After an Atlanta teen completed in-patient psychiatric treatment, his school required him to "transition" through a psychoeducational program, part of the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS.

The South Metro GNETS program, in Forest Park, was a place of continual screaming in the halls and an almost total lack of academic instruction, the teen’s mother said. Her son – like all his classmates at South Metro – is black. In fact, although 20 percent of Atlanta Public Schools students are white or Hispanic, every Atlanta student assigned to GNETS is black.

Click here to see a breakdown, by school, of the Atlanta students enrolled in GNETS.

“It’s like the ghetto,” the mother said.

Schools across the state send a disproportionate number of black students to GNETS programs, segregating them by disability and race, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.

Read the AJC's complete investigation here.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

Credit: NYT