State Representative Ryan Williams and State Senator Paul Bailey voted in favor of school vouchers on Thursday during the special session.
Bailey said he is for parents having the ability to send their children to the school that is in the best interest of their child. Bailey said last year he was not for school vouchers but this year he was.
“One area that I’ve always had concern about was making sure that any disenrollment in our public schools that there would still be funding there to cover the loss of those students and this bill addressed that,” Bailey said.
Williams also said he voted for school vouchers because public education would not lose funding. Williams said the bill set a spending floor for each school system and that the spending floor is based on the school district’s current population.
“Since they put a floor in it, it can only go up based upon attendance,” Williams said. “So you can only go up from there and so for me that was huge for Putnam County because it guarantees that the resources and revenues for Putnam County Schools can only go up in out years.”
Bailey said he believes he heard from people who were for and against school vouchers. Bailey said he believes he voted in the best interest of his constituents.
“Many times those that were not in favor of the legislation, once I had an opportunity to go over and discuss with them exactly what the bill did,” Bailey said. “They usually came around and said well that’s okay because everyone is always concerned about public school funding.”
Bailey said legislators have a constitutional obligation to fund public school systems. Bailey said the state has provided over $3.35 billion in additional funding for K-12 education just within the past ten years. Bailey said private schools will have to meet requirements before a student can use a voucher to attend the school.
“That private school has to be accredited by the state board of education,” Bailey said. So it’s not just some school that can just pop up and go to receiving the scholarship money. They actually have to go through a licensing process with the state of Tennessee.”
Many people against voucher systems pointed to other states that have voucher systems that are failing. Williams said in other states there were challenges with caps in funding and that other programs had financial problems or other issues due to a lack of guide rails relating to the total amount of students. Williams said this voucher system will work in Tennessee.
“In this bill, the reason why it is so important, and the governor’s office chose two percent based upon what he felt the utilization of the uptake of those scholarships would be two percent of the population,” Williams said. “So in order for that to grow or cost the state more money someone would have to come in and have a legislative change to increase the dollar amount or increase the number of students. This bill limits it to the number of folks and with having income limits on half of those we suspect many of those will not be consumed and that will be able to get more empirical data before we ever make a decision to expand the program.”
Bailey said $145 million for the school vouchers was already appropriated last year in the budget. Both Bailey and Williams said that school vouchers would not affect funding for other departments and things such as TDOT projects. School Vouchers are set to take place in the 2025-2026 school year.
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