NASHVILLE – Tennessee’s GOP-led House turned a collective thumbs-down Monday to Senate Republican-made changes in Gov. Bill Lee’s controversial school voucher bill, increasing the likelihood the measure will wind up in a conference committee.
Senators, meanwhile, are refusing to budge from their version.
Now the bill is widely expected to wind up in a joint House-and-Senate conference committee. It’s adding yet another element of last-minute drama for lawmakers already struggling to wrap up their annual legislative session this week, not to mention for Lee, a Republican who took office earlier this year.
When the Senate version came up on the House floor late Monday afternoon, House Speaker Pro Tempore Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, moved to reject amendments added by the Senate. It now goes back to the Senate, which is expected to refuse to change its position.
Lee’s signature plan calls for spending an estimated $110 million in state funds and more from local tax revenues to create a “education savings account” program.
It would provide $7,300 in public tax money for up to 15,000 parents of students living in targeted, lower-performing public school districts to pay for private school tuition.
The Republican-dominated Senate and House have passed differing versions of the bill.
Lee’s original bill applied to Hamilton, Knox and Shelby counties school systems as well as Metro Nashville and the state’s Achievement School District.
As a result of a successful last-minute deal cut to break a 49-49 tie floor vote, Republican House Speaker Glen Casada agreed to remove Knox County, leaving Hamilton, Metro Nashville and Shelby as well as the ASD.
But senators removed both Hamilton and Knox from the bill, renamed the effort as a “pilot” project while retaining Metro Nashville, Shelby and the ASD, which includes low-performing schools.
Agreement on that is possible, but other provisions are expected to prove a tougher nut to crack. These include:
* In an effort to placate the House, Lee included provisions that effectively seek to exclude undocumented children from the bill, arguing that parents having to provide identification such as a Social Security number, driver’s license or passport is necessary to ensure proper auditing.
But that conflicts with a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, in which the court held in a Texas case that public school systems can’t check the immigration status of children and must provide them with an education.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, who has long championed in-state college tuition for undocumented students qualifying under the federal Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals program, insisted on removing Lee’s provision.
Instead, Republican senators have refused go along with that and included language simply requiring parents to present a pay stub or W-2 statement to help the state in auditing expenditures.
But the undocumented student issue is giving House Republicans a collective case of heartburn. It’s unclear how that can be resolved.
* Another difference is that the House excluded home-schooled students from bill. Senators have included them.
And a new wrinkle emerged Monday with Metro Nashville and Shelby County schools now engaging in public saber rattling, saying that if the bill passes, they will march into court and challenge it on grounds it violates the Tennessee Constitution.
“If the Governor and Legislature are determined to pass a general law that would apply arbitrarily only to us or a limited number of school systems, we will be sure to exhaust all of our legal options,” said Dr. Joris M. Ray, Shelby County Schools superintendent in a joint news release with Metro Nashville Public Schools.
Dr. Adrienne Battle, Metro Nashville Public Schools’ interim director, stated that “no matter what you call them, vouchers are a bad idea. They are not what we need for public schools. We owe it to this generation of students – and to all of those who follow them – to fight for a system that is fairly funded.”
Metro Nashville and Shelby officials say excluding any number of districts from the low-performing schools standard violates Article XI, Section 9 of the Tennessee Constitution “because it is arbitrarily limited to only a portion of the state when the Constitution requires any Act of the General Assembly to apply statewide unless approved by a local legislative body or through a local referendum.”
They point to excluded districts such as Madison and Fayette counties’ school systems, with larger or nearly the same percentages of schools performing in the bottom 10 percent of schools statewide.
They also cite the political gymnastics that legislators went through to limit the bill’s impact, noting it only applies to certain districts with priority schools from the state’s 2015 priority school list even though the 2018 list includes schools in Campbell, Fayette, Madison and Maury counties.
Priority schools fall within the state’s lowest 5 percent of schools in terms of student performance.
While Lee has sought to steer clear of the House and Senate fight, the new governor’s spokeswoman, Laine Arnold, quickly engaged on the lawsuit threats.
“Baseless legal threats distract from the real mission of the education savings account proposal, which is giving our children every tool to succeed,” she said in a statement.
According to earlier estimates from the Tennessee County Services Association, when 15,000 students are in the ESA program – and if Hamilton County remains in the law – the system would lose $8.2 million annually in state Basic Education Program funding formula dollars and another $7.4 million as the money presumably follows an estimated 2,822 students.
Lee said he is providing $25 million in annual funding over a three-year period for all systems impacted by the bill and, following that, $25 million for priority schools for impacted systems.
Davidson County, meanwhile, stands to lose $14 million in state Basic Education Program formula funding and an additional $18.54 million in local tax dollars as the money presumably follows 3,950 students.
The estimated losses for Shelby County are $30 million in state funds and $13 million in local tax funding presumably following 5,512 students.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow on Twitter @AndySher1.