Georgia Today: 'Woke' language removed from teacher training; VP visits Atlanta; New prison podcast

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Friday, May 12. I'm Orlando Montoya. On today's episode, so-called "woke" language is being removed from Georgia teacher training. The vice president is in Atlanta this afternoon. And we'll talk with the producers of a new podcast that looks at one of Georgia's most troubled correctional facilities. These stories and more are coming up on today's edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Orlando Montoya: The state board that oversees teacher training rules voted yesterday to remove words like diversity, equity and inclusion from educator preparation programs. The Georgia Professional Standards Commission voted to replace them with words like Difference, Fairness and Opportunity. Commission chair Bryan Sermons says the change will minimize confusion.

Bryan Sermons: We were asked to remove or simplify words that in recent years have taken on multiple and unintended meanings. We were told that these terms were leading to difficulty in interpreting program standards.

Orlando Montoya: The vote came despite an outpouring of opposition. A coalition of students, teachers and parents criticized the decision as a politically motivated step that will hurt teacher preparation. The change follows debates over so-called "wokeness" in the classroom that have flared tempers at school boards across Georgia and the nation.

Story 2:

Orlando Montoya: Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Atlanta this afternoon. GPB's Donna Lowry reports it's her third visit to Georgia this year.

Donna Lowry: The vice president will attend a DNC finance event then later headline the Democratic Party of Georgia Spring Soiree. Democrats consider Georgia an important swing state and the visit is part of the kickoff to fundraising for the Biden-Harris 2024 reelection campaign. Last month, Harris toured the Qcells solar panel plant in Dalton to tout the White House's focus on clean energy. In February, she spoke at Georgia Tech following the president's State of the Union address. For GPB News, I'm Donna Lowry in Atlanta.

Story 4:

Orlando Montoya: Tybee Island's City Council is asking state and federal lawmakers to consider restricting access to the island when it becomes overly crowded. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports the request comes in the wake of this year's Orange Crush Spring Break event.

Benjamin Payne: There's only one road leading into and out of Tybee, and that's U.S. Highway 80. In a resolution passed Thursday night, the council called on legislators to look at limiting or even shutting down the highway in order to prevent overburdening of the island. This comes after last month's Orange Crush festival, when an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people, mostly Black college students, visited Tybee, causing massive traffic backups and concerns over safety on the beach. Here's Tybee Mayor Shirley Sessions speaking ahead of the council's unanimous vote.

Shirley Sessions: This is about public safety. It's about infrastructure. And it's about having control over keeping our resources, our people, our visitors, everyone safe.

Benjamin Payne: Close to 2 million people visit Tybee Island annually. For GPB News, I'm Benjamin Payne.

Story 5:

Orlando Montoya: Forsyth County officials want their own look at the potential financial impacts of a proposed $2 billion development anchored by a new arena. A private developer unveiled plans last month for an entertainment, retail, residential and hotel complex in the county about 30 miles north of Atlanta. County Commissioner Laura Simonson says she expects project backers to ask for some kind of public partnership and doesn't want to agree to one based on their economic projections alone. She compared the project's potential to that of Cobb County's The Battery, a mixed-use development anchored by the Atlanta Braves' Truist Park. Media reports have linked the Forsyth County Project to a potential bid to return an NHL team to the Atlanta area.

Story 6:

Orlando Montoya: Colorado-based Frontier Airlines is launching five new nonstop routes from Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport this week. The routes to Salt Lake City, Utah; San Diego and Ontario, Calif.; Guatemala City, Guatemala; and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic bring to 10 international and 28 domestic routes that the low-cost carrier offers from ATL.

Story 7:

Orlando Montoya: State officials in charge of checking Medicaid eligibility for millions of people over the next year gave their first update on the process yesterday. GPB's Sofi Gratas has that story.

