Republicans in the Georgia legislature passed the controversial voucher law in 2024, over objections from all Democrats except one who subsequently switched parties.
The GOP characterized the money as a way to give choice and opportunity to children, and many wanted the vouchers to be available to all families with school-age children, not just to those in schools that scored poorly on an annual ranking.
Republicans budgeted enough money to grant vouchers to about 22,000 students in the 2025-2026 school year, but later reduced the line item due to lack of eligible applicants.
Democrats argued that the money would subsidize children whose families intended to go to private school without the state funds, while diverting crucial public money from public schools.
Some critics of school vouchers contend that private schools are not legally obligated to provide accommodation for children with disabilities, as public schools are. Other critics say that taxpayer funds should not subsidize religious instruction.
The sponsor of the 2024 voucher bill, state Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, has run inflammatory Islamophobic advertisements this year as he campaigns for lieutenant governor calling for Georgia to be “sharia-free.” Sharia is the Islamic jurisprudence that is steeped in religious law, something frequently taught in religious education. The ad also featured fictitious, AI-generated Islamic radicals terrorizing white Georgians.
The Current GA has reached out to Dolezal for comment on Georgia parents spending public money at religious schools in general and Muslim schools in particular. His staff cancelled a scheduled in-person interview and he has not responded to phone calls.
According to state law, money allocated in the voucher program can go towards tuition at a private educational facility or for home school expenses.
Families last year also spent another $10.2 million on other educational supports like laptops, books, software and therapy. Amazon’s $2.6 million in revenue made it the top vendor receiving such funds.
Students who have spent at least a year in the state’s lowest-performing quarter of schools in an annual ranking from the governor’s office are eligible to apply for the money. This year, one or more schools from every coastal county except Camden appear on the list. Schools’ scores can swing up and down by dozens of points a year, as The Current GA has reported.
The $6,500 doesn’t cover the average cost of annual tuition in a private facility or a public one. The National Center for Education Statistics put the national average price of private school tuition at $14,570 in 2021. Georgia spends about $8,300 on average per public school K-12 student, according to the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. (Plus local governments add more on top of that.)
Program administrators at GESA are due to file their first review of the Promise Scholarship to legislators in December.
The Tide brings regular notes and observations on news and events by The Current staff.
You must be logged in to post a comment.