Tennessee is preparing for another debate on private school vouchers. Here’s what we know. • Kentucky Lighthouse

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The new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed in 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 would table his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth to do the same.

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

During the 2024 session, the Governor’s proposal for the Education Freedom Scholarship was introduced stuck at a dead end in finance committees over disagreements over testing and funding, despite overwhelming GOP majorities, and even as universal voucher programs emerged in several other states.

Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have struggled to attract support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, have tried to drum up votes with omnibus style bill which also included benefits for public schools. But Senate Republican leaders balked at the scope and cost of the House-passed version.

Johnson recently gave school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, an update on 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 who would be eligible to attend a private school starting next fall, with half of the seats going to students considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all K-12 students in Tennessee, regardless of family income, will be eligible for vouchers, although the number of recipients will depend on the amount of funding allocated to the program.

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

Liability testing is one of the main issues to be resolved

Johnson said the 2025 Senate bill would again include some type of testing requirements for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to determine whether the program improves academic performance.

However, the Senate bill would eliminate a previous provision that could have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if it was not designated for them. This policy proposal was included under pressure from Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican who lost his re-election bid in August primary school.

Lamberth, the House speaker, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment on his chamber’s plan, which would not include a testing requirement for voucher recipients in 2024. 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 aimed at gaining support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to 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 plans to “significantly” increase public education funding in 2025, but did not specify by how much or for what.

“I think we’ll have some things on offer that will be great for public education as a whole,” he said, when asked later about including costly incentives such as funding for teacher health insurance. “Whether it’s in this (coupon) bill or a separate bill is a great question. We’ll see. I don’t know the answer.

Williamson County School Board rescinds previous voucher resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects a “nominal” impact on two suburban school systems in Williamson County, south of Nashville, if the bill passes the Legislature in 2025. Most of those signing up will come from urban areas where it is more -Lead Schools and Private School Options.

Later Monday, the Williamson County Board of Directors, including four newly elected members whose campaigns were supported by a conservative out-of-state political action committee, voted 10-2 to dismiss a resolution adopted by the previous Council opposing Lee’s Educational Freedom Grant Act.

The Governor is a native of Williamson County and graduated from Williamson County Public High School in 1977. That’s why it was significant when his local board voted to join in March over 50 other school boards throughout Tennessee for his signature educational proposal.

However, Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that due to the recent election it was appropriate to reconsider the issue and proposed repealing the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won the election have been speaking publicly about this matter for over six months, so it has been exposed,” Diggers said. “I am not going to deny parents in Williamson County the opportunity to help their children.”

Meanwhile, a Tennessee policy organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing that 58% of voters in the state are more likely to support a candidate who supports allowing parents to collect public funds to choose where their child will be educated, including public, private, statutory or home schools. The Beacon Center Poll in his question to voters he did not use the word “vouchers”, which tends to vote worse than the “school choice” language.

Universal vouchers would represent a significant expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. The targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, had 3,550 participants enrolled in its third year, still below the 5,000-student limit, according to data provided by the state Department of Education.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “consolidated” universal voucher bill that is expected to begin discussions ahead of the 2025 session. She noticed that too This year’s state budget has $144 million left for the program, even though MPs did not approve the bill.

“We are grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to providing Tennessee families with educational freedom scholarships by maintaining funding from last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent based in the Chalkbeat Tennessee bureau. Contact her at (email protected). Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site dedicated to changes in education in public schools.