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A brand new common college voucher proposal would be the first invoice filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Invoice Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 training precedence for a second straight yr.
Senate Majority Chief Jack Johnson mentioned this week that he’ll file his chamber’s laws on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects Home Majority Chief William Lamberth will do the identical.
The massive query is whether or not Home and Senate Republican leaders will be capable to agree on the small print in 2025. The 114th Tennessee Basic Meeting convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his final two years in workplace.
Throughout the 2024 session, the governor’s Training Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, regardless of a GOP supermajority, and whilst common voucher packages sprang up in a number of different states.
Sponsors within the Tennessee Home, the place voucher packages have had a more durable time getting help from rural Republicans and concrete Democrats, tried to woo votes with an omnibus-style invoice that included advantages for public faculties, too. However Senate Republican leaders balked on the scope and value of the Home model.
On Monday, Johnson gave a voucher replace to highschool board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on the event of latest laws.
Much like final yr’s proposal, the brand new invoice would supply about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to every of as much as 20,000 college students to attend a personal college starting subsequent fall, with half of the slots going to college students who’re thought of economically deprived. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s Okay-12 college students, no matter household earnings, can be eligible for vouchers, although the variety of recipients would depend upon how a lot cash is budgeted for this system.
“The invoice just isn’t finalized, however we’re all working along with the governor’s workplace to give you a invoice all of us can help,” Johnson instructed Chalkbeat after the presentation.
Testing accountability is amongst chief points to settle
Johnson mentioned the Senate’s 2025 invoice will once more embrace some sort of testing requirement for voucher recipients — both state assessments or state-approved nationwide exams — to gauge whether or not this system is enhancing educational outcomes.
Nevertheless, the Senate invoice will remove a earlier provision which may have allowed public college college students to enroll in any district, even when they’re not zoned for it. That coverage proposal had been included on the insistence of Senate Training Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican who misplaced his reelection bid in the August major.
Lamberth, the Home chief, didn’t reply this week to a number of requests for remark about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 had no testing requirement for voucher recipients. As a substitute, the Home model sought to dramatically scale back testing and accountability for public college college students, together with changing highschool end-of-course assessments with ACT faculty entrance exams.
The Home invoice additionally included quite a few monetary incentives to attempt to garner help from public college advocates. One thought was to extend the state’s contribution to pay for public college academics’ medical insurance coverage by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for instructor wage will increase.
Johnson instructed college board members the governor is planning a “substantial” enhance for public training funding in 2025 however didn’t specify how a lot or for what.
“I believe we’re going to have some issues in there that will likely be nice for all public training,” he mentioned when requested later about together with expensive incentives akin to instructor medical insurance coverage funding. “Whether or not it’s in that (voucher) invoice or if it’s in a separate invoice is a superb query. We’ll see. I don’t know the reply.”
Williamson County college board rescinds earlier anti-voucher decision
Johnson instructed board members in his dwelling district that he expects “nominal” affect to Williamson County’s two suburban college methods south of Nashville, if the invoice passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees, he mentioned, can be in city areas which have extra low-performing faculties and personal college choices.
Later Monday, Williamson County’s board, together with 4 newly elected members whose campaigns had been supported by a conservative out-of-state political motion committee, voted 10-2 to rescind a decision handed by the earlier board opposing Lee’s Training Freedom Scholarship Act.
The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public highschool there in 1977. So it was vital when his native board voted in March to affix greater than 50 different college boards throughout Tennessee on document in opposition to his signature training proposal.
However Dennis Diggers, a brand new board member, argued that it was applicable to revisit the difficulty given the latest election, and proposed rescinding the decision.
“4 of the six candidates who received their election ran publicly for greater than six months on this problem, so it was on the market,” Diggers mentioned. “I’m not going to disclaim the mother and father in Williamson County the possibility to assist their youngsters.”
In the meantime, a Tennessee coverage group that helps vouchers launched a brand new ballot displaying 58% of the state’s voters are extra inclined to help a candidate who helps letting mother and father gather public funding to decide on the place their youngster is educated, together with public, non-public, constitution, or dwelling faculties. The Beacon Heart ballot didn’t use the phrase “vouchers” in its query to voters, which tends to ballot worse than language about “college selection.”
Common vouchers would mark a serious growth of vouchers in Tennessee, the place lawmakers voted in 2019 to create training financial savings account choices for college students in Memphis and Nashville. That focused program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga space, has 3,550 enrollees in its third yr, nonetheless beneath the 5,000-student cap, in keeping with information supplied by the state training division.
A spokeswoman for the governor mentioned his administration continues to work with each legislative chambers on a “unified” common voucher invoice to kick off discussions for the 2025 session. She additionally famous that $144 million stays on this yr’s state price range for this system, though lawmakers didn’t approve the invoice.
“We stay grateful for the Basic Meeting’s continued dedication to ship Training Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee households by retaining funding for final yr’s proposal within the price range,” mentioned Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
