Repayment of lost revenue for school districts could play an important role in next week’s special session on “school vouchers”

Governor Lee unveiling the Education Freedom Scholarship plan in 2023 (Photo by Governor Lee’s Office)

One major difference between Governor Bill Lee’s proposal this year  to let families use public dollars to send their children to private school, sometimes referred to as school vouchers, and last year’s plan that failed, is a provision designed to ease fears about potential lost revenue for school districts.

Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) school funding formula, state dollars follow students to the school they attend, and opponents of the Governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act have worried school districts would lose needed revenue when students leave for private school.

The bill lawmakers will begin debating in next week’s special session has a provision designed to appease those concerns. It guarantees that a school district’s allocated state funding for education “shall not decrease from one year to the next year due to the disenrollment of students.” Under the legislation, the state would allocate additional funding to ensure district’s do not receive less funding than the prior school year because of the program.

Lee Administration Policy Director Michael Hendrix explained how it would all work in a School Choice Forum earlier this month hosted by Latinos for Tennessee, saying the administration remains committed to funding public schools.

“If your TISA amount goes down in any given year due to disenrollment, we will true that up. So, if there is a concern in your district that disenrollment will cause funding for public education to go down, that shouldn’t be a concern,” said Hendrix. “This is truly a yes, and for, education in Tennessee.”

Still the question of whether districts might lose funding remains a big one for opponents and that includes some Republicans.

Representative Jody Barrett (Photo by Tennessee General Assembly)

Representative Jody Barrett, R-Dickson, says he still has questions about the provision that holds school districts harmless.  Speaking in an interview with the Tennessee Conservative posted on X this week, Barrett said he expect the provision to be tweaked in the special session.

“The language that was originally drafted is a little bit vague as to how long that’s going to stay in place, which has created some area for discussion where opponents of that bill think that it’s only going to be good for a year. Those that support it are saying, ‘No this is going to be in perpetuity and that funding will stay there for the public schools,’ so I suspect there will be some effort to clean that language up,” said Barrett.

Barrett said as the bill is currently written, he don’t know if he can support it because of financial concerns and feedback from his district.

 Democrats have largely remained united against Governor Lee’s plan, and leaders held a press conference Wednesday with Michigan State University education policy expert Dr. Josh Cowen to attack the legislation.

 Dr. Cowen said voucher programs that are similar to the one Governor Lee is proposing, have created financial challenges Arizona, Ohio, and Arkansas.

 “These voucher schemes defund public schools,” Cowen said. “There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody is going to pay for this and it’s going to be local school districts that bear the real cost.”