02/03/2026 Senate Committee on Children & Families

The children and families committee. It's been a little crazy around here today, so apologize if anybody got here an hour early for the committee meeting. We were, voting up until just recently. So, with that, I'm gonna ask senator Hatchett to open us in prayer.

Alright. Thank you. Let us pray. Dear heavenly father, thank you for today. Thank you for, allowing us all to arrive here safely.

Thank you for our families back home. Please watch over, protect us, and, help us deliberate today and get us home safely to our families this afternoon. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.

Thank you. We have two bills today. And since I'm the sponsoring senator for both of them, I'm gonna ask my vice chair, Senator Hatchett, to scoot over here and, run the meeting.

Thank you, madam chair. And I will let you decide which one you wanna do first. Okay.

Let's do Senate Bill four thirty one

Alright.

First, this bill, which, is LC four nine two five six nine, as a result of the study committee that met over the summer and the information from people who testified that foster kids who change placements and schools are not always being immediately enrolled. In some cases, this has resulted in losing credits that did not transfer. And in one case that we heard about, a student had to repeat a grade. We've got, we've identified a number of school districts that are not immediately enrolling the kids. Department of Education testified, and they told us they really don't have the authority to tell the local districts that they have to do immediate enrollment.

We passed Sunbelt two sixty eight on school safety, which required record transfer. And some schools are delaying due to waiting for records that are protected by HIPAA and other federal laws. So this bill specifically addresses foster students, and it requires the school, the receiving school to enroll within two school days. It requires the school districts to provide the parent or legal custodian with accurate contact information, including the school's Risa student affairs officer and the chief privacy officer. The Department of Education can then require the receiving school to comply with a corrective action plan.

And that is all the bill does, and I'm happy to take any questions. I don't know if anybody signed up to testify.

I think we have anybody signed up. Does anybody have any questions for the chairwoman?

Do we have a sign up sheet? Yeah. Okay.

What number are you? 9? Alright.

Thank you. I didn't follow the work of the study committee, so I asked this question, as a sincere, just kind of trying to update myself. The school safety bill two six what was it? Two six eight. Eight.

I believe that one of the issues that that bill tried to deal with was, the issue that in some of the, gun in schools incidents, not just here, but nationally, children with behavioral issues were being moved from school to school, and sometimes the new school didn't know that the child had a history of severe behavioral issues. So I believe that the, waiting till the records get there was an effort to correct that. I have heard since then that one of the unintended consequences is that children are stuck being out of school because the records aren't there, which is not good either. My concern is that foster children, may have you know, they may be at higher risk of behavioral problems. And is there a counter concern that if the records aren't there, that other children could be endangered, is there also a way that we can speed up the records?

That seems to me that that would be the answer is to, speed up getting those records.

Well, again, I think the local school districts have the, sort of the authority in these situations, but these kids are in state custody. And so it's a little bit different than the the rest of the kids, if you know what I mean. So, the problem with February was there was a may instead of a shall involving the record transfer. And so, there's been some discussion of just changing that for all the kids, and I think there's some work going on in that area. But I really wanted to focus on the foster kids in this bill, and that's why I didn't make it

Well, is there anything that the foster foster care system can do to make sure that the schools know, you know, the situation that the child is in, knows something about the child they're receiving. So that if precaution needs to be taken for behavioral issues, they can be taken. There might be. Even without the records.

There might be except that, again, a lot of the information that is being requested to be transferred can't be released. And so, it's a tricky Yeah. Sort of balance there, you know, but between protecting the students' rights and protecting the other kids in the school.

So I

don't I don't totally know the answer to how to fix that, but I do know that there's some changes to two sixty eight that are being entertained.

Okay. So I'm sure since you did a whole study committee on it that you kind of weighed the pros and cons, and and you came to the conclusion that it was better to get more kids into school swiftly, than the risk of a bad situation happening because the school doesn't understand the behavioral complexities of a student entering their school. You weighed those.

Yeah. I think the foster kids are already facing challenges Mhmm. That are beyond what the rest of the school population is facing. And a day out of school is, has big impacts on the kids. So that's why we're just trying to address this narrow population.

And again, it's not a huge number of kids in the school population, but it's definitely impacting some of the people that we heard from of the study committee. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? Hearing none, we'll entertain a motion. Move due pass by senator Burns. Is there a second? Second.

Second by senator Parks. All those in favor, raise your hand. And opposed, It's unanimous.

Okay. Thank you. And, I guess I'll go ahead and talk about the other bill now, Senate Resolution six twenty two, Joint Study Committee. And what this bill has to do with this also has come up recently, and this was not discussed in our study committee because this kinda came up after the study committee had finished our meetings. And it has to do with the issues at DHS recently, specifically a budget deficit that has gotten a lot of attention and has affected programs and services for foster care.

