Tennessee to Expand Voucher Program to 35,000 Students Next Year | EUROtoday

One yr after it launched a common faculty voucher program, Tennessee will almost double this system with 15,000 extra vouchers, directing about $260 million in public funds to personal colleges.

The Tennessee Senate voted 18-14 on Thursday to fund 35,000 vouchers for the 2026-27 educational yr. The Senate invoice conformed to its companion within the House, adopted earlier this week, which included 5,000 fewer vouchers than Gov. Bill Lee’s ask of 40,000. The invoice handed by a equally slim margin of 52-43 within the House. The laws now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature.

In an hour-long dialogue on the Senate ground Thursday morning, legislators debated a number of last-minute adjustments to this system that might affect state funding for native public faculty districts, with criticisms raised by Democrats and a few Republicans.

The invoice contains an modification that alters the hold-harmless provision of the voucher program. School districts that have disenrollment will solely be reimbursed for these college students who depart public faculty to just accept a voucher. That funding ground was put in place final yr for every kind of disenrollment, to guarantee public faculty districts that they’d not lose state funding to vouchers.

Under the modification, faculty districts will even solely be compensated for public faculty college students who supplied their Social Security numbers on the time of their enrollment.

Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) stated he’s “concerned about changing the funding floor, what that will do for our rural schools in the future.”

“The people should be able to depend on us doing what we say we’re going to do,” Hensley stated.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) stated this can finally part out the hold-harmless provision altogether.

“Repeatedly this chamber has been asked to vote for something, and the year after it expands to something else,” Yarbro stated.

Under federal regulation, colleges can’t require college students to share their Social Security numbers. When requested whether or not the modification would require colleges to gather this data, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) stated it could not, since “schools can ask for the Social Security number, but parents do not have to provide them.”

Johnson added that voucher recipients are already required to offer their Social Security numbers. This modification would use these numbers to observe college students who transfer from public to personal colleges and doc enrollment losses, he stated.

Democrats argued that this raises privateness and security issues.

Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) stated that the modification comes “after two unsuccessful efforts in this body to go after Plyler,” the Supreme Court precedent that held that every one college students have the proper to attend a Ok-12 public faculty no matter their immigration standing.

She added that asking for college kids’ Social Security numbers would have a “chilling effect” on those that are undocumented.

“Parents will be afraid to enroll their children. We are also affecting enrollment numbers by children who will not be going to school. So the TISA funding will go down, further draining (districts),” she stated, referring to the per-pupil funding system.

Yarbro stated that whereas this modification doesn’t problem Plyler, anticipating colleges to gather college students’ Social Security numbers violates federal privateness legal guidelines.

“Some schools that used to collect this data stopped, because they had data breaches,” he stated. “So we’re adding a privacy risk as well.”

Democrats and a few Republicans additionally argued towards rising this system with out proof that college students accepting vouchers have carried out higher academically in personal colleges. Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville) cited a report from the comptroller’s workplace that discovered that college students within the state’s former voucher program have underperformed their public faculty friends.

“There’s not been an examination yet when you have the same students taking the same test, that they even came close to performing at the level of the kids in the public schools,” Briggs stated.

Republican management has repeatedly pointed to the variety of functions to the voucher program as proof of guardian demand. This yr, greater than 56,000 households utilized. Some legislators have argued that guardian alternative is a extra necessary measure of success than different metrics used to judge colleges, corresponding to educational efficiency.

“We focus on test scores, we focus on TCAP, nationally normed assessment tests, and that’s fine,” Johnson stated. “But if a parent who loves their child unconditionally does not believe that public school is meeting the needs of that child, we should satisfy our constitutional obligation and give them an option.”

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This story was initially printed by the Nashville Banner and distributed by way of a partnership with The Associated Press.