Georgia has one of the most competitive charter approval processes in the country. Schools with strong academic models and genuine community need get rejected every cycle. Not because the board doesn’t want good schools—but because the petition didn’t communicate what the board actually needed to see.
After working alongside multiple schools through the Georgia approval process, I’ve developed a clear picture of what moves a petition from the maybe pile to approved.
“Approval in Georgia isn’t just about having a good school. It’s about proving you can run one.”
What the Board Is Really Evaluating
The Georgia State Charter Schools Commission and the Board of Education are evaluating three things above everything else: academic clarity, financial sustainability, and governance competence. If your petition has gaps in any of these three areas, everything else—your passion, your community need, your innovative model—gets discounted.
1. Academic Clarity: Can a Stranger Understand Your Model?
Board reviewers read dozens of petitions. They are not education specialists in your particular model. If your academic framework requires insider knowledge to decode, your petition will not score well on academic quality—no matter how strong the model actually is.
The test I use: hand your academic model description to someone who works outside of education. Ask them to explain back to you what your school does differently and why it would produce better outcomes for students. If they can’t, your petition needs rewriting before it goes to the board.
Specificity matters enormously here. “Personalized learning” is not specific. “Each student has a learning plan reviewed with their family monthly, updated weekly by their teacher based on mastery data”—that’s specific. That’s evaluable.
2. Financial Sustainability: Do the Numbers Hold Up Under Scrutiny?
Georgia’s board has seen too many schools open underfunded and close within two years. They are cautious about financial plans that assume optimistic enrollment from day one or that rely on grant funding without a backup plan.
Your financial projections need to be defensible at 80% of your target enrollment, not just at 100%. They need to show a clear path to sustainability through the state funding formula, not just through hoped-for philanthropy. And they need to account for the real costs that first-year schools consistently underestimate: staff training, technology infrastructure, community outreach, and the slower-than-expected enrollment ramp.
3. Governance Competence: Does Your Board Know What It’s Doing?
The board you present to Georgia’s commission is being evaluated as a governing body—not just as a group of committed community members. They need to demonstrate clear role delineation, understanding of fiduciary responsibility, and the specific expertise required to oversee a charter school.
A board composed entirely of educators with no financial, legal, or operational expertise will raise flags. A board where every member has the same background signals risk. Diversity of expertise—not just diversity of community representation—is what the commission wants to see.
The Political Layer That Nobody Talks About
Georgia’s charter approval process has a political dimension that is real but rarely discussed in preparation guides. Local district relationships matter. Community opposition can be raised and weaponized. And the commission’s appetite for approvals shifts based on broader policy winds.
This doesn’t mean you need to play political games. It means you need to be aware of the landscape, build genuine community support before your petition is submitted, and not be caught off guard if local resistance becomes part of your process.
Three Things That Most Often Sink Strong Petitions
- Vague academic outcomes. Stating what you will do is not the same as stating what students will achieve. The board wants measurable outcomes tied to your model—not just descriptions of programming.
- Thin community evidence. Letters of support from friends and family members don’t demonstrate community need. Survey data, waitlist evidence, partnership letters from community organizations, and documented outreach to your target population—that’s what moves the needle.
- A governance structure that looks borrowed. Petitions that use templated bylaws and generic board role descriptions signal that the founding team hasn’t thought deeply about how the school will actually be governed. The commission can tell.
If you’re preparing a Georgia charter petition, the single highest-leverage thing you can do is have someone who has navigated the process read your draft before it’s submitted. The gaps that look invisible to you are usually visible immediately to someone with pattern recognition.
Ready to Apply This to Your School?
Every post I write comes from work I’ve done with real schools. If you’re ready to build systems that actually fill classrooms, let’s talk.