Johnny Isakson: “I rise in support of it because I recognize there are unique circumstances where this type of flexibility ought to be…”

“I rise in support of it because I recognize there are unique circumstances where this type of flexibility ought to be available to our systems. Rather than making a general speech, I would like to use two specific examples, the city of Dalton public schools in Georgia and the city of Gainesville public schools in Georgia. Ten years ago, both these systems had a Hispanic population that was less than a fraction of a percent. Today, in the city of Dalton, the percentage of Hispanic students is almost 60 percent, as it is in the city of Gainesville. This amendment recognizes that there are certain circumstances where the uniqueness of challenges that confront a system are overriding. To let my colleagues know how pressing that is, in the city of Dalton, a gentleman by the name of Erwin Mitchell, 7 years ago, started something called the Georgia Project, a project that exchanges teachers from Georgia with the University of Monterey in Mexico to teach Hispanic-speaking teachers English and English-speaking teachers Spanish so when they exchange those students, and they come to Georgia, that we have the ability to train children from their primary language of Spanish to the language of English in a rapid period of time.”