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Georgia Today: School absenteeism; APD officer fired after stun gun death; a Krispy Kreme returns
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On the Tuesday, Oct. 10 edition of Georgia Today: Georgia faces an epidemic of absenteeism in schools; an Atlanta police officer is fired after a man dies after being shocked with a stun gun; and an iconic Atlanta shop is making doughnuts again after being destroyed by fire twice.
Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Tuesday, Oct. 10. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Georgia faces an epidemic of absenteeism in schools. An Atlanta police officer is fired after a man dies after being shot with a stun gun. And an iconic Atlanta shop is making doughnuts again after being destroyed by fire twice. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.
Story 1:
Peter Biello: Atlanta's police chief has fired the officer who attempted to arrest a 62-year-old Black deacon who died after being shocked with a stun gun. Chief Darin Schierbaum said today that the officer, Kiran Kimbrough, failed to follow standard operating procedures when he attempted to arrest the deacon, Johnny Hollman. Schierbaum said Kimbrough should have called a supervisor to the scene when Hollman refused to sign a citation after a minor car crash. A lawyer for the Hollman family says video of the incident could be publicly released by Thursday. The lawyer is calling for the officer to be charged with murder after a medical examiner ruled that the deacon's death was a homicide.
Story 2:
Peter Biello: In Georgia, about 1 in 4 kids are not in school as much as they're supposed to be. Nationally, that number is 1 in 3. This chronic absenteeism peaked during the COVID pandemic. But now, almost two years into the return to in-person learning, schools are still struggling to get kids into the classroom. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
Grant Blankenship: It's the first cool day of fall in Macon, Georgia and Principal Kizzie Lott is in a floppy green poncho and baby blue rubber boots — so students can dump water on her head. You only get a bucket if you've been regularly coming to school. And by now, Lott is wet.
Lizzie Lott: You ready? The poncho does nothing. Right here. You ready?
Grant Blankenship: This is fun. But in truth, it's a kind of soft diplomacy. There's a message a Lott needs these kids to take to their grownups and their friends who missed school.
Lizzie Lott: School attendance matters! Especially in our early grades.
Grant Blankenship: That's Lott drying off in a conference room in her school, Bruce Elementary. She says caregivers of little kids might think:
Lizzie Lott: Oh, they're just playing all day. But no, that's where the foundation of reading and the foundations of mathematical skills begins.
Grant Blankenship: Students missing enough instruction to threaten those foundations was already a problem for Lott's school before COVID. COVID supercharged absenteeism at her school. That was true for the surrounding county school district and, says Stanford University researcher Thomas Dee, it was true for the nation. Dee studies the economics of education, including chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing 10% of potential school time. So a month into school, that's two days. Over a school year, that's like 18 days. Dee says a lot of kids fall into this category.
Thomas Dee: Prior to the pandemic and hovered around 15%, which was already considered too high.
Grant Blankenship: The last good federal statistics on chronic absenteeism date to 2015. So they went state to state collecting his own attendance data for 2022, the first year when kids were back in class.
Thomas Dee: My sense was that people were ready to get back to normal. So I'll confess, I was surprised by the really sharp rise in chronic absenteeism.
Grant Blankenship: What he found, and describes in a study published in August ,was a doubling of the pre-COVID absenteeism rate across the country in districts both urban and rural. That means nearly 1 in 3 students missed too much school, even when things were, quote, "back to normal." What Dee is unsure of is why. He found no correlation to community COVID infections.
Thomas Dee: Or whether a state either adopted a masking mandate during that return to school or banned mask mandates. It was such a broad phenomenon.
Grant Blankenship: Preliminary data indicates the level of chronic absenteeism, which surprised in 2022, persisted in Georgia in 2023, the second post-pandemic school year. And Georgia generally tracks the national average for chronic absenteeism. Back in Macon. Principal Kizzie Lott's school district knows their 2023 rate was higher than the previous year. Lott has a few guesses why.
Lizzie Lott: Homelessness is real. Financial struggles that may affect utilities. Things are happening within families, whether it's illness, it's death. Those things are real life things that affect a child's attendance.
Grant Blankenship: Things tied to poverty. That's why Lott's staff checks in with caregivers after a child's first absence to ask, "How can we make it easy to get to school?" Sometimes there's no cooperation. In that case, there's court, because Georgia has a law mandating school attendance. Kristen Murphy is a local prosecutor who handles absenteeism cases. She says they rarely end in conviction.
Kristen Murphy: At the end of the day, the most important thing is the kids being in school.
Grant Blankenship: If caregivers can make that happen, Murphy tells them they don't have to see a judge.
Kristen Murphy: There's that carrot dangling in front of them that "I'm not going to get prosecuted if I bring my kids to school."
Grant Blankenship: This kind of dealmaking typically takes about a year to complete — a year in which kids will have missed school. At Bruce Elementary, Principal Kizzie Lott would really rather not use courts to get her students where they need to be. So she's planning more fun things to encourage them to come to school. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.
Story 3:
Peter Biello: There is good news for Georgia schools. The high school graduation rate ticked up again. The State Department of Education said today that a record 84.4% of seniors graduated on time in the spring. That's up from 84.1% last year. Graduation rates have increased steadily since 2012, when fewer than 70% of Georgia seniors were graduating on time. It's gotten easier to graduate in recent years. The state eliminated four end-of-course exams in 2020. Georgia's graduation rate still remains below the national rate of 87% in 2020, the last year for which a national rate is available.
