Friends of Coweta Schools

Have you voted yet? Tomorrow is your last chance to make your voice heard! Vote YES for ESPLOST!

If you need help understanding your ballot, let us know! To find out where to vote, visit mvp.sos.ga.gov!

There’s one more chance to catch the Magic School Bus before the election! Come see us at the Newnan Crossing Fall Festival!

91% of the property tax dollars that come in to our schools go right back out to pay our amazing faculty and staff.

That leaves us only 9% to do EVERYTHING else that it takes to run a school district!

This is why ESPLOST is important. It enables us to run the schools with that 9% and use the sales tax to make the big improvements and investments that help our district thrive!

Vote YES for ESPLOST!

There is a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding, and negativity about ESPLOST, property taxes, and school finance flying around the Coweta corner of the internet. Please, if you have questions or concerns, reach out to us!

We aren’t paid by the district. We’re just 3 moms and an iPad who want an educated community that supports our public school system. We don’t like taxes as much as the next guy, so we wouldn’t sign up for anything frivolous.

Happy 25th Birthday to the CEC! In celebration, the district is kicking off a renovation project guaranteed to help the next 25 years of Coweta students fulfill their career dreams - funded by ESPLOST!

The project not only provides a full facility renovation, it also encompasses the following:

✔️New Mechatronics lab and classroom
✔️Diesel Technology lab and classroom
✔️Auto Technology lab and classroom
✔️Welding lab and classroom
✔️Upgrades to the HVAC lab, Electrical Tech, Photovoltaic lab, precision machining lab
✔️Expansion and/or renovation to the cosmetology , graphic arts, aviation, culinary, and AV and music spaces.

When former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes helped set the stage for the Central Educational Center (CEC) in 2000, he described it as “the way of the new education,” a bold vision to bridge the divide between high school, college, and the workforce.

Twenty-five years later, Barnes returned to Newnan to celebrate that vision realized. What began as a local experiment has become a national model for how communities can align education with economic opportunity.

“It’s so good to be here once again and see this wonderful institution that has blossomed so much,” Barnes told the audience. “What began here has become an example of seamless education everywhere, not just in Georgia, but in the nation, and I would dare say in the world.”

Read more: https://www.times-herald.com/arts_and_community/a-single-spark-how-cec-turned-a-local-idea-into-a-statewide-model-for-education/article_74bf7807-3e4f-49b9-b178-e2fb7468a90a.html

This is what ESPLOST looks like on your ballot! You can read the whole thing before you go in to vote if you’d like, but the short and sweet summary is:

Vote YES to continue collecting ESPLOST, like we have since 1997

Vote NO to stop collecting ESPLOST, which means the board will have to raise property taxes to make up for what we will lose in ESPLOST ($276M over 5 years) OR we won’t see a lot of the improvements that the district has proposed.

I was asked an excellent question yesterday, and I thought I’d share here for everyone:

Q: Does ESPLOST actually trickle down to benefit the teachers?

A: Yes, but not usually as directly as a teacher providing a list of items and having it purchased with ESPLOST dollars.

The State of Georgia requires public schools to provide a “quality BASIC education,” and that is how the state determines school funding. In the spirit of being good stewards of our tax dollars, they keep the requirements “bare bones.”

That’s where ESPLOST comes in! It’s a way for school districts to fund the things that make a school environment a great place to work and go to school; a way for districts to provide career development programs that require expensive equipment (like welding and broadcasting!); a way to make sure everyone in the buildings feel safe and secure in an age when simply going to school can feel scary.

ESPLOST enables us to be better than “basic,” and I KNOW Coweta families want that for their children!