Opinion ID: 2509859
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Statements by Drafters of the 1983 Constitution

Text: In construing our Constitution, we also sometimes look to the understanding expressed by people directly involved in drafting the document. See Collins, 198 Ga. at 22, 30 S.E.2d 866. In this respect, we are fortunate to have transcripts of many of the committee and subcommittee meetings that ultimately led to the 1983 Constitution. The majority asserts that these transcripts reveal a consensus among all the participants that `special schools' were indeed those schools that enrolled only students with certain special needs or taught only certain special subjects. Maj. Op. at 778. The only true consensus, however, was that the special schools provision was being broadened from the version in the 1976 Constitution and that the General Assembly was being granted authority to create such schools without local involvement. Like the local systems, the majority cites a few statements by drafters indicating that the special schools provision was talking about vocational schools, et cetera and would allow the General Assembly to create additional schools for the deaf and blind and other exceptional children. See Maj. Op. at 778. These references to the types of special schools that were listed in the then-existing 1976 Constitution, while understandable because constitutional language is often discussed in relation to its current objects, are not limiting. See Collins, 198 Ga. at 22, 30 S.E.2d 866. More significantly, the evidence is not so one-sided. For example, in a meeting of the Committee to Revise Article VIII in August 1980, Melvin B. Hill, Jr., who served as the Assistant Executive Director of the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision, explained that he did not include a list of the types of special schools in the new draft because I thought that even a definition of special schools should be provided by [statutory] law. Select Committee on Constitutional Revisions, 1977-1981, Transcripts of Meetings, Committee to Revise Article VIII, Vol. III, Aug. 21, 1980, p. 53. When committee members were asked later in the same meeting if they would like to specify the kinds of special schools we have in mind, LeAnna Walton responded, I think this is sufficient. I think when you start naming them you could think of fifty million different kinds. I think it's better not to name them at all, let the laws provide like you say. Id. at 55. Chairman Donald Thornhill responded that he wanted to ensure the term was broad, stating that [i]f you name one or two, that limits it to them. Id. The best evidence, of course, is not what various framers said to each other at various points during the process, but what they ultimately drafted together-the actual Constitution that the citizens of Georgia then ratified. The 1983 Constitution deleted the three examples of special schools, indicating that, to the extent those examples ever limited the scope of the term, it had now been broadened to thereby authoriz[e] the General Assembly to provide by law for the creation of any type of special school. Maj. Op. at 780.