In Chattooga County, Georgia, graduating eighth grade is celebrated as if it were high school graduation.
"It's like a high school graduation event of the year for the students that are able to get through eighth grade and go on to high school," middle school teacher Christopher Conley said in a phone call.
According to the Georgia Department of Education, Chattooga County Schools' dropout rate for the 2021-22 school year was 4.5%, higher than the statewide average of 3.4%. The majority of the students the county serves are economically disadvantaged.
It's why Conley moonlights at Mountain Education Charter High School, a public night school that helps high school dropouts obtain diplomas.
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It's also why, when a bill last year jeopardized the school's future funding, Conley sent a flurry of letters to representatives asking for help.
"I see a lot of students from our school and from this area that didn't make it through high school and show back up at night school to continue and get their diploma," Conley said. "I think it's a huge benefit for the families in this area to have that available to them."
Now a new bill, House Bill 87, the Nontraditional Special Schools Act, is making its way through the state Senate. Its passage will determine whether Mountain Education Charter High School can remain open.
"BOLD EXPERIMENT"
Mikayla Jackson dropped out of high school in 2017 after learning she was pregnant.
"I was due seven days before we were supposed to come back to school (after a break)," Jackson said in a phone call. "And my family isn't really a family, so I didn't have anybody that could keep the baby while I went. I dropped out and stayed out for probably about a year."
Her teachers encouraged her to enroll at Mountain Education's Chattooga campus. Though her path hasn't been linear, the now 22-year-old is set to receive her high school diploma in March.
"I think that they should keep the schools open because it really helps the kids that (don't) come from a great background or have to go to work or had kids at a young age," Jackson said. "It helps them be able to provide and still be able to further their education."
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Mountain Education opened its first site in 1993 as part of a collaborative three-county -- Fannin, Towns and Union counties in North Georgia -- non-traditional evening school. It has since added 18 campuses across the state and serves 2,700 students. It has also spurred the creation of two replicate charter schools, Foothills Education Charter High School and Coastal Plains Charter High School.
"The origin of Mountain Ed was an incredibly bold experiment," Mountain Education Assistant Superintendent Joe Cash said in a phone call.
The concept of an alternative pathway to a high school diploma was foreign at the time, he added.
"The normal trajectory of a high school student is to graduate high school at the place where they live," Cash said. "So for students who drop out of high school, which is what they basically have done coming to Mountain Ed -- they have dropped out of the school that they were once enrolled in. That's not the normal trajectory. And, so, what Mountain Ed has done is it's met our students at the door, literally, and said, 'We're going to be with you every step along the way here.'"
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In 2012, the State Charter Schools Commission of Georgia was created to oversee, fund and authorize charter schools. The commission approved Mountain Education as a 10-year charter in 2013.
But eight years later, Senate Bill 153, also known as the Graduation Opportunities and Advanced Learning Act signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May 2021, shifted the funding responsibilities from the state commission to local school districts.
Cash said Mountain Education receives roughly $30 million a year in state funding, enough to allow the school to save money and grow its fund balance. He said because the school is overfunded, he believes legislators were looking for ways to cut spending. However, the bill would have forced them to petition local school districts to take on associated costs, effectively stripping the school's status as an independent agency.
"Instead of being authorized by the Department of Education, we had to be authorized by any school system that we partner with to be a part of their school system," Cash said. "If we were adopted as a program back into a traditional school setting, the students who had dropped out would just drop out again, is what our fear was, and what our more local collaborative school districts' fear was, too."
Thankfully, said Cash, HB87, the Nontraditional Special Schools Act, replaces the former bill and would allow Mountain Education to continue operating independently with state funds.
"It creates a new category of school that the bill calls completion schools," Cash said.
He explained the bill designates seven zones across the state where completion schools can be established.
"I think that's huge for the state of Georgia," Cash said. "To make sure that education is the great equalizer and to provide opportunities for the most marginalized students in the state."
While school officials do expect a decrease in funding and a change in how the money is distributed, students won't feel affected, Cash said.
"We are grateful that our legislators have listened to us to try to find a solution that would keep our doors open for students without any type of lapse in service," Cash said.
The bill passed through the House unanimously with 170 votes on Feb. 15. The Senate will likely read the bill in early March.
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.