The move to expand Tennessee’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program statewide is expected to have a very powerful ally in the General Assembly’s next session, sources told The Tennessee Star.
State Representative Bryan Richey (R-Maryville) said Governor Bill Lee is planning a press conference on Tuesday to discuss a bill to expand ESA beyond Metro Nashville, Memphis, and Hamilton County into all of Tennessee’s 95 counties.
Richey said an official from Lee’s office told him the proposal calls for initial income limits. The savings accounts would be for students whose families are at 200 percent or less of the poverty line in the first and second year of the expansion. The income limits would widen over 10 years through a phase-in, ultimately opening up the savings accounts to K-12 students throughout the state.
“I’m in favor of the expansion,” Richey told The Star in an interview Friday. “At the end of the day, these are taxpayer dollars to educate kids and I think parents should have a say in whether it’s at a government school, private school, charter, or a home school. They should have the opportunity to place their kids in whatever environment they want them in.”
Richey said he’s not a fan of the phase-in plan, a provision, he said, that will only serve to segregate kids based on their parents’ income.
“Now, they will be creating a different classification of kids,” said the lawmaker, who serves on the House Standing Committee on Education Administration and the K-12 Subcommittee. “I don’t like this particular legislation where it’s based off of what parents are bringing in monetarily when those tax dollars are there for what’s best for kids. The tax dollars are supposed to follow them.”
Richey said he would support caps on the number of students who can participate each year but not income limits.
A spokeswoman for the governor’s office did not return The Star’s request for comment seeking more information on the proposal and Tuesday’s scheduled press conference.
Lee made ESAs a top initiative of his first term. The 2019 bill that passed the General Assembly faced legal challenges before being upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Eligible students in Shelby, Davidson, and (as of earlier this year) Hamilton counties may use state and local Basic Education Program funds to cover expenses, including tuition, fees, and textbooks at approved private schools. For early postsecondary opportunity courses and exams, tutoring services and fees are also included under allowable ESA expenditures.
Roxanne Glass, a single mother in Memphis, told The Beacon Center of Tennessee that she is able to send her elementary school daughter to the school of her choice thanks to the ESA program.
Glass, who said she almost dropped out of high school, said she will “fight for this program as much as possible.
“Doors can open, generational curses can be broken, and the program is helping me to do that,” the mother said, adding that the approximately $8,200 in annual per-student ESA funding gives struggling parents “the chance to breathe.”
State Representative Mark White (R-Memphis) told The Center Square earlier this month that he will sponsor a bill on a statewide expansion of the ESA program. White, who serves as chairman of the House Education Administration Committee, acknowledged it “will be a tough hill to climb,” but that he wants to keep the conversation going.
He told the publication that he expects legislation to be filed, introduced, and discussed in committee early in the upcoming session starting in January. However, the legislation will likely need the entirety of the session to reach its final, passable form.
The lawmaker confirmed to The Tennessee Lookout earlier this week that the governor is scheduled to hold the press conference. He said he offered to carry the legislation “as a supporter of parental choice.”
“I know that’s Govrnor Lee’s wish that it open up to parental choice statewide, so that’s what the conversation will be when we go back in session,” White told the publication. “A lot of people say it takes money away from public schools. I’m not a believer in that. … When you have choice, you have competition, which opens up innovation.”
Critics of the expanded savings accounts warn that the programs will siphon more tax dollars out of the state’s public education system —schools, they insist, are in desperate need of more funding.
A Beacon Center poll in July, however, found that 69 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat supported expansion of the state’s ESA program.
Tennessee’s program officially launched last year with nearly 2,600 students using the savings accounts, about half of the initial 5,000-student cap in the first year. Enrollment can increase 2,500 students annually over the remaining four years, with a maximum cap of 15,000 students in year five.
Over the last two years, seven states have enacted new universal education savings account programs or have expanded existing programs to universal or near-universal eligibility, according to the Manhattan Institute.
This year, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, and Utah have either created new universal ESAs, in which all K–12 students are eligible, or have expanded existing ESA programs to near-universal levels, the think tank reported.
In Iowa, the state approved nearly 19,000 eligible applications for the state’s ESA program, which gives families $7,635 per student this school year. That’s nearly 5,000 more students than expected, Iowa Public Radio reported in August.
Richey said he’s not worried about a mass exodus of students from public schools in his district or many others across Tennessee.
“We have great schools here,” the lawmaker said. “I look at it as what’s best for students for their specific needs.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Bill Lee” by Gov. Bill Lee.
