HB 706: Quality Basic Education Act; history of Black Americans; provide coursework

Georgia law already lets local school boards require a semester course on America's founding philosophy and principles for high schoolers, covering topics like the Bill of Rights and past transformational movements such as the antislavery movement and women's suffrage. This bill adds a new item to that list: the history of Black Americans, including both struggles and triumphs and their contributions to American society. It also updates the school year the course requirement starts from 2017-2018 to 2025-2026. Separately, the bill fills in a currently blank section of Georgia's Quality Basic Education Act (O.C.G.A. § 20-2-308). It would require every local education agency to have each school it runs hold at least one class period covering the same history of Black Americans topics, and encourages schools to schedule those activities during Black History Month in February.

• Adds the history of Black Americans, including struggles, triumphs, and contributions to American society, to the list of transformational movements covered in the optional high school founding-principles course.
• Updates the starting school year for that founding-principles course requirement from 2017-2018 to 2025-2026.
• Fills in a previously blank code section to require every local education agency to hold at least one class period on Black American history at each school it operates.
• Encourages, but does not require, schools to focus that class period during the month of February.

Georgia public high school students and local boards of education that choose to require the founding-principles course, as well as every local education agency and public school statewide, which would face a new requirement to hold at least one class period on Black American history.

Georgia schools that already teach the founding-principles course would add a specific unit on Black American history, and every public school in the state would gain a new baseline requirement to devote at least one class period to that topic, changing what students are guaranteed to encounter in the curriculum.

• Section 1 revises O.C.G.A. § 20-2-142.1(c) to add 'the history of Black Americans, including both the struggles and the triumphs of Black Americans throughout the history of the United States and the contributions of Black Americans to American society' as a topic in the optional semester course on founding principles.
• Section 1 also changes the applicable starting school year in subsection (e) from 2017-2018 to 2025-2026.
• Section 2 rewrites O.C.G.A. § 20-2-308, previously reserved (blank), to require each local education agency's schools to conduct at least one class period on Black American history and to encourage doing so in February.
• Section 3 repeals any conflicting laws.

1. 2025-03-06House Second Readers (House)
2. 2025-03-04House First Readers (House)
3. 2025-03-03House Hopper (House)

• Solomon Adesanya (D, HD-43)Primary sponsor
• Mekyah McQueen (D, HD-61)
• Phil Olaleye (D, HD-59)
• Robert Dawson (D, HD-65)
• Park Cannon (D, HD-58)

• public education curriculum
• Black history education
• Quality Basic Education Act
• civics education
• K-12 schools