NASHVILLE — Republican state lawmakers voted Wednesday to approve expanding Tennessee's private school voucher program for low-income students into Hamilton and Knox counties.
The House approved the previously passed Senate Bill 12 bill on a 57-35 vote, adding the two counties to the existing program that already includes Metro Nashville and Shelby County.
Because the Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, was amended to include Knox County, the measure returns to the Senate for final approval before heading to Republican Gov. Bill Lee. Gardenhire has said he intends to accept the addition.
Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, opposed the bill. He said the measure would affect a number of low-performing public schools in his district, which currently has eight schools on the state's priority schools list. That and personal income thresholds are qualifying conditions for parents wishing to use the $8,100 annual taxpayer-funded voucher to send a child to private school.
Hakeem questioned sponsor and Education Administration Committee Chairman Mark White, R-Memphis, asking why the chairman didn't come to him to discuss the bill or discuss the measure with the community.
"I wish I had time to get around to get to everybody and ask them," White said, adding, "If you had an issue with me, I wish you'd come around and asked me."
Hakeem also questioned why the bill adds only Hamilton and Knox counties but does not add any rural school districts. White said the two counties have a high number of low-performing priority schools.
"So you're telling us it's not relative to what the parents think in that community ... the community leaders," Hakeem said. "What happens for those in public schools where dollars are being siphoned off? How does that help students in those schools where monies are being siphoned off?"
White said he disliked "talking about money." But he noted a family of four with a household income of $75,000 or less would qualify for the voucher program, which was branded by Lee, a Republican school choice proponent, as the Education Savings Account program when it passed in 2019.
Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, said vouchers have not been proven effective anywhere in the nation.
"The performance is not better in any state when you compare a voucher-accepting school with a public school peer," said Johnson, a retired teacher.
Rep. Bo Mitchell, D-Nashville, a fierce critic of the school voucher program and the manner in which it narrowly was approved in 2019, said it "wasn't passed, it was purchased."
That was a reference to the pork barrel projects and other enticements for House Republican lawmakers that then-House Speaker Glen Casada, R-Brentwood, promised GOP members to get them on board Lee's bill. They also opted out their counties en masse from the bill. Even then, it only eked through on a 50-49 vote.
There are still-lingering questions whether Casada and others crossed a legal line with one then-Democratic lawmaker, a lieutenant colonel in the Tennessee National Guard, later confirming to reporters he was offered a promotion to a generalship for his vote.
Casada has denied doing that. The former speaker was later indicted by a federal grand jury on unrelated public corruption charges. That involved an alleged scheme by Casada, then-Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, and Casada's former chief of staff. Indictments charge the trio sought to disguise their involvement in an effort to provide taxpayer-funded constituent mail services to fellow GOP lawmakers colleagues.
Smith has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal officials as the prosecutions of the others move forward.
Gardenhire, a longtime voucher proponent, excluded Hamilton County from the 2019 bill. When introducing the bill to add Hamilton this year, he said he and other delegation members in 2019 wanted to give local school district leaders time to implement a new program local officials promised would bring five schools up to par.
The senator said it never happened, with the number of priority schools in the county eventually rising to nine before dropping to eight shortly after he introduced his bill. Gardenhire has said the delegation previously got the state to plow some $20 million into helping the struggling schools.
After passage in 2019, Lee's voucher program stalled amid court challenges by Nashville and Shelby County officials. It only became effective this school year after the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2022 overruled two lower courts' decisions to find the underlying singling out the counties did not violate a state constitutional provision.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-285-9480.