'Taking it to an extreme:' local school leaders talk Gov. Lee's voucher expansion plans

Gov. Bill Lee isn’t about to stop championing school vouchers. Last year, Tennessee implemented his Education Savings Account (ESA) program, which currently offers 2,400 students in Shelby, Davidson, and Hamilton counties $9,000 in state funds to cover tuition and other expenses at private schools.

And on Tuesday, Lee is expected to propose a larger, statewide school voucher program: the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, which would offer $7,075 in state funds to 20,000 students looking to attend a private or home school in the 2024-2025 school year.

“Everyone knows that I’m a proponent of school choice,” Lee told The Tennessean earlier this month. “Anytime we can appropriately expand choice for parents, I’m very interested in looking at it.”

The ESA program, however, faced significant backlash. And, already, the Education Freedom Scholarship Act is drawing strong criticism, with at least some of it coming from Memphis. The Commercial Appeal spoke to Amber Huett-Garcia and Mauricio Calvo, members of the Memphis-Shelby County Board of Education, and Ted Horrell, superintendent of the Lakeland School System, about Lee’s latest proposal. Here’s what they said.

'What is driving this expansion?'

Huett-Garcia isn’t uniformly against education savings accounts, and she said there can be a place for them in the state, “particularly with our students who have needs that cannot be met by our public schools.”

And Tennessee, she noted, is increasing investments in education, and “prioritizing a lot of things well.” But she doesn’t think vouchers should be a priority. And when she attended the Tennessee School Board Association’s annual leadership conference in Nashville recently, every school board member she met was worried about the potential voucher expansion. The state, she asserted, is not consulting school districts enough about the plan. And if it did, she said, it’d “hear loud and clear that they don’t want these.”

“We talk about struggling schools, facilities, literacy, CCTE, and having a future ready workforce. All of those things need the time, talent, and resources of people who are working in the governor's office and the Department of Education,” she said. “And vouchers are not something that I am hearing from other elected officials – or even parents, for that matter – that they want to access to and don't have. So, it does beg the question, what is driving this expansion?”

Added Calvo: “Why are we trying to do this? … What are the true meanings or motives behind this?... I'm an advocate for a portfolio approach. We should have charters; we should have traditionals. We should have all these things. But I feel like this is taking it to an extreme.”

'The most financial need'

Huett-Garcia also has significant reservations about a key component of the proposed Education Freedom Scholarship Act: the option for any student, regardless of income level, to apply for the funds.

Of the 20,000 students expected to receive money in the 2024-2025 school year, half would be made available to students whose families’ income are below 300% of the federal poverty level, students with disabilities, and those who meet eligibility requirements for the existing ESA pilot program. The other half would be open to any student currently entitled to attend a public school.

And beginning in the 2025-26 school year, all Tennessee students, regardless of income or previous school enrollment, would be eligible for the program. If demand were to exceed available funding, previously enrolled program participants, low-income students and students enrolled in public schools would be prioritized. But removing income level requirements, Huett-Garcia said, could lessen one of the primary impacts touted by voucher advocates: the opportunity for lower-income families to send their children to private schools, if they want to.

“If you miss that income requirement, it is going to be who has the resources to get to them the fastest,” she said. “It may not be our parents or guardians who have the most financial need.”

'A long-term threat'

Huett-Garcia also noted that the announcement is coming as MSCS is putting together a comprehensive infrastructure plan that’s expected to address $500 million in deferred maintenance, and a significant expansion of school vouchers would be something the district would have to take into account as it looks to implement it.

Whether Lee’s proposal would impact MSCS’ numbers remains to be seen. But the district’s overall enrollment – between both traditional and charter schools – has decreased by 4,026 since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping from 103,093 in FY 2019 to 99,067 on the 20^th day of FY 2024. MSCS is looking to gradually recoup this number. And while Huett-Garcia doesn’t think bringing back students it lost during the pandemic will be discernably affected by vouchers – many of them are disconnected youth not in school at all – it could affect enrollment in the long run.

And as she noted, MSCS’ number of students is the primary determinant of its budget size. Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) plan, MSCS will get a base of $6,890 per student in the district, with the number potentially rising depending on factors like student income levels.

“I don’t think there’s a major threat [to MSCS] immediately,” Huett-Garcia said of a potential expansion of vouchers. “But I do think of it as a long-term threat – particularly if it opened the availability to anyone.”

She isn’t the only one who thinks the voucher expansion could negatively affect public schools, either. Horrell, the Lakeland School System superintendent, noted the possibility, too.

“I really think any plan that takes funds away from public schools has the potential to hurt public schools,” he said. “We certainly appreciate the recent investments in public schools, but we would advocate for more investments in public schools. We’d advocate for even higher teacher pay… to me, the answer is not, invest elsewhere. It's invest more in public schools.”

'A tremendous amount of accountability'

Horrell has another reason for opposing the voucher expansion, too. Data, he explained, doesn’t show that they affectively improve student performance.

As The Tennessean reported, state test scores from the first group of ESA students show they performed worse, overall, than their public-school peers last year.

“There's not a lot of data that suggests that they do better in those circumstances,” Horrell said.

And he takes issue with something else: while private schools benefit from the state’s voucher programs, he asserted, they aren’t expected to meet the same requirements Tennessee expects of its public schools.

“Public school systems have a tremendous amount of accountability. We have a lot of requirements that we have to meet,” he said. “Private schools that accept public funds don't have… that accountability. They don't have follow the same regulations that we do… The students, in most cases don't have to take numerous assessments that we have to take… So, it seems like anyone taking public funds... should have to meet the same requirements that public school systems have to meet.”

While Lee’s proposal has faced criticism, many parents who have participated in the initial ESA program have been pleased with the impacts on their students. The Tennessean recently reported results of the Tennessee Department of Education’s Parent Satisfaction survey. After the spring 2023 semester, 91% of parents who took the survey said that they were "extremely satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their child's academic growth during the 2022-23 school year. Only 2% of parents reported being "not very satisfied" with their child's academic growth.

John Klyce covers education and children's issues for The Plain Dealer. You can reach him at john.klyce@commercialappeal.com

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 'Taking it to an extreme:' local school leaders talk Gov. Lee's voucher expansion plans