Tennessee Governor Bill Lee promised to continue his educational priorities after comfortably winning a second term.
Governor Lee won nearly 65 percent of the vote to Democrat Jason Martin’s nearly 33 percent Tuesday night. It’s an improvement over Lee’s victory four years ago where he won with 59 percent of the vote.
“In a republic the people decide what happens by choosing leaders whose ideas they like the best,” said Lee to supporters. “We are expecting to win by a large margin and that makes me feel good. While that makes me feel good it’s important because what it means is that our ideas have resonated from one end of the state to the other.”
Throughout the campaign, Governor Lee prioritized his education accomplishments over national issues, including signing the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act and the Tennessee Literacy Success Act during the 2021 historic special session. That work is largely credited with improvements in state testing results this year.
Lee also signed the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) this year. The legislation puts a billion new dollars into public education and changes the way schools are funded to a student-based formula that’s utilized by most states, including California and Texas.
“I’m very proud of the fact that we have made historic investments in our public education system, and we have passed teacher pay raises every year since we’ve been here. I’m also proud of the fact that we have given more school choices for parents who want something a little different for their kid,” said Lee. “Those two ideas are not in conflict with each other. We can fund public schools and provide alternative opportunities for children at the same time if we are committed to funding students not systems.”
Education proved to be an issue with stark differences between the two candidates.
While Governor Lee touted the new TISA legislation and his support for public charter school options, Martin campaigned on re-writing TISA and called public charter schools a “failed experiment” in Tennessee.
“Twenty months ago, we launched an effort to bring common sense and compassion back to the state of Tennessee. This campaign borne in the pain and loss and suffering of the COVID crisis blossomed into a movement to fight for values that we hold sacred here in Tennessee,” said Martin following the race. “Great public schools that stay public.”
Governor Lee will continue to have a friendly Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly during his second term. Lee promised to continue his focus on improving education and his support for parents.
“You pay a steep political price if you don’t pay attention to parents and in this state. We have paid attention to parents and will continue to pay attention to parents going forward,” said Lee.