Story 4:
Peter Biello: A computer science professor at Georgia State has received a $10 million grant from the Department of Defense to address critical problems in artificial intelligence and robotics. Jonathan Chiao Ji's research will focus on human robot interactions, 3D virtual environment, reconstruction, edge computing and trustworthy AI. The grant will enable Ji and his fellow researchers at Georgia State to fund a dozen Ph.D. students, 100 undergraduate students and multiple postdoctoral researchers at the university over the first five years. The team also plans to partner with local high schools to spark interest in AI and robotics in younger generations.
Story 5:
Peter Biello: People age 50 and 51 who received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, will now have to work to continue those benefits. GPB's Sofi Gratas reports the change is part of the bipartisan compromise that increased the national debt ceiling in June.
Sofi Gratas: As of Oct. 1, adults up to 52 years old who receive monthly food assistance must complete 80 hours of work a week in order to keep their benefits. It's the latest change since the end of the public health emergency brought back work requirements for most able-bodied adults with SNAP — about 90,000 in Georgia. Ife Finch Floyd is director of economic Justice at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
Ife Finch Floyd: The research is very clear that work requirements do a better job at removing people from benefits like SNAP than actually helping them find high-quality, well-paying jobs.
Sofi Gratas: A proposal to waive work requirements in 23 rural counties with higher than average unemployment rates was rejected by the state earlier this year. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas in Macon.
Story 6:
Peter Biello: Georgians stuck in Israel as the latest war between Hamas and the Jewish state broke out over the weekend are letting loved ones know about their safety. Airlines have suspended flights to and from Israel as the fighting continues. Among those waiting to get out is state Sen. Russ Goodman of Southeast Georgia's Clinch County. He said on social media that he and his mother were visiting the Sea of Galilee and are being well taken care of. A group from First Baptist Church in Logan Village, east of Atlanta, traveled to Israel on Friday, the day before the attacks began. A post on the church's Facebook page says they appreciate prayers for a quick end to the conflict and their safe return home.
Story 7:
Peter Biello: Columbus has a new police chief. City councilors today ended months of turmoil and uncertainty with their unanimous confirmation of Stoney Mathis as chief. Mathis was named interim chief in May amid intense racial division over the ouster of former chief Freddie Blackmon.
Story 8:
Peter Biello: Researchers at the University of Georgia have detected in the state a parasite found in rats that can cause a rare type of meningitis. GPB's Devon Zwald reports.
Devon Zwald: The parasite, commonly known as rat lungworm, spreads to humans and animals when they ingest an intermediary host like snails or slugs. Possible symptoms can include headache, fatigue and changes in vision. UGA's Nicole Gottdenker says infection in the U.S. is very rare, but it's important for the public and medical professionals to know the parasite has been detected here.
Nicole Gottdenker: Doctors might add it to their list of what we call differential diagnoses. So the list of things that could possibly be if someone has an eosinophilic meningitis.
Devon Zwald: Rat lungworm had previously been detected in neighboring states, but not in Georgia. Gottdenker says she thinks its range might be spreading due to climate change. For GPB News, I'm Devon Zwald.
Story 9:
Peter Biello: A Georgia-based research expert is now leading a nationwide nonprofit focused on building public trust in scientific research. GPB's Ellen Eldridge reports.
Ellen Eldridge: The Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research named a Georgia pediatrician, Dr. Ivy Tillman, to lead the organization. Tillman spent the last 23 years of her career researching sickle cell disease.
Ivy Tillman: I was privileged to walk alongside the children and their families as they made decisions about participating in research that gave them access to, you know, medical breakthroughs that really benefited them.
Ellen Eldridge: Tillman is a graduate of Augusta University and has spent years focusing on family and the ethics of research. She will be the organization's third executive director since its founding in 1974. For GPB news, I'm Ellen Eldridge.
Story 10:
Peter Biello: The sports entertainment group behind the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United has unveiled the name and logo for a new golf team. ABM Sports and Entertainment, owned by Atlanta businessman Arthur Blank, said today that the team will be called the Atlanta Drive. Its red-and-white logo complements the Falcons and United logos. The Drive will play in a new sports league called TGL, which is backed by PGA Tour legends Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. The new league will feature a mix of virtual and live action golf set to launch next year. The TGL said yesterday that ESPN has secured its broadcast rights.
Story 11:
Peter Biello: And the Atlanta Braves are off tonight after last night's dramatic win. The Braves erased a four-run deficit to defeat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5 to 4, and even the National League Division Series to one game apiece. Austin Riley and Travis Cano launched homers to power the Braves' late-game comeback. The Braves had been shut out in Game one Saturday and were hitless through five innings last night. But with those homers and an exceedingly rare 8-5-3 double play to end the game, the Braves turned the tide on an aggressive Philly team. Last night's winning pitcher A.J. Minter says the momentum has swung back in the Braves' favor.
A.J. Minter: With that being said, I mean, we have to continue to play really good baseball. And, you know, we came out obviously slow the past two games and we can't afford to keep doing that and relying on coming back in the later innings.
Peter Biello: Games 3 and 4 will be played in Philadelphia tomorrow and Thursday, and Game 5, if necessary, will be back in Atlanta on Saturday.
Story 12:
Peter Biello: An Atlanta institution is back in business. The Krispy Kreme location that burned down twice and is owned by NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal reopened today. Fans of the shop lined up in the overnight hours of Tuesday to get its first "hot now" doughnuts in two years. The location became a symbol of resilience in Atlanta after suspected arson gutted the location in 2021, only to be completely destroyed a few months later by a kitchen fire. The new building features a refurbishment of the iconic Krispy Kreme heritage sign that dates back to the 1960s.
And that is it for this edition of Georgia Today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you had a great long weekend. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit GPB.org/news. And as always, do not forget to subscribe to this podcast for planning on being back in your podcast feed tomorrow afternoon. If you've got feedback or a story idea for us, send it our way by email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news.
Read the latest updates on the Georgia indictments here.
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