Rep. Scott Cepicky calls Governor Lee’s voucher bill “terrible” despite receiving his endorsement in next month’s primary

Governor Lee (left) and Representative Scott Cepicky (right) at a fundraiser earlier this year (Photo by Sky Arnold)

Last May, Governor Bill Lee travelled to Columbia to attend a fundraiser for Representative Scott Cepicky’s, R-Culleoka, re-election campaign.

Cepicky was the leading voice in the State House this year for expanding universal school choice statewide, sometimes referred to as vouchers, allowing families the option of using taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school. Lawmakers considered three Education Freedom Scholarship plans including a House plan, a Senate plan, and Governor Lee’s plan.  All three failed following disagreements among lawmakers for how to iron out the differences.

The Governor has since endorsed Cepicky along with other candidates in the August state primary who support universal school choice in hopes of passing the legislation next year.

“Scott believes that parents should have the right to choose where their children go to school.” said Governor Lee at that May campaign event. “There’s 132 members of the General Assembly. I don’t go to every member’s fundraiser, but I’ll drive to Columbia to stand next to this man.”

Representative Scott Cepicky speaking at the July 23 candidate forum (Screengrab)

Representative Cepicky made it clear where he stands on the Governor’s universal school choice plan that failed this year at a candidate forum Tuesday night.

“The Governor’s bill, and I’m not afraid to say this, was terrible. I was wide open. It probably would’ve added a billion dollars to the budget. It would’ve put us in the same pitfalls as Arizona is,” said Cepicky. “The Senate had a version that really wasn’t much better.”

Cepicky told spectators at the forum that he wrote the House plan for universal school choice and added in provisions to keep costs down and provide state leaders with limited data on how well students taking part in the program are performing in private school.

He also repeated a misleading claim he’s made in other interviews about testing and teacher evaluations. The House plan for universal school choice would have reduced the amount of state tests Tennessee students are required to take along with the number of evaluations their teachers see.Cepicky told spectators at the forum that Wisconsin saw improvements after making similar changes to education. A Tennessee Firefly investigation found Wisconsin didn’t make the changes Cepicky referenced and the state has traditionally been a leader in education performance.

“The things we were going to do for public school, would’ve transformed them to a point that we could’ve done the same thing that Iowa and Wisconsin did and springboard our school system to one of the best in the country,” said Cepicky.

Cepicky’s opponent in the August GOP primary pushed back on the incumbent's praise of the failed House legislation.

County Commissioner Ray Jeter says he decided to challenge Cepicky after hearing from teachers who were upset with the incumbent’s comments earlier this year that he wants to throw the state’s education system “in the trash at one time.”

Ray Jeter (Photo by Ray Jeter campaign)

Jeter told spectators at the forum that he supports universal school choice but believes the House universal school choice plan that Cepicky wrote, would have added government regulation to private and home schools and taken needed money away from public schools.

“I do not want to see our public schools defunded. We have to protect our public school system from being defunded in this process and it can be done. We can have both school choice, or vouchers, or whatever you want to call it. We can have school choice and not defund our public school system,” said Jeter. “The bill that was just discussed (Cepicky’s bill) would have defunded our public school system.”

Jeter outraised Cepicky, largely with contributions from Maury County, according to the most recent campaign filings for the House district 64 primary.

The winner will be favored over the winner of the House district 64 Democratic primary in November’s General Election.