The General Assembly gave final passage to a $36.1 billion fiscal 2025 state budget Thursday night, including raises for state employees and public school teachers as well as an 11th-hour influx of funding for Georgia’s Pre-Kindergarten program. The spending plan, which passed the state House 175-1 and the Senate 54-1 in the final hours of this year’s legislative session, represents an increase of $3.7 billion over the fiscal 2024 budget lawmakers adopted last spring.
It includes $4,000 cost-of-living raises for most state workers, with an additional $3,000 for employees in state agencies suffering large turnover rates, including law enforcement officers and welfare workers. Teachers would get increases of $2,500.
The budget also contains substantial increases in funding for various education initiatives, including $243 million to account for student enrollment growth, $200 million to buy more school buses, and $108 million in school safety grants to upgrade security on public school campuses. Every public school in Georgia will get grants of $45,000.
The ’25 budget also includes $10.7 million for a technology upgrade inside state prisons to head off a flood of cellphones being smuggled in to inmates. Another $18.6 million will boost reimbursement rates to health-care providers.
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