Georgia School Superintendent: Richard Woods, Lydia Powell

Lydia Powell (D)

Powell supports modernizing the education funding formula and said if elected, she will be more aggressive and effective at encouraging lawmakers to refresh the formula than Woods has been.

“As state superintendent, you are a lobbyist for your students and your teachers,” she said. “You have to show up. You have to be loud. You have to be obnoxious. You have to go to committee meetings. You have to talk to members of the Senate, members of the House. You have to work with your universities, with our researchers to get research and data.

Powell said adding a permanent poverty weight is her top priority within the QBE formula.

She also said schools often miss out on the full amount of funding they are entitled to because of a lack of statewide training in some of the intricacies of the program and pledged to educate districts on navigating the system while working to change it.

Richard Woods (R)

Woods said he supports modernizing the Quality Basic Education formula, which determines the state’s share of education funding for Georgia’s public schools. The formula hasn’t been comprehensively updated since it was enacted in 1985.

Speaking at an education forum in August, Woods said attempts to update the formula in recent years have failed because lawmakers aimed for a complete overhaul instead of incremental changes.

“I think that’s been one of the issues, they’ve tried to eat the entire elephant in one bite,” he said. “Because one of the things as you begin to work with the formula, to make changes to the formula, is you want to see what type of impact does it have.”

Woods said an example of the incremental approach he’d like to see more of came in 2024 when lawmakers added a funding increase for school transportation into the budget.

Woods said he’d like to see further changes including rounding up fractional teacher positions to reduce class sizes. For example, if the formula calls for the state to fund 5.1 teachers in a grade, Woods says the state should send the money for six teachers rather than sending a prorated amount.

Woods also said he wants to see a poverty weight added to the education formula, which would send more funding to districts with high rates of poverty. Lawmakers approved a limited poverty weight as a one-time grant in 2025.

Lydia Powell (D)

Powell’s approach to early literacy emphasizes expanding participation in the state’s pre-K program so students enter kindergarten with a good foundation and ensuring teachers are able to receive the proper training to teach literacy.

“I’m glad we have the state law,” she said. “However, in the state law, there’s no minimum qualification as to who we’re going to put in front of our students to deal with the literacy issue.”

Powell said she would push lawmakers to divert more funding toward teaching the state’s youngest students to read and criticized lawmakers for what she characterizes as prioritizing controversial school choice vouchers over literacy funding.

Richard Woods (R)

Woods praised a new state law overhauling literacy instruction, including by hiring more than 1,300 specialized teachers called literacy coaches to assist kindergarten through third grade teachers. But he said his department was ahead of lawmakers in that regard.

Prior to the overhaul, the Woods’ department used federal funds to deploy literacy coaches to the state’s lowest performing schools.

“Several years ago, I said, ‘Hey, we need coaches in our schools,’” he said. “I gave the General Assembly a number. They said that’s way too much. Well, lo and behold, it’s about the number that they funded this year.”

Woods pushed back against a commonly cited statistic that only about 35% of Georgia third graders can read at a proficient level, arguing that the correct number is closer to 65%. He touted the department’s efforts to improve literacy standards, bring back phonics instruction and work with the board of regents to help newly trained teachers enter the workforce qualified to teach literacy.

Lydia Powell (D)

Powell said she will emphasize creating incentives for those in other industries to consider education as a second career and to teachers who are willing to work in smaller districts away from large population centers.

“We’re not good unless all of our counties are good,” she said. “We need to put funding in those areas of high need and rural Georgia.”

Powell said she also supports reinstituting the leadership training pay raise but wants the state to consider incentives beyond boosting salaries like reducing class sizes and working to help teachers with their expenses.

“I was recruited in Lee County, Florida, and one of the things that they did was, number one, we got a discount on our apartment,” she said. “We also got free insurance, free childcare if we wanted it. They offset the low salaries that we got by making our expenses less.”

Richard Woods (R)

Woods said his department has worked to increase teacher recruitment and retention through the Teach in the Peach campaign launched last year to support current and aspiring teachers.

Woods added that whether or not teachers decide to stay in the profession largely depends on their supervisors.

“It comes down to leadership,” he said. “That principal at the local level is the driving factor. They set the environment, they set the tone, so leadership development is extremely important with that.”

Woods said the department has worked to improve leadership through its program Georgia LEADS, an evaluation and development system designed to help educators improve their craft. He said he supports expanding the pay scale to continue increasing pay after 21 years and restoring a policy allowing teachers to get a pay increase for receiving leadership training even if they are not in a leadership position.

Lydia Powell (D)

Powell has been critical of vouchers, which she has characterized as taking money from public schools.

She has not called for the elimination of the scholarship but said the budget should prioritize improving public education before funding vouchers.

“When we look at $70 million, that is a lot of money for us to do good work,” she said, referring to the money spent hiring literacy coaches under the state’s new literacy overhaul. “However, we’re putting $100 million in vouchers. So we’re saying vouchers are more important than our students reading when we can look at the data that shows our students are having struggles with reading.”

Richard Woods (R)

Woods has adopted a cautious approach to Georgia’s school voucher program, the Promise Scholarship, which allows some students to use state funds for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses, expressing skepticism about state funds being withdrawn from public schools but not directly publicly opposing the plan.

He did not respond to requests for comment for this voter guide.

Lydia Powell (D)

• Georgia Equality PAC
• Gun Sense Candidate
• D4 Women in Action
• Cobb Progressives
• Democratic Party of Georgia
• Fulton County Democrats
• Justice Opportunity Liberty Politico
• Peach Power PAC
• Young Democrats of Georgia

Richard Woods (R)