For Immediate Release November 16, 2018
ATLANTA -- “GAE would like to congratulate Governor-elect Brian Kemp on his win,” said Charlotte Booker, president of the Georgia Association of Educators (GAE). “As the world observed, in a true democracy, once its citizens have all been accounted for, we accept the results and begin the business of addressing the needs of our citizens and state. For GAE, as public educators, that means we look forward to sitting down with Governor-elect Kemp to address the concerns of our members on how to continue to move public education forward in Georgia.
That means continuing to address needs such as wrap-around services for our most needy public schools and communities to provide the means for their students to succeed; providing needed resources in order for schools to ensure its buildings are safe; working to ensure that last legislative session’s full funding of our public schools wasn’t an aberration; and raising salaries for both our veteran and beginning teachers to both address our looming teacher shortage and provide them with what they deserve. That also means finally recognizing our public schools’ support professionals, without whom our students could not get to and from school and both they and educators would not have a clean and functioning place to learn and teach, with a salary schedule, living wage and improved benefits and continuing to work toward fair and enforceable evaluation and grievance procedures for Georgia’s thousands of public educators.
These and other needs will not happen unless educators have access and a voice in matters that impact them and their students directly. So, to that end, we stand ready to represent the voices of those on the frontlines to address these and other matters of importance to Georgia’s public education system and its 1.6 million students.”
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