I got a chance to sit down with State Senator Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) last week to talk about his Governor campaign, which is honestly something I had been looking forward to for a while now.
Talking to the man, he is a man who knows his stuff and is very sincere about it. When he gets into a debate, you can rest assured that he has done his research on his opinion, so you need to come prepared if you have an opposite position.
As I do with all candidate interviews, I gave the Senator a chance to choose whether to talk about his competitors or some issues in the campaign, and Senator Johnson chose the issues for this short interview. The full audio and transcript are available at the bottom of Part 2 of this interview.
On his most passionate issue, education (audio), when I asked Senator Johnson why I should support his SB 90, he responded “Good for parents, good for students, good for teachers, good for taxpayers. Unlike Neal Boortz, I don’t beat up on government schools. They’re community schools. Some are good, and some aren’t. Some systems are good and some aren’t. The real issue is whether or not the parents ought to make the decision where their children are educated. You could be in the best school in public school with the teacher of the year and still decide you want to go next door to a private school instead of a 45 minute bus ride or you may want to faith based education or you may want a class size of 10 instead of 25. Whatever your reasons are, you ought to have that freedom to do it. … The community ought to be able to pool their resources and have a community system, but that doesn’t mean that a parent ought to send their child there just based on a GPS coordinate.”
Discussing vouchers in particular, the Senator said “The real debate ought to be, and I hope that citizens will listen to it as we move the campaign along, is it really shouldn’t be about whether voucher kids are better off, because most people agree, I mean, you know a couple of parents may make a bad choice like they make a bad choice about what they feed their kid and all that kind of stuff, but 98% of them are going to be better off. Its whether or not vouchers help kids in public schools that don’t use vouchers. 17 of 18 studies say test scores go up when you’re exposed to competition, because the bureaucracy is all about money, and they don’t want to lose the money. So they all of a sudden turn up the after school programs, the tutoring programs, and focus on student achievement and parent satisfaction. The one study, that was paid for by a school board, said there was no difference in vouchers, but 17 of 18 said that public school kids that are exposed to school choice come across better. In Florida, when we had the debate in the Senate Caucus, within the Republican Caucus, the Chief of Staff of Governor Bush came and showed the Florida test scores when he passed the A+ scholarship, which was the failing school scholarship, in the year they passed it, there was a remarkable shift upwards in their reading and math skills. Seven years later, their Supreme Court kicked it out and it plummeted back down. So just the threat of vouchers you could see rapidly in Florida. Only two schools ever qualified for two years, but it helped public school education.”
Regarding opposition to the idea, Senator Johnson said “Other than the bureaucracy fighting, which is more of an – some of its ideological, some of its thinking that the government does a better job than individuals, and some of its just money and ego. The interesting thing is that I don’t sense a real fight from teachers. Teachers groups are ideological and oppose I but rank and file teachers, they’re worried about pay, they’re worried about health benefits, they’re worried about class sizes, they’re worried about paperwork, but they’re not worried about 2 or 3 kids taking a voucher and going.”
Finishing the education portion of our discussion, Senator Johnson noted that he is now shifting to “talking about a 21st Century education that personalizes education. Get away from the whole – whether charter schools or charter systems or career academies or vouchers, the more choices we have, the more ability to take every child and find the best place to put them and the best career path, whether it is college or technical school or Move on When Ready”.
On Transportation (audio), when I mentioned the high drama under the Gold Dome regarding the political fights between the House and Senate over two different transportation solutions, Senator Johnson said “I don’t like to think of it as House vs Senate vs the Governor. I think the House has good points about a statewide solution and a one vote process where, like a SPLOST, you see what you’re voting on, it’s for specific projects for specific lengths of time. The Senate has a legitimate argument that we do not believe a statewide will pass when rural Georgia thinks all the money will go to Atlanta, Atlanta think all the money comes to rural Georgia. By doing it regionally, there would be more confidence that money would stay in your area and not be moved around. … I don’t think we’ll come out of there after the next session without an agreement. … So I think we’ve come together, but one of the discussions they are now trying to focus on is maybe we do a 50/50 plan where it would be a statewide vote, half the money would go to the statewide, the House list of projects, and half would stay in the county or in the region so that you contribute to the statewide problem, but a lot of your taxes stay home. I think a compromise will be reached. It really wasn’t House vs Senate, the House had good ideas, we just didn’t think the House plan would pass on the ballot.”
On the charge Austin Scott mentioned of Senator Johnson donating money to Democrats (audio1, audio2), the Senator responded “I’m a conservative, and I want to get things done. Sometimes, not every Republican is a conservative. Sometimes, Democrats may be liberal but agree with you on a conservative issue. School choice, vouchers in particular, the only time they’ve ever passed is when Republicans and black Democrats, to the best of my knowledge, have worked together. … you just can’t seem to get enough Republicans on board and the past conservative legislation, if it helps for the Democrat, and Alisha Morgan believes in school choice. There was a front page Albany article on that, on the bill I helped her with, and was willing to take a bullet. I gave her money because I assumed she was going to be attacked from the left by the teachers’ unions and the liberal groups, so I gave her money to survive that. As it turned out, nobody qualified against her. I’ve given some money to local, and that’s not unusual for the local delegation to help each other out when you have a good relationship with them.“
Get away from the whole – whether charter schools or charter systems or career academies or vouchers, the more choices we have, the more ability to take every child and find the best place to put them and the best career path, whether it is college or technical school or Move on When Ready”.
Now, when it comes to education, there’s a lot of different ideas. I really like this part from Johnson though. I tend to distrust single-prong approaches to issues, especially with children. No two kids are the same, so why should there only be one solution to education? Frankly, this multi-pronged outlook sounds fair and reasonable for getting the job done…but what’s the cost? That’s the question.
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