This is a multifactorial problem that we feel needs further discussion. Some of the factors that have been raised include increasing costs for complex needs kids in state custody, delays and approval for Medicare by the CMO provider that is accountable for the foster kids care, resulting in the department paying those bills so that the kids get the care and increasing court order directives for care and many other things that were brought up. So the lieutenant governor's office, the governor's office, and the department have been in discussions with the general assembly ever since this information came out. And, so what I'm asking is that we approve this joint study committee to come up with solutions and to do a deeper dive for this complex issue of increasing cost for out of home care. This has to exactly match the house language.

They've dropped the same bill on the other hand, representative Beth Camp, who's now the chairman of juvenile justice, and I are working on this. And the senate, as you know, has had three study committees in a row for addressing problems faced by kids in the foster system. And we've done a lot of legislation, also appropriations in this area, but the issues are complex, and we need to continue the work, particularly when it comes to dealing with the complex needs kids. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Any questions from members of the committee? Alright. We have oh, you have a question? No. No.

No. No. No. Okay. We have three people signed up, to speak.

It looks like all are in favor, and I think this bill's going the right way. So if we could keep it to our brevity will be your friend. I'll put it that way. So Devin Rudy Johnson. If you could just introduce yourself and tell us who you're with.

I think

Hang on one second. There we go.

We good now?

We're good.

Alright. Hello. Thank you you all for allowing to speak. My name is Devin Rudy Johnson. I work with Georgia Empowerment.

We believe that when our decisions being made about young people in foster care, that lived experience voice should be involved. And we are very grateful to senator Kirkpatrick for involving us so far. And we just we are in favor. We're really excited about both of these bills, and we believe that it's best practice to involve young people or people with lived experience in these things from the very beginning and throughout, to avoid tokenization and parentification and just collecting stories. They should be there to help drive the change.

And senator Kirkpatrick did let us know that, there's plans to involve their testimony, going forward. But I'd love if my colleague with lived experience, Reginald Holloway, could speak to what it would mean to be involved throughout from the beginning to the end of the study committee and maybe even being a committee member.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Mhmm. Thank you for the opportunity to speak and participate in today's hearing. My name is Reginald Holloway, and I'm here as an advocate alongside Georgia empowerment, but I'm also someone with nearly seventeen years of lived experience connected to Georgia's foster care system. I believe that consideration for s r six twenty two is an important step toward the future of youth in care. Establishing a study committee to examine rising foster care costs acknowledges that the system is under strain, but I want to offer this perspective.

Cost does not rise in in isolation. They rise in response to children in crisis, families seeking stability, and systems making decisions without always hearing from those most impacted. Having a front row view into the realities of budget deficits and the effects of funding cuts, I can say clearly that voices with lived experience are not optional. They are necessary. At Georgia Empowerment, we live by a simple but powerful principle.

Nothing about us without us. That phrase does not mean opposition. It means partnership. It means policies are stronger, smarter, and more effective when people who are most affected are a part of the conversation from the beginning, not after decisions have already been made. When we talk about deficits, we often speak in numbers.

But behind every number is a real life impacted, A placement that didn't last, a service that came too late, or a young person who aged out without the support they needed earlier. These realities are not always visible in data, but they are deeply understood through lived experience. This is why it is essential that lived experience experts be included on the s r six twenty two study committee, not as symbolic representation, but as subject matter experts whose insights come from navigating the system in real time. Lived experience helps identify where dollars are being spent without impact, where early investments could prevent higher cost later, and where policy intentions may not align with real world outcomes. Without lived experience, a study risk a study committee risk examining this system from the outside in.

With it, this committee has the opportunity to understand the system from the inside out, leading to recommendations that are more practical, more humane, and more sustainable. If Georgia is serious about understanding the true cost of foster care, then we must also be intentional about listening to the people who live those cost every day. In that spirit, I respectfully ask the committee members to consider, including lived experience experts on this s r six twenty two study committee. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there any questions from the committee for the presenter? No? Alright. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next, we have Darlene Lynch.

Well, I had actually signed up to support the bill. You already voted out of committee. But I

We heard you loud and clear.

I'll just say real quick, though, two sentences. I'm Darlene Lynch, legal and policy director from Georgia Appleseed. We have been a nonprofit working for twenty years with and in schools to improve the school environment, make sure kids get enrolled. We did our own study and saw 35 plus counties were denying enrollment for children in part because of the new record requirements under h b two sixty eight, and we fully support, senator Kirkpatrick's bill. Thank you.

Thank Thank you. Alright. That's all the testimony that we have today. Would the author like to close? Are you good?

Alright.

No. I just will make the point that because this is a joint study committee, the language has to exactly match between the senate and the house. So I'm happy to work with the house to be sure that people with lived experience are included in the process.

Perfect. Alright. I will entertain a motion. Motion do pass. Motion do pass.

Is there a second? We got a second. All those in favor, raise your hand. Opposed? It's unanimous.

Thank you so much.

Do you wanna close the meeting?

You can close.

Alright. Meeting is adjourned.