Here is a simple proposition: If a Georgia public school has an open seat, any Georgia student should be able to take it.
This idea isn’t fringe or partisan—broad majorities of parents across party lines support it. Transferring between public schools shouldn’t require insider knowledge, a scavenger hunt across district websites or a superintendent’s blessing. And it certainly shouldn’t close the door on a child just because the boundary line runs down the middle of their street.
A new Reason Foundation study, “Public Schools Without Boundaries 2025,” makes the case plainly. Strong open-enrollment laws expand opportunity by letting public school students transfer to public schools with available seats. Weak open-enrollment laws strand families in their assigned schools and even withhold basic information—including where the available seats are.
Reason distills the policy playbook into seven best practices for better open-enrollment laws to empower students. Let’s examine how Georgia measures up to these metrics.
Statewide cross-district open enrollment — Georgia fails. Georgia doesn’t require universal cross-district open enrollment; transfers across district lines hinge on the consent of the receiving district and voluntary participation, which remain inconsistent. Families end up with a patchwork of access that changes at the whim of local policy. The remedy is straightforward: when a receiving school publicly reports open capacity, acceptance should be the default—denied only for objective reasons such as verified capacity limits, with a written explanation so parents know why.
Statewide within-district open enrollment — Georgia passes. State law requires districts to offer within-district transfers when space is available. However, laws should still be more robust. Obstacles still exist, including a four-year exemption for new schools, narrow application windows, rigid paperwork rules and capacity determinations that vary by district and often seem arbitrary. Georgia should adopt the same default-accept standard inside district lines: if a school posts open seats, it should accept willing students up to that capacity, using a transparent application process so families aren’t penalized by red tape.
Children have free access to all public schools — Georgia passes. Despite a passing grade in this category, districts may still charge nonresident tuition for cross-district transfers. That puts a price tag on a public-to-public move and turns choice into a privilege for those who can pay. If taxpayers already fund the system to educate Georgia’s children, the door shouldn’t demand a second fee; lawmakers should end in-state tuition charges for public transfers.
Public schools are open to all students — Georgia fails. Georgia law does not clearly prohibit screening transfer applicants based on ability or disability. Even if formal discrimination is rare, the lack of explicit guardrails invites subjective criteria that can quietly edge out some families. The fix is to set bright lines: no ability-based screening, denials limited to clear, objective reasons and a written rationale for every rejection.
Transparent reporting by the state education agency — Georgia fails. The state does not collect and publish standardized open-enrollment data—applications, acceptances, denials and reasons—by district. The Foundation’s report last year highlighted this lack of transparency and data collection. Without a statewide scoreboard, parents can’t see where opportunity actually exists and lawmakers can’t diagnose bottlenecks. Georgia should publish an annual, public dashboard that puts every district’s numbers in one place and makes it obvious where policy is working—and where it isn’t.
Transparent school-district reporting — Georgia fails. In preparing the Foundation’s report last year, we contacted dozens of districts and still received only a limited set of usable responses—often after formal records requests, delays and fees. Some districts could produce school-level capacity and accept/deny counts; others kept no transfer records or mixed categories in ways that made apples-to-apples comparisons impossible. Several don’t even make applications available for schools labeled “at capacity,” which erases denials on paper while shutting families out in practice. In the state’s largest district, basic open-enrollment figures aren’t tracked and public guidance is largely outdated. If parents are going to make real choices, districts must post school-by-school, grade-by-grade seat counts before windows open, keep those numbers current and put every deadline and form in one easy-to-find place.
Independent appeals process — Georgia fails. A rejection typically ends at the local level; there’s no dedicated, neutral, statewide appeal designed for open-enrollment denials. When “capacity” becomes a catch-all, parents deserve a second look. Georgia should create an appeals pathway outside the rejecting district—housed at the state education agency or another neutral body—so families have real recourse when the numbers don’t add up.
Taken together, Georgia’s framework is weak—an open-enrollment law on paper but not in practice. The result is predictable: access depends on ZIP code, timing and bureaucratic discretion rather than on whether a seat is open and a student is ready to learn. Georgia’s not alone in this, but that doesn’t make it any better for Georgia families.
Recent years have seen an increase in many educational alternatives as families seek out the best educational option for their children. But most children still attend traditional public schools. A robust open enrollment system meets families where they are. It gives them options now, inside the system they already fund, without pitting “public” against “choice.”