Tennessee Supreme Court Agrees to Hear State’s School Voucher Appeal

 

The Tennessee Supreme Court has agreed to the state’s appeal on the constitutionality of its education savings account program (ESA). The pilot school voucher program has been tied up in a legal battle for all of 2020 after its passage by the General Assembly in 2019, thereby preventing any planned advancement of the program.

The program was previously ruled unconstitutional by Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Anne Martin. She assessed it would disproportionately impact two counties: Shelby County Schools (SCS) and Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS). Those districts reportedly contain about 90 percent of the state’s failing schools list. The Court of Appeals upheld Martin’s decision last September.

Appellants argued that the ESA program doesn’t violate the “home rule” – Article XI, § 9 of the Tennessee Constitution – because it doesn’t target only one, but two counties.

The Liberty Justice Center and the Beacon Center of Tennessee joined the appeal.

Liberty Justice Center senior attorney and State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) told The Tennessee Star that the urgency to implement this program has only grown due to the pandemic-induced school closures.

“The implementation of the ESA program has been stalled at a pivotal time in our education landscape,” stated Kelsey. “Inequity is being exacerbated as students in Tennessee’s poorest performing school districts are still in remote learning while schools in the rest of the state are open. Access to ESA funding would allow low-income families to choose among opportunities and services.”

As The Star reported earlier this week, MNPS suffered from around 25,000 truant students and 6,000 transfer students due to distance learning. They began to phase-in reopening schools on Thursday.

MNPS board member Abigail Tylor criticized the program as a “waste of taxpayer dollars,” and claimed that the funds wouldn’t cover private school costs.

One day after the Tennessee Supreme Court agreed to the appeal, Mayor John Cooper announced “the largest-ever” capital spending plan to invest $191 million into their public schools. Over half of those funds will be for a new high school and new middle school.

Under the ESA program, qualifying low-income students could receive a little over $7,000 in scholarship money for the school of their choice. The average cost for a private school is just over $10,000, although there are scholarships available through the schools and local communities to offset the remainder of costs.

The case on the ESA program, Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, et al., v. Tennessee Department of Education, et. al., doesn’t have a date set for its hearing yet.

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Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Tennessee State Supreme Court” by Thomas R. Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.

 

 

 

 

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