About GCEE
The Georgia Coalition for Educational Equity (GCEE) is a coalition of professionals, activists, and parents advocating for inclusive, quality, educational equity for all students in Georgia. GCEE was founded to address inequity in Georgia public schools, where students with disabilities – who are disproportionately black boys – are segregated into separate schools where they lack educational opportunities to thrive.
Still today, the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Supports (GNETS) creates separate and unequal educational opportunities for students in Georgia. Disability activists filed a lawsuit claiming that the state “discriminates against thousands of Georgia public school students with disabilities” by “segregating them in a network of unequal and separate institutions.”
Since July 2015, when the Department of Justice published their Letter of Finding, followed by a federal lawsuit, US v. Georgia, and the subsequent class action lawsuit, GAO v. Georgia, momentum and interest in educational equity in Georgia schools increased. Stakeholders are invested and want to be involved in advocacy efforts that work parallel with these legal cases to increase inclusive education opportunities across Georgia by making the GNETS system obsolete.
Read the GCEE Stakeholder Letter to Governor Deal – November 25, 2015
Read the GCEE Press Release – November 25, 2015
In 2020, the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities funded a grant for Lipson Advocacy to convene and lead stakeholders through GCEE who push for practices that ensure education equity in Georgia, and work towards inclusive, quality educational opportunities for all students.
COVID-19 Impact
Although GCEE was established to address the need to end Georgia’s segregated school system, COVID-19 and its related educational disruptions pose other threats and exacerbate threats to students’ wellbeing. Our biggest barrier with education is the inequitable education offered to students receiving special education and the disruptions to services and supports overall.
In Georgia, there are 190,000 students with disabilities who are eligible for special education services, and COVID-related disruptions in educational services exposed the cracks in our education system for disabled students, students who experience poverty, LGBTQIA+ students, students of color, and other marginalized populations.
The COVID-19 pandemic will be defining for students in Georgia’s public education system, and the effects of the pandemic will linger for many years. Experts in education predict increases in disciplinary exclusion, school push-out, increased policing in schools, and increased needs for psychiatric support in schools. Educational advocacy has never been more important than it is today.
GCEE continues to focus on our relationship with DOJ, our State, and Stakeholders to work in enforcing in the rights of students to have meaningful supports in the most integrated setting.