Summary:

            This bill makes Georgia eligible to join a compact to provide definitions and requirements for school enrollment, placement and attendance of children of active duty military personnel and other military personnel.

Requirements:

All requirements apply to states who participate in the compact, only.

• Students are eligible for the provisions if they are children of active duty personnel, active duty personnel or veterans who have been severely injured and medically discharged, and active duty personnel who die on active duty or within 1 year of service.
• Students are NOT eligible for the provisions if they are children of inactive guard or reserves, retired personnel, veterans not included above, or U.S. Department of Defense personnel and other federal civil service employees and contract employees.
• Sending schools must send either official or unofficial records with the moving students, and receiving schools must use those records for immediate enrollment and educational placement.
• Simultaneously, the receiving school must request official records and the sending school has 10 days to respond with the records.
• Immunization requirements of the receiving school may be met within 30 days from the date of enrollment (or in progress).
• Children will be placed in the same grade as the one for which they were eligible in the sending schools.
• Receiving schools must honor placement of students in all courses from the sending school: honors, International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement, vocational-technical, and Career Pathways, if those courses are offered in the receiving school
• Gifted and ESL placements must be continued in receiving school.
• As federal law requires, special education students must be placed by the existing IEP with reasonable accommodations in the receiving school.
• Local Education Agencies have flexibility in waiving prerequisites for all courses and programs, but they also have the right to re-evaluate to ensure continued enrollment, as appropriate.
• Students of active duty personnel shall have additional excused absences at the discretion of the LEA for visitation relative to leave or deployment.

Notes:

• Georgia laws already in place require the enrollment of students moving into the district and the transmission of records within a reasonable time.  Principals are free to place children into courses and programs as close to those they left behind, as long as those programs/courses are available in that school.  Georgia law also allows excused absences for visitation of active duty personnel.  What’s new other than joining the compact?
• This bill was vetoed by Governor Perdue in 2008.