Former Gov. Roy Barnes has a new video up on his website apologizing to teachers for messing them around.

Teachers are a key constituency that believes Barnes double-crossed them on tenure, and now he’s trying to win them back. The 1:30 video quotes Barnes apologizing to teachers, and teachers alternating between accepting his apology and saying he shouldn’t have to apologize at all.

“I agree that I should have slowed down, and I should have reached consensus better and listened better,” Barnes says. “And for that, I think that’s the greatest failure of my administration.”

To drive the point home, Barnes is hosting a conference call for teachers on June 23. Will it be pillow talk or a screaming match?

UPDATED ...

Despite the Georgia Chamber of Commerce closing it to the press and even its own membership, a bit of news – or, rather, interesting hearsay – did surface from the double-super-secret Illuminati meeting, um, I mean debate, in Greensboro last week.

Former Gov. Roy Barnes, according to a person who was in the room, spoke in favor of investing state employees’ – including teachers’ – retirement funds in venture capital, a move some might consider risky.

Campaign manager Chris Carpenter said he wasn' there, but Barnes is "not in favor of touching teacher retirement," so he doubts Barnes included teachers along with other state employees in his statement. Barnes told the same thing to Channel 46 recently, Carpenter said, but they didn't include it in their story, and no tape of the debate exists.

Georgia’s 100,000 teachers are a powerful block of voters who care deeply about education funding and policy, vote in droves and are never afraid to complain when they feel unappreciated or under attack.

Former Gov. Roy Barnes learned that lesson the hard way in 2002. Now, he’s launched a Web site aimed directly at teachers.

Retired teacher Vickie Carson of Atlanta says in a fundraising e-mail sent out today:

Or at least that's what can be imputed from University System of Georgia Chancellor Erroll Davis' State of the System address to the system's Board of Regents. In relevant part, Davis told the regents, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story paraphrasing his remarks, "that 25 percent of Georgia's first-time freshmen are unprepared for college work."

Here's what that means: Out of every 100 Georgia students that teachers, principals and other administrators certify to have successfully completed a K-12 education -- an education that, at a minimum, should have given those students the ability to move into a college classroom -- 25 students can't do college-level work.