Sofi Gratas: So far, in May, just over 12,000 people have gone through Medicaid redeterminations. About 5,000 of them were re-enrolled in Medicaid automatically based on their enrollment in other programs like food aid. The rest, just over 7,000, will need to renew benefits on their own. Lynette Rhodes with the Department of Community Health says that happens when the agency is missing information.

Lynette Rhodes: Sometimes we're unable to draw down or pull down the information that we need for a member, or there may be conflicting information.

Sofi Gratas: Rhodes says that's why Medicaid enrollees should be on the lookout for notices from public health workers. Those who don't respond to notices could lose coverage. The state has given itself just over a year to check Medicaid eligibility for millions of people. Medicaid recipients can renew their benefits online, in person or over the phone. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas.

Story 8:

Orlando Montoya: A new podcast sheds light on problems in the Georgia Department of Corrections by looking closely at one facility, Smith State Prison in Tamil County. GPB's Peter Biello sat down with the hosts.

Peter Biello: The Georgia Department of Corrections currently faces a number of problems: aging facilities, overcrowding, understaffing and criminal activity, both among those who are incarcerated and those who work at the facilities. These problems are not new, but the extent to which these problems are endemic is the subject of a new podcast which sheds light on the system as a whole by looking closely at one: Smith State Prison, in Tatnall County. The podcast is called Prison Town. And with me now are its hosts, Evey Wilson Wetherbee, who teaches journalism at Mercer, and Jessica Szilagyi, publisher of the news outlet The Georgia Virtue. Welcome to both of you.

Evey Wilson Wetherbee: Thank you so much for having us.

Jessica Szilagyi: Thanks for having us.

Peter Biello: I'll start with you, Evie. Why did you want to focus on this one prison for this project?

Evey Wilson Wetherbee: I work at Mercer and we work with partner publications that were all reporting on the Georgia Department of Corrections because the federal Department of Justice was investigating and is currently investigating them for civil rights violations. So I had been reporting on different stories on the uptick of violence in our local prisons here. But I came across this story in the Georgia Virtue. And it illuminated all of these things that we saw across the Georgia Department of Corrections. So it was this wild story where the violence had left the prison walls and it also illuminated contraband issues, understaffing, violence, gang activity — all of these things that we've seen throughout all of a sudden were illuminated in this one story that was originally reported by Jessica Szilagyi.

Peter Biello: And I want to get to that story in a moment. But first, I want to ask you, Jessica, because you've been reporting on prisons there in Tattnall County for a while. Can you tell me a little bit about the landscape there? How many prisons are in that area? How long you been covering them and what have you — what have you been seeing over the years?

Jessica Szilagyi: So off and on, I've been covering stories from the prisons and just how the prisons impact the county for about seven years. Until 2022, Tattnall County had three prisons in its one small rural farm county. It was unique because there's no other county that currently has that many prisons. And then not to mention that it was Georgia State Prison, which obviously housed some very serious maximum security offenders, as did Smith and then Rogers State Prison. So it's been a foundation of the community for a very long time.

Peter Biello: Evey, you mentioned a story that brought all this to the fore. I'm going to spoil it a little bit for listeners because the podcast itself takes a long time to unspool this story. I'd like to leave that for listeners to enjoy. It's a multi-part podcast. I'll spoil it a little bit. So if you don't want the spoiler, just skip ahead about a minute into this interview. But essentially that story is the investigation starts with the murder outside the prison walls orchestrated from inside the prison walls. And it's eventually revealed that an incarcerated man hired someone to murder a corrections officer. But those who were hired to kill the corrections officer go to the wrong house and they kill an innocent person who is a upstanding citizen, very well-regarded. And that's how the public is first really shocked by all this. So how did an inmate manage to coordinate such a thing from prison? How does an inmate get the resources and the connections on the outside to make this happen? Maybe we'll start with you, Evey.

