State officials need to standardize grading in all of Georgia's school districts and should give the lottery-funded pre-kindergarten program the same scrutiny as the HOPE scholarship.

Those are among the recommendations being sent to lawmakers by the HOPE Scholarship Study Commission, which was set up to find ways to ensure the program's financial survival.

The recommendations, which were sent to commission members for their final review Friday, also call for eliminating fee and book money for HOPE scholars starting next year.

The commission's recommendations would save the state more than $125 million next year. Without any changes, the decade-old program, funded by the state lottery, would spend more than $500 million for the first time. If approved, the changes would save about $1 billion over the course of the next five years.

Lawmakers will use the commission's findings to develop legislation for the 2004 session, which starts next month. Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Bill Hamrick (R-Douglasville), co-chairman of the commission, said lawmakers are still working on legislation and haven't yet decided whether to include Gov. Sonny Perdue's controversial proposal to require a minimum SAT score for HOPE scholars.

Hamrick and House Speaker Pro Tem DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) said that issue could help decide whether lawmakers approve the commission's recommendations. Some lawmakers fear that including a minimum SAT score would penalize minority and rural students who have historically scored lower on the college entrance test.

"I think if we put something in without the SAT, we've got a good chance of getting most of it or all of it [approved]," Hamrick said.

Porter, who sponsored the original HOPE legislation when he was Gov. Zell Miller's floor leader in the early 1990s, said he thinks there is support in the General Assembly for eliminating book and fee money from HOPE.

"It was not part of the original incentive," Porter said. "We added it later because we had the money."

But House Higher Education Committee Chairwoman Louise McBee (D-Athens), who co-chaired the study commission, expects the book and fee cuts to draw the most ire in the session.

"When people have had entitlements -- which is what HOPE has become -- they assume there will never be changes," she said.

If changes aren't made, officials have estimated that HOPE and the pre-kindergarten program will begin dipping into financial reserves in the 2006-07 budget year. However, recent budget proposals predict that the money could run out next year.

Under the lottery-funded HOPE program, students with a B average or higher receive full tuition, mandatory fees and money for books to attend a Georgia public college. Technical school students are also eligible, and students at Georgia private colleges can receive a $3,000 annual grant.

The recommendations released Monday largely follow decisions the commission made last month. They include using a 3.0 GPA to determine whether high school students have the grades necessary to get a HOPE scholarship, starting in the 2007-2008 school year. About a third of HOPE scholars entering Georgia's public universities do not have a standard 3.0 GPA, although they are classified as "B" students.

Shelley Nickel, who heads the Georgia Student Finance Commission, which administers HOPE, said the 3.0 cutoff would bring the scholarship in line with current college entrance requirements. She and her staff are already meeting to determine the best way to implement the changes if they are approved.

The commission also supports implementing a uniform grading system for k-12 schools. Currently, a score of 80 can be a B in one district and a C in another.

Many systems lowered the numeric score requirement for a B to 80 to expand the number of HOPE-eligible students.