Governor Bill Lee on Tuesday shared details about the new school choice legislation filed in the Tennessee General Assembly, suggesting the path universal school choice begins by making 20,000 scholarships available to Tennessee students, including 10,000 reserved for families who could not typically afford a private or parochial school.
Lee shared a website for the Tennessee Education Freedom Act in a post to the social media platform X, where he also included a clip from his recent Fox News appearance, when he explained the Tennessee Education Freedom plan would eventually lead to universal school choice.
“Every child deserves a shot at success – regardless of zip code or income,” wrote Lee in his post to X. “TN’s Education Freedom Act will reserve the first 10,000 scholarships for low-income families, empowering parents to pick the right school for their child.”
The governor told the network, “Ultimately, I think every family regardless of their income, should have the freedom to choose the educational outcomes and pathways for their children, so ultimately we want it to be universal. Every Tennessean ought to have that option, and that freedom, and that’s where we’re headed, but we’ll start with a priority on low income students.”
The Tennessee Education Freedom Act will initially offer 10,000 scholarships during the 2025-26 school year to students whose families earn income at least 300 percent at or below the $47,767 required for a family of three to apply for free or reduced meals, requiring a family of three to earn less than about $140,000 to apply. The second pool of 10,000 scholarships will be made available to students eligible to attend public school.
After the first year, 5,000 new scholarships would be added annually until the number of applicants reaches 75 percent of available scholarships. Tennessee has about 1 million public school students.
Though detractors of the failed, previous push for school choice in Tennessee cited concerns about funding for public schools, including Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill), the Tennessee Education Freedom website claims the legislation will prevent public school funding from being lowered due to declining enrollment.
It will also provide a $2,000 bonus to teachers and earmark 80 percent of revenue collected through sports betting to public schools, and will raise starting teacher salaries from $35,000 in 2019 to $47,000 in 2025.
Polling published last month found school choice remains widely popular in Tennessee, with The Beacon Center finding that 58 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans in the Volunteer State support efforts to let parents choose where children are educated.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Gov. Bill Lee Visits with Tennessee Students” by Gov. Bill Lee.
Karen Bracken – Well thought out commentary. The whole Bill Lee school voucher scheme is nothing but a sham. Any school taking the vouchers MUST use standardized testing that the state public school cabal approves. I figure that there are a lot more strings attached to this money as well. School choice should be EDUCATIONAL choice not just disguised government manipulation. As I read the bill it also GUARANTEES that the public schools will not lose one dollar of funding even should they lose students. Just another trap like those already buried in the current public school funding disaster.
Tell your state rep to shoot this monstrous bill down.
So where in TN can you go to private school for $7000? And how many “poor” neighborhoods have private schools? And how does a poor family transport their children to a school that could be an hour or more from home? This program is a joke and smells to me like Lee is applying for his next job….in DC perhaps?? Understand one thing…….the goal of the education system today is to get ALL children into the same indoctrination system and these voucher schemes is how they will suck private and religious schools into the same program we find in the public schools. There is a solution but our state has always been willing to sell out our children’s education for federal money that comes with federal strings and mandates. Giving up that money and getting out of the US Dept of Ed would prove to save us money and would allow us to get back to real education instead of federal and global indoctrination. Our elected and parents are always looking for the easy answer and it always focuses on money. Money is not the problem and money is not the solution. But our elected are not truly interested in a real solution. They just keep hanging out schemes laced with warm and fuzzy words like “choice” when in the end what you are being offered is a false choice. Parents in TN already have choice. Corey DeAngelis who was the face of school choice here in TN and representing American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos) and who has since been released from AFC (due to exposing his past in porn videos) was also involved (until they removed him as well) with UNESCO’s Inclusive Policy Lab. Now why would a person like DeAngelis push a program that would truly benefit our TN children when he was working for and pushing the UNESCO agenda of one education system for all children…..which was also a core priority of Common Core education standards (that are still alive and well in TN)??? BTW DeAngelis is still out there pushing the globalist agenda. READ UNESCO’s VISION FOR SCHOOL CHOICE (say NO to Lee’s fraud) Some back story on UNESCO…Reagan got the US out of UNESCO because of their anti-western (communist) agenda’ Bush Jr. got us back in and pushed his No Child Left Behind (UNESCO agenda); then Trump again removed the US from UNESCO and surprise, surprise Biden rejoined.