'Change to the status quo:' Gov. Bill Lee talks commitment to vouchers during Memphis visit

In the fall, Gov. Bill Lee excitedly announced a sweeping voucher proposal, the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, which would provide $7,075 in state funds to 20,000 students looking to attend a private school in the 2024-25 school year.

Lee championed the proposal for months, but as time passed, it ran into hurdles. The Tennessee Senate and House created dramatically different versions of the bill, and it faced staunch opposition from both urban and suburban school districts. Last month, a disappointed Lee announced that his voucher proposal didn't have a pathway forward in the 2024 legislative session.

Still, he emphasized that he would pursue the voucher proposal again next year. And on Tuesday, he reiterated that commitment at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, during a Q&A session.

'Entrenched thinking'

When asked if the uniform opposition from school districts would cause him to change his approach as he thought about vouchers going forward, he pushed back against critics of his proposal and asserted that it’s wanted by parents throughout the state.

“There will always be critics; there are always concerns whenever there is change to the status quo. Entrenched thinking is the status quo and changing that is hard,” Lee said. “But we've seen… that parents far and wide across Tennessee, want to have better options, want to have options and choices for their kids. Why wouldn't we want to give a parent a choice for a child's education? Why wouldn't we want a child to have another option to succeed?”

The governor was also asked what the proposal would look like next year ― would he again pursue $7,075 for 20,000 students, or would he seek larger or smaller numbers?

Without getting into specifics, Lee said he thinks the actual legislation will be different, and that he’ll learn from what he “saw and experienced” with the proposal this year. His goal for “education freedom,” he explained, was that it be “universal.”

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“What that means is that every family in the state have access to a choice about where their kids go to school,” he explained. “All education institutions will rise in quality when that happens. And we should be committed to the best public, the best private, the best educational choices for all of our students.”

Lee’s point about simultaneously having great best public schools and an expansive voucher program is one he’s made before; and on Tuesday, he emphasized that, if the voucher bill passes next year, it will be enacted alongside the largest funding increases for public schools in the state’s history.

“We can have the best public schools and give education freedom to parents at the same time,” he said. “We should not expect anything less than that.”

What the school districts think

But his comments aren’t likely to assuage public education leaders, who derided the proposal and were relieved when it failed in the general assembly.

School district officials had expressed concern that the bill would ultimately harm public schools, despite Lee’s insistence that the program would be funded separately. Many also noted that it would send government funds to private schools, which weren’t beholden to the same state assessments and regulations as public ones. And others pointed out that students didn’t necessarily perform better after switching to private schools using vouchers.

They also seem ready to again push back against the voucher proposal if and when it resurfaces. For example, when Lee revealed the bill was dead for the year, Arlington Community Schools Superintendent Jeff Mayo called it “a small victory,” but said “public school advocates cannot stay silent this next year.”

“Even now, Governor Lee has publicly said he’s making plans to revive the bill next legislative session, meaning he hasn’t even taken a day to understand why his signature bill failed,” he said in a statement last month. “That tells me he doesn’t care to listen to our concerns. The end game is to ultimately usher vouchers into Tennessee to fund private schools, despite the lackluster evidence that it will actually help students.”

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee talks about next voucher bill in Memphis