Four districts: which one is yours?
In this part of Georgia, your city, your county and your school district can be three different answers. Promise eligibility and IEP questions both run through the school district, so start there.
| District | Who it serves (by land area; confirm your address) | Listed schools, 2026-27 | Listed schools, 2025-26 | Students in special education, fall 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeKalb County School District | DeKalb County outside the cities of Atlanta and Decatur, including Stonecrest, Brookhaven, Dunwoody, Tucker, Chamblee, Doraville and Clarkston | 52 | 44 | 9,865 (11.1% of K-12) |
| Atlanta Public Schools | The City of Atlanta; about 93.5% of the district’s land is in Fulton County and 6.5% in DeKalb County | 31 | 31 | 5,844 (12.0%) |
| Fulton County Schools | Fulton County outside Atlanta: Sandy Springs, Roswell, Johns Creek, Alpharetta and Milton to the north; South Fulton, East Point, Union City, Fairburn and about three-quarters of College Park’s land to the south | 8 | 9 | 9,156 (10.8%) |
| City Schools of Decatur | The City of Decatur, inside DeKalb County | 0 | 0 | 524 (10.0%) |
Listed schools: our count of GOSA’s 2026-27 list and the February 14, 2025 list. Special education: GOSA’s fall 2024-25 K-12 counts, which GOSA describes as full-time-equivalent enrollment counts; they show public-school services, not unmet need, and say nothing about who qualifies for Promise. Fulton County Schools’ figures cover north and south Fulton together. Land shares are from federal NCES boundary files. No 2025-26 district special-education file had been posted when we checked.
Edges worth checking
- Atlanta crosses the county line. About 43,340 of Atlanta’s 529,110 residents live in DeKalb County (Census Bureau, July 2025 estimates). By land area, Atlanta Public Schools covers the city on both sides of the line.
- Decatur is its own district. City Schools of Decatur serves the City of Decatur only. An address just outside the city limits is in a different district, so confirm whether your home is inside the city.
- College Park is split. About three-quarters of its land is in Fulton County Schools and about a quarter in Clayton County’s district (see our south and east metro page).
- Fulton County Schools is north and south. We haven’t mapped which part of Fulton holds its 8 listed schools, and GOSA’s list doesn’t split Atlanta Public Schools’ 31 by county. Check the schools zoned to your own address.
What the Promise list means here
These four districts hold 91 of the 506 schools on the 2026-27 Georgia Promise Scholarship list, about 18% (our arithmetic). DeKalb County School District went from 44 listed schools on the 2025-26 list to 52, the most of any Georgia district. Atlanta Public Schools stayed at 31.
The rule is about where you live, not where your child goes to school: your home must be in the attendance zone of at least one listed school. Check all three levels. A family zoned to an unlisted elementary school but a listed middle or high school still meets the zone rule, because the program’s guidance says to look for any school in your zone. Every other eligibility rule still applies, and the program, not a tutoring company, decides who qualifies. Our step-by-step address check walks through it.
A student who was already accepted stays eligible even if the zoned school later drops off the list. GOSA must publish the next list by December 1, 2026.
Local options to know about
These programs were checked on October 2, 2026. They are separate organizations, not partners of ours, and we don’t know their current openings unless noted.
- The Schenck School: S.H.I.N.E. (Paran Road NW, Atlanta): free one-to-one Orton-Gillingham tutoring by volunteer tutors for income-eligible metro Atlanta children aged 5 to 15 with documented reading challenges. The school’s undated page says applicants “may be placed on a waiting list.” Schenck also offers Orton-Gillingham tutoring to children who aren’t enrolled there, online or in person.
- Lindamood-Bell Atlanta Learning Center (Northside Parkway, Atlanta): reading, spelling, comprehension and math instruction in person or live online one-to-one. It is the only Georgia center on Lindamood-Bell’s own locator.
- The Howard School Evaluation Center (Foster Street NW, Atlanta): psychoeducational evaluations that its page says are “Open to the entire community.” We don’t do evaluations, so this is one place families look when they need one outside school.
- Georgia State University Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic (Atlanta campus): speech-language and hearing services; its page says a sliding scale is available. We don’t provide speech services.
- DeKalb County Public Library: free live online homework help for grades 3 to 12.
How we differ: our tutoring is private and one-to-one with a teacher certified in special education, it is entirely online, and it covers reading, math, writing and executive-function skills rather than one method or subject.
Who to call about an evaluation or IEP
Your school district handles evaluations and IEPs, not the city or the county government, so the table above tells you which special education office is yours if your child is home-schooled or in public school; for a private-school student, contact the district where the school is located. For help understanding the process, the Georgia Department of Education’s list of parent mentors by county and school system names the parent mentor for each district, and Parent to Parent of Georgia offers free help statewide. In GaDOE’s last published directory of its regional Georgia Learning Resources System (GLRS) programs, from 2021 and now archived, Atlanta Public Schools was served by Metro West GLRS and DeKalb, Fulton County and Decatur by Metro East GLRS; we could not find a current Metro East page. Our Georgia IEP help page covers timelines and your rights.
Online sessions from an Atlanta or DeKalb home
Your child joins a live video session from home and works one-to-one with the teacher on the skill they are practicing. If your child has an IEP, a 504 plan or an evaluation report, you can share the academic goals you want us to focus on, and the teacher plans sessions around them. Broadband subscriptions are common here (91.7% of households in the Atlanta Public Schools area and 93.6% in the DeKalb County School District area, American Community Survey 2020–2024), but if your connection is patchy, tell us in the consultation.
We tutor reading and dyslexia, math, ADHD and executive function and academic skills for autistic learners. We provide academic tutoring only, not therapy, speech services, evaluations or diagnosis, and tutoring doesn’t replace the services a district provides. In the consultation we check which teacher and which times could work, rather than promising a slot up front.
Paying with Georgia Promise
Special Ed Resource is an approved provider in the Georgia Promise Scholarship Odyssey Marketplace. Families apply through the program’s site, mygeorgiapromise.org, and spend Promise funds only in the Odyssey Marketplace. We are not the Georgia Education Savings Authority (GESA), Odyssey or the State of Georgia.
Promise-funded tutoring must be in a core subject and, in the program regulations’ words, “provided by an educator certified by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission,” and each Marketplace tutoring offering names its certified tutor. In the consultation we explain which teacher would lead Promise-funded sessions. For the 2026-27 school year the scholarship is up to $6,500, paid in four quarterly payments of $1,625; GESA may withhold up to 5% for administration. Families approved in the August or November 2026 application window receive only the second half of the year’s payments. See paying for tutoring with Georgia Promise and Georgia Promise and your child’s IEP.
Court status: In August 2026, families filed a lawsuit in DeKalb County Superior Court (Sands v. Green) challenging the rule that students must first attend public school, according to the families’ lawyers and news reports. As of October 2, 2026, we have found no report of a ruling, and the program is operating for the 2026-27 school year. More on the court case.
Sources
- GOSA: 2025 Georgia Promise Scholarship Public School List for the 2026-27 academic year
- GOSA: Georgia Promise Scholarship Public School List, February 14, 2025 (2025-26)
- GOSA: Enrollment by Subgroup Metrics, 2024-25 (special education K-12 counts)
- Odyssey: Who is eligible to apply for the Georgia Promise Scholarship? (updated April 30, 2026)
- National Center for Education Statistics: School District Geographic Relationship Files (GRF25)
- U.S. Census Bureau: Vintage 2025 population estimates (incorporated places)
- U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates, table B28002 (school-district geography)
- Provider and program pages linked above, each checked October 2, 2026
Local figures and links checked October 2, 2026.