Evey Wilson Wetherbee: It's really clear that many inmates have access to contraband cellphones. And on some sides of that, it's a really good thing because they can talk to their families and they can communicate what's happening on the inside to the outside. But this was a unique case where a contraband cellphone was able to be used to hire a hitman on the outside of prison to continue criminal activity across the prison walls. What we found in our reporting is that a lot of that contraband comes in through people that work at the prison. So, corrections officers, security — people that actually work there. And as we were doing our reporting, we kept wondering how far up that corruption went. And it just seemed like at a certain point, everyone who worked there had to know. You had to see it at some point. So we were wondering how far up it went. We had our answer on Feb. 8 when the warden got arrested for corruption.

Peter Biello: Yeah. Let me back up on that. Jessica, how deep did it go? I mean, to get through these checkpoints, a lot of people have to be in on it, right?

Jessica Szilagyi: Absolutely. You factor in two different things. You factor in that they're short staffed, so there's not as many people that would be observing or would be the I guess, standing in the gap between good and bad and the Department of Corrections because they are so understaffed. And then you also factor in that the warden has been charged and so everything from the top had trickled down. And it begs the question of: why would a — an officer who see something wrong ask or try to stop it if at the top they're saying, "oh, it's fine" or turn a blind eye or whatever the case may have been?

Peter Biello: Overall, what I'm hearing from this podcast is that because of low staffing, which is in part because of low pay, people on the outside of prison aren't safe because people inside are able to order these hit jobs. People on the inside aren't safe because riots, when they occur, can't be quelled. They have to just lose steam on their own and then corrections officers can step in. The people who are incarcerated are not rehabilitated in any way. In fact, because of the violence there, they're subjected in part to more trauma. So when they are released, if they are released, they're not better. In fact, in a lot of cases, worse. And this is in part costing the nearby county because of the multiple trips that EMS has to make to the prison to help people who are injured because they are not protected properly by the guards. That a lot. That's a lot for the the state to have to address. I'm wondering what you've heard from the state in response to all your reporting and all the conclusions you draw.

Jessica Szilagyi: I think that it's really important to point out that the state's response has been absolutely nothing. They hurried and closed Georgia State Prison in early 2022. They did it very fast. And now there's this proposal for a 3,000-bed facility to be built, and one of the prospects is Tattnall County. So they shuttered a prison. They're down to two. And now they're talking about bringing in an even bigger, "better" facility. And the people are outraged. So the state solution is, "Well, we can give you this better prison that we can hopefully keep more secure and that will solve all your problems." But we already know that that simply is not possible.

Evey Wilson Wetherbee: And that better prison is supposed to be for 3,000 inmates. You know, we have 40,000 inmates in the state. And what we have found in our reporting is that the issues that we see at Smith are pervasive across the Georgia Department of Corrections.

Peter Biello: Evey Wilson Wetherbee, co-host of the podcast Prison Town, and Jessica Szilagyi, co-host of the podcast and publisher of The Georgia Virtue. Thank you both very much for speaking with me. Really appreciate it.

Evey Wilson Wetherbee: Thank you so much. I'm really grateful.

Jessica Szilagyi: Thank you so much for having us.

Story 9:

Orlando Montoya: And finally in sports, the NFL schedules for the 2023 season were released on Thursday. And there's some good news for Falcons fans: Atlanta has the easiest strength of schedule of any team in the league. They'll open the season at home against the Carolina Panthers and top pick quarterback Bryce Young from Alabama on Sept. 10 and will play eight games total at The Benz. In October. The Falcons travel to London, where they'll face the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium. Atlanta wraps up the season on Jan. 7 against their rival, the New Orleans Saints.

That's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. If you'd like to learn more about these stories, go to our website, GPB.org/News. That's where you'll find the latest from our GPB newsroom. If you haven't yet hit subscribe on the podcast, do that now. It helps you to keep us current in your feed. If you have feedback, please send that to us at Georgiatodau@gpb.org. I'm Orlando Montoya, filling in for Peter Biello today. I hope you have a great weekend.

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