Tennessee State Senator Mark Pody (R-Lebanon) confirmed that Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice voucher program would be forced by a Supreme Court ruling to distribute scholarships to illegal alien students. However, he said he believes that not many will take advantage of the program because its application requires parents to provide their children’s social security numbers.
“Everybody has to fill out the form, including a social security number and so forth. If you don’t have a social security number, then anybody that doesn’t have one, we want to make sure that those authorities are aware that these students don’t have a social security number,” Pody said on Monday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Pody said the application asks for a social security number so the state can track students’ grades based on their demographics and citizenship status.
“One of the things that we want to do is this: If [the student is] white, what are their grades? If they’re poor, what are their grades? If they’re female, what are their grades? If they’re black, what are their grades? If they’re here and they’re here illegally, what are their grades? We want to know how each individual segment of society is doing, so if there’s one group doing better or worse than another, we need to be able to make sure we’re addressing it,” Pody explained.
Pody added that he believes not many, if any, illegal alien families would apply for the voucher program if their children do not have social security numbers.
“I will tell you though, I think most of the people that are going to be applying, if they’re here illegally, they won’t want to have that information passed on, but that’ll be their choice,” Pody said.
“We cannot deny them because of the law,” Pody added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
