(Georgia Recorder) – The Georgia House passed a slew of bills Tuesday that could reshape the way public school students learn.

The chamber approved bills including a ban on cell phones for high schoolers, a requirement to install weapons detectors at school entrances and a bill aimed at boosting reading rates that Speaker Jon Burns called “arguably the most impactful education legislation passed by this House since the HOPE Scholarship was created three decades ago.”

Homer Republican Rep. Chris Erwin, who chairs the House Education Committee characterized the literacy bill and the rest of the education platform as transformative.

“Our mission is clear, our plan is clear, and it’s clear to me that we need the whole state of Georgia joining in this effort and teaching all of our children to read,” he said. “This is not just a House effort, Senate effort, governor effort, this is the entire state of Georgia effort to teach these young children how to dream big.”

The bills will need to pass the Senate by April 2 before they have a chance of being signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp.

Literacy bill

The Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026, or House Bill 1193, is among Burns’ top priorities for the session.

The largest and most expensive component of the bill is hiring literacy coaches for every Georgia school that serves kindergarteners through third graders.

Literacy coaches are educators with special training in literacy and reading. They help teachers both in the classroom by co-teaching and through help with planning, training and mentoring.

Each school with more than 200 students will get funding for one literacy coach, while those with fewer will get half the funding. It’s expected that some of the coaches will be new teachers and some will be experienced classroom teachers looking to make a lateral career move.

House leaders said hiring a projected 1,300 literacy coaches will make up around 90% of the cost to implement the measure. That is likely to exceed $100 million, though lawmakers say they can’t pin down an exact number until the hiring is done.

That’s because teacher pay varies depending on their experience and education, so if schools hire more veteran teachers as literacy coaches, their costs will be higher.

“We’re not going to ask the teachers to take a pay cut when they move over,” said Gainesville Republican Rep. Matt Dubnik, who chairs a House subcommittee responsible for education spending. “So until we hire the teacher and know how much training and experience they have, we don’t know how much they’re going to cost.”

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Burns said the program will pay out big dividends in the future.

“It’s time we made this investment,” he said. “We’re way behind now. We need to catch up. And this will be an investment in our future.”

About two-thirds of Georgia third graders do not read at grade level, according to the Georgia Council on Literacy.

Weapons detectors

House Bill 1023 by House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, a Mulberry Republican, would

require schools to install weapons detection systems at main points of entry by next July.

The bill does not provide money to pay for the detectors, but local school systems could pay for them through state-funded school safety grants that they already receive annually.

Efstration called the measure a common sense idea to keep Georgia’s schoolkids as safe in schools as they are in sports venues or airports.

“That is a similar process that we have when I go to the courthouse, when we go to the airport, we see these different places, and it’s very reasonable to extend these measures also to Georgia public schools,” Efstration said.

The House approved the plan 151-11. Most of the nay votes were Democrats, some of whom expressed concerns about what they characterized as lax firearm laws.

“Metal detectors are not a victory, they are an admission, an admission that we failed somewhere else,” said Atlanta Democratic Rep. Bryce Berry, who is also a teacher.

Johns Creek Democratic Rep. Michelle Au, a physician and longtime backer of gun safety bills, was among the Democrats who supported the measure, but she said she hopes it will help spur more conversation at the Capitol about ways to reduce gun deaths.

“Remember why it is that we, some of us, want bills like this to pass,” she said. “Think about, as we talk about all the time, the root causes of gun violence, and recognize that the final common pathway of all gun violence is not the absence of metal detectors, but easy access to a gun.”

Cell phone ban goes to high school

The House passed a bill that would expand a ban on cell phones during the school day that they previously approved for grades K-8 into high schools.

If House Bill 1009 becomes law, high schoolers will need to give up their phones and other

devices from the morning bell until dismissal.

The bill’s author, Peachtree Corners Republican Rep. Scott Hilton, said locking up devices will help students learn and teachers teach.

“Unfortunately, in today’s classroom, (teachers) have become the cell phone police,” he said. “Both students and teachers are suffering. Students, we’ve seen disciplinary incidents go up with cell phones in the classroom, but I want to let teachers do what they do best, and that’s teach, so by getting cell phones out of the classroom, they no longer have to manage that.”

The bill passed 145-20, with opposition largely centering around concerns that students would not be able to contact family members in case of a shooting or other emergency.

“While I appreciate us removing the distractions from the classroom, I think we need to think about the safety measures on taking their phones from bell to bell,” said Tucker Democratic Rep. Imani Barnes.