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Senate · Passed · 2025-2026 Regular Session

SR 545: Senate Paid Student Teaching Study Committee; create

Last action March 31, 2026 · Senate Passed/Adopted By Substitute

A Senate resolution creates a six-member study committee to examine whether Georgia should pay student teachers, looking at costs, teacher shortages, and how other states have done it.

Read the full resolution text

These buttons carry the resolution's own text, not the summaries below. Copy for LLM, View as markdown, and Send to AI use the Markdown version: the text as filed, then the summaries under a heading that names them as ours. View raw is the text alone.

The summaries below were written by an AI model (claude-sonnet-5) from the text of the resolution and are not part of it. Quote the text, not the summary. The stored text is the Enrolled version, the latest the General Assembly's website lists.

In plain language

Aspiring teachers in Georgia currently complete unpaid student teaching, often working more than 40 hours a week in classrooms while still paying tuition and covering living costs. This resolution creates the Senate Paid Student Teaching Study Committee to look into whether the state should change that by paying student teachers. The committee will have six Senate members, four picked by the Senate majority caucus leader and two by the minority caucus leader, with a chairperson named by the President of the Senate. It will study financial hardships facing student teachers, the effect of unpaid teaching on recruiting and keeping educators (especially in rural and high-need schools), links between paid internships and teacher quality, cost estimates for a statewide paid program, and lessons from other states. The committee can recommend legislation, must fund itself through existing Senate appropriations, and is abolished on December 1, 2026.

What the bill does

  • Creates the Senate Paid Student Teaching Study Committee made up of six Senate members to study paying student teachers.
  • Assigns the President of the Senate to name a chairperson from among the committee's legislative members.
  • Directs the committee to study financial hardship, teacher recruitment and retention, program costs, and practices in other states.
  • Allows the committee to recommend legislation if it approves findings by majority vote before the committee ends.
  • Sets member travel and meeting allowances under existing Senate rules (O.C.G.A. § 28-1-8), capped at five paid days unless more are approved.
  • Abolishes the committee on December 1, 2026, requiring any report to be filed before that date.

Who it affects

The resolution directly affects the six Senate members appointed to the committee. Its subject matter concerns student teachers, teacher preparation programs, public school students and districts (especially rural and high-need schools), and the broader pool of Georgians considering entering the teaching profession.

Why it matters

If the committee's work leads to a paid student teaching program, it could ease financial pressure on aspiring teachers and potentially help address Georgia's teacher shortage. For now, the resolution itself only creates a study group, so no funding or pay changes take effect immediately.

Key provisions

  • Paragraph (1) creates the Senate Paid Student Teaching Study Committee.
  • Paragraph (2) sets committee membership at six senators, four chosen by the majority caucus leader and two by the minority caucus leader, with a chairperson designated by the President of the Senate.
  • Paragraph (3) directs the committee to study the issues raised in the resolution and recommend action or legislation.
  • Paragraph (5) ties legislative member allowances to O.C.G.A. § 28-1-8 and limits paid days to five unless additional days are authorized, funded through Senate appropriations.
  • Paragraph (6) lays out reporting rules, requiring majority committee approval before any report is filed with the Secretary of the Senate.
  • Paragraph (7) abolishes the committee on December 1, 2026.

From the bill

“student teaching in Georgia currently requires aspiring educators to work more than 40 hours per week in public school classrooms without pay, while simultaneously paying tuition and covering living expenses, creating significant financial hardship and feelings of burnout”

The resolution's stated reason for studying paid student teaching.

“There is created the Senate Paid Student Teaching Study Committee.”

The provision that formally establishes the study committee.

Discussed in meetings (3)

The House and Senate meetings that took this bill up, from their machine transcripts. Each account was written by Georgia Commons with AI and is not part of the record; the video is what was said.

  1. Senate Education and Youth Committee, March 26, 2026

    From 0:25:16 · Watch on the General Assembly's Vimeo channel

    Summary by Georgia Commons: The sponsor said SR 545 would create a study committee on paying student teachers. The sponsor described payment as a way to address teacher shortages and improve recruitment and retention, citing Louisiana and Kentucky as states that already pay student teachers. The sponsor said an earlier pilot proposal was a useful start but that Georgia needed a permanent approach. Members accepted an amendment changing the resolution's year from 2025 to 2026 without objection, then held a show-of-hands vote on the amended resolution. The final result was not clearly announced.

  2. Senate Rules Committee, March 30, 2026

    From 0:27:53 · Watch on the General Assembly's Vimeo channel

    Summary by Georgia Commons: The chair included SR 545 in a group of 12 study committee resolutions. The chair said Capitol study committee meetings during the interim would need to use the legislative office building because other meeting rooms would be under renovation. The committee unanimously moved the group to the consent calendar.

Status timeline

  1. 2026-03-31Senate Passed/Adopted By Substitute (Senate)
  2. 2026-03-31Senate Third Read (Senate)
  3. 2026-03-27Senate Read Second Time (Senate)
  4. 2026-03-27Senate Committee Favorably Reported By Substitute (Senate)
  5. 2025-04-04Senate Read and Referred (Senate)
  6. 2025-04-02Senate Hopper (Senate)

Sponsors

  • RaShaun Kemp (D, SD-38)Primary sponsor
  • Jason Esteves (D, SD-35)
  • Freddie Powell Sims (D, SD-12)
  • Harold Jones II (D, SD-22)
  • Kim Jackson (D, SD-41)
  • Sally Harrell (D, SD-40)
  • Derek Mallow (D, SD-2)
  • Kenya Wicks (D, SD-34)
  • Gail Davenport (D, SD-17)
  • Josh McLaurin (D, SD-14)
  • Nikki Merritt (D, SD-9)
  • Donzella James (D, SD-28)
  • Tonya Anderson (D, SD-43)
  • Nabilah Parkes (D, SD-7)
  • Sonya Halpern (D, SD-39)
  • Sheikh Rahman (D, SD-5)
  • Randal Mangham (D, SD-55)

Votes

  1. PassedSenate voteMarch 31, 2026

    48 yea, 0 nay (3 not voting, 3 excused)

    CONSENT CALENDAR FOR SENATE STUDY COMMITTEES: Senate Vote #875

Topics

  • teacher shortage
  • student teaching
  • education policy
  • Georgia Senate committees
  • teacher pay

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Answers come from this document. Not legal advice.

Machine-readable https://georgiacommons.org/bills/2025-2026/sr545.md · https://georgiacommons.org/bills/index.md · MCP https://mcp.georgiacommons.org/mcp

SR545: Senate Paid Student Teaching Study Committee; create | Georgia Commons