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Tennessee is gearing up for another debate over private school vouchers. This is what we know. • Kentucky Lantern
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Tennessee is gearing up for another debate over private school vouchers. This is what we know. • Kentucky Lantern

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Subscribe to their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill introduced for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for the second year in a row.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he will introduce his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He hopes House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly will convene Jan. 14 as Lee begins his final two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s proposal for Educational Freedom Scholarships stagnant on finance committees over disagreements over testing and funding, despite a Republican supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs emerged in several other states.

House sponsors in Tennessee, where voucher programs have had a harder time gaining support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, tried to attract votes with a bus style ticket that also included benefits for public schools. But Senate Republican leaders objected to the scope and cost of the House version.

Johnson recently provided an update on bonds to members of the Williamson County school board, which he represents, regarding the development of new legislation.

Similar to last year’s proposal, The new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students attending a private school starting next fall, with half of the spots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all Tennessee K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible to receive vouchers, although the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“The bill is not finalized, but we are all working together with the governor’s office to put together a bill that we can all support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.

Testing responsibility is one of the main issues to be resolved

Johnson said the 2025 Senate bill will again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients (whether state assessments or state-approved national tests) to assess whether the program is improving academic outcomes.

However, the Senate bill will eliminate a previous provision that could have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they are not classified for it. That policy proposal was included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican who lost his re-election bid in August primaries.

Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment on his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 did not require testing for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.

The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to gain support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for health insurance for public school teachers by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher pay raises.

Johnson told school board members that the governor is planning a “substantial” increase in public education funding in 2025, but did not specify how much or for what.

“I think we’re going to include some things that will be great for all of public education,” he said when asked later about including expensive incentives, such as funding teachers’ health insurance. “Whether it’s on that (voucher) bill or whether it’s on a separate bill is a big question. We will see. “I don’t know the answer.”

Williamson County School Board Rescinds Previous Anti-Voucher Resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects a “nominal” impact on Williamson County’s two suburban school systems south of Nashville if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most of those enrolled, he said, would be in urban areas that have lower incomes. -High performing schools and private school options.

Later Monday, the Williamson County Board, including four newly elected members whose The campaigns were supported by an out-of-state conservative political action committee, voted 10-2 to rescind a resolution adopted by the previous meeting opposing the Lee Educational Freedom Scholarship Act.

The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant that his local board voted in March to join more than 50 other school boards throughout Tennessee against its distinctive educational proposal.

But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that it was appropriate to revisit the issue given the recent election and proposed rescinding the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won their elections ran publicly for over six months on this issue, so it was there,” Diggers said. “I will not deny Williamson County parents the opportunity to help their children.”

Meanwhile, a Tennessee political organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing that 58% of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports allowing parents to raise public funds to choose where their children are educated. their children, whether public, private, charter or home school. He Beacon Center Survey did not use the word “vouchers” in his question to voters, which tends to probe worse than the language about “school choice.”

Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That specific program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has 3,550 enrolled in its third year, still short of the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “unified” universal bond bill to begin discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that There is $144 million left in this year’s state budget for the program, even though lawmakers did not pass the bill.

“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to providing Educational Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee families by keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent covering the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at (email protected). Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.