Georgia

Overview

During the 2023-2024 school year, Georgia preschool enrolled 71,526 children, a decrease of 1,936 from the prior year. State spending totaled $457,779,908, up $45,050,454 (11%), adjusted for inflation, since last year. State spending per child equaled $6,400 in 2023-2024, up $782 from 2022-2023, adjusted for inflation. Georgia met 8 of 10 quality standards benchmarks.

What's New

For the 2023-2034 school year, all Georgia Pre-K Lead and Assistant Teachers received a $2,000 raise and all Pre-K programs were funded with an additional $3,676 in operating funding. The additional salary also increased the amount that providers received in funding for teacher benefits as the benefits are paid as a percentage of salary. During the 2023-2024 school year, the program also piloted a reduction in class size from 22 to 20 students. An additional 128 classes were awarded to support the reduction in class size. Based on the pilot implementation, an additional funding of $9.1 million was budgeted for the 2024-2025 school year to reduce class size to 20 in all Georgia’s Pre-K classrooms. A Georgia General Assembly House Study Committee on Pre-K was convened to study increasing the access of and maintaining the quality of Georgia’s Pre-K Program. 

A historical investment of $97.6 million, a 22% budget increase, was made for the 2024-2025 school year. Recommendations from the House Study Committee on Pre-K were met with bipartisan support from the General Assembly. Governor Brian Kemp decided to increase the state budget from the Georgia Lottery for Education on the last night of the 2025 Legislative Sessions to fund all recommendations. The funding supports increasing access to the program while maintaining quality of the program, which is celebrating its 32nd anniversary during the 2024-2025 year. The budget includes additional funding to reduce the class size to 20 students, further support salary parity for Pre-K teachers with K–12 teachers, increased program operating funding, and increased transportation. The funding also included $8.9 million to maintain access to the Summer Transition Program with the ending of federal COVID-19 relief funding.

Background

Georgia’s Pre-K Program launched in 1992 as a small pilot program and expanded in 1995 to become the nation’s first state-funded universal preschool program for 4-year-olds. State lottery revenues generate funding for the program, which is provided in a variety of settings, including public schools, private child-care centers, faith-based organizations, Head Start agencies, state colleges and universities, and military facilities.

In 2011, the Georgia General Assembly authorized an evaluation of Georgia’s Pre-K Program. In response to the General Assembly, DECAL commissioned national experts at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to conduct a series of studies to measure the impact of the state’s nationally renowned pre-K program. Reports and summaries from the studies are available here.

Reports include recent results from the Pre-K Longitudinal Study designed to examine the short- and long-term learning outcomes for children who attended Georgia’s Pre-K as well as the quality of their preschool and early elementary school experiences. The report from the fifth year of the study was issued in January 2021. The final report with findings through the fourth grade was issued in spring 2023.

Georgia's Pre-K Program

Access

Total state pre-K enrollment	71,526
School districts that offer state program	100% (counties)
Income requirement	No income requirement
Minimum hours of operation	6.5 hours/day; 5 days/week
Operating schedule	School or academic year
Special education enrollment, ages 3 and 4	10,749
Federally funded Head Start enrollment, ages 3 and 4	15,993
State-funded Head Start enrollment, ages 3 and 4	0

Resources

*Pre-K programs may receive additional funds from federal or local sources that are not included in this figure. †Head Start per-child spending includes funding only for 3- and 4-year-olds. ‡K–12 expenditures include capital spending as well as current operating expenditures.