The Tennessee State House voted 53 to 45 Thursday afternoon to approve Governor Bill Lee’s plan to let families use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school.

The legislation comfortably advanced out of the House and Senate Education Committees Tuesday with just two Republicans, joining all Democrats voting against it.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, opened the first day of the special session on Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act of 2025 by replacing half of the members serving on the influential House Education Committee.

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.

Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, named former teacher, Senator Dawn White, R-Murfreesboro, as chair the Senate Education Committee that’s expected to play a big role in the legislative session and upcoming special session.

After weeks of speculation, Governor Bill Lee officially announced his decision Wednesday morning to call for a special session on January 27 to address his Education Freedom Scholarship Act of 2025 (frequently called vouchers), Hurricane Helene relief for East Tennessee, and illegal immigration.

State Senators re-elected Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally, R- Oak Ridge, as Speaker with a 26 to 0 vote and Representative Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, to serve as House Speaker with 75 votes to Democrat nominee Representative Karen Camper’s, D-Memphis, 23 votes.

It’s believed Governor Lee will call for a special session on his Education Freedom Scholarship Act of 2025 in late January, following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee wasted no time applauding President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of a former professional wrestling mogul to serve as the United States Secretary of Education.

There have been some mixed reactions to Tennessee lawmakers’ efforts to reintroduce school choice legislation for vouchers that allow public tax dollars to be used for private school enrollment.

Voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska have decisively rejected efforts to implement school voucher programs that would allow families to use tax dollars for private school enrollment.

Testing didn’t receive a lot of headlines during the debate earlier this year over Governor Bill Lee’s plan to let families use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school, but it played an important role in why the legislation failed. Members of the State House and Senate advanced different versions of the Governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship, sometimes called vouchers, and couldn’t come to a compromise on those differences. One of the biggest involved a provision in the House version of the legislation that would reduce the number of tests students in public school are required to take.

The Governor’s new voucher plan unveiled Wednesday includes no reduction in testing and additionally requires participants in grades 3 through 11 to either take a nationally standardized achievement test or The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Going into Tuesday night’s general election, Tennessee Democrats had high hopes of whittling into the Republican supermajority by winning a handful of House seats that are currently held by Republicans.  On the flipside, GOP leaders targeted growing their supermajority by flipping three Middle Tennessee seats currently held by Democrats.

Neither came to fruition, but one came close.

Last year, the Tennessee General Assembly attracted headlines when members held multiple hearings on the possibility of rejecting up to a billion dollars in federal education funding. Lawmakers ultimately didn’t go forward with that idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. Republican House District 27 candidate Michele Reneau said in a recent interview that she’s open to the possibility of rejecting federal education dollars.

The Williamson County Schools Board of Education voted Monday to rescind a resolution from March that voiced the board’s opposition to Gov. Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.

When Tennessee Governor Bill Lee unveiled the details of the $100 million Helene Emergency Assistance Loans (HEAL) Program in a press conference Thursday afternoon, a reporter asked whether he might be willing to dip into the unused funding for his vouchers program. The Governor did not seem interested despite $144 million in voucher funding sitting unused.

A new report from the Georgetown University education think tank FutureEd notes that 569,000 K-12 students received public subsidies for private schooling in 2023-24 across eight states with universal school choice programs.

Tom Stinnett

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has a history with an issue Tennessee Democrats have spent the last year opposing.

Tuesday Governor Bill Lee took his ongoing push for universal school choice to the biggest stage yet.