On Second Thought For Thursday, September 1, 2016

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Georgia last week for allegedly segregating and mistreating thousands of public school students who are enrolled in a statewide program called GNETS. The program serves students with behavior-related disabilities. We revisit our conversation about the GNETS program with journalist Marian Wang and parent Natasha Hall, whose son is in the program. Meanwhile, the DOJ recently said it was reviewing a separate case in Newton County, Georgia. As we reported on Monday, plans for a mosque and cemetery there were put on hold after the county issued a moratorium on building permits for religious institutions. Now, the county says it has lifted the moratorium, which began in response to public outrage over the projects.

Then, a new report says Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship program will run out of money by 2028 – the year today’s pre-K students will start college. Nearly two million students have received HOPE since the program began in 1993, and 98 percent of the freshman class at UGA will be getting either HOPE or Zell Miller scholarships. We talk with Nancy Badertscher, who authored the report “Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship: A victim of its own success?” about the effect this will have on students and the state. Plus, the pop culture/sci-fi convention Dragon Con hits Atlanta this weekend. We hear sounds from the convention and give a sneak peek of the characters you may meet in the halls.

And, Mercer University President Bill Underwood told students last week that the role of the university is not “to shield you from ideas and opinions that you find disagreeable or even that you find deeply offensive.” His speech comes as a national debate over “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” take place on campuses across the country. We talk with him about what he said and whether there are limits to freedom of speech. Then, the University of Georgia recently created two new fellowship programs to recruit the most promising graduate students. The fellowships will waive tuition and provide at least $20,000 a year for research that aligns with the needs of Georgia's economy. But is graduate school worth the cost? We talk about the return-investment on graduate and doctoral programs with University of Georgia Graduate School Dean Suzanne Barbour and Andrew Hanson, an senior analyst at Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.