While politicians debated side issues related to an expansion of the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) pilot program, many Hamilton County students continued to struggle in underperforming public schools.
Fortunately, those able to see through the haze and help improve the lives of local students, no matter where they attend school, were successful in adding the county to the program in the waning days of the recently completed legislative session.
Parents who qualify in Hamilton County now can — for the 2023-2024 school year — apply for $8,100 taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their child to a private school. The county joins Metro Nashville and Shelby County in the pilot program, which was passed in 2019 but not declared constitutional by the Tennessee Supreme Court until 2022.
About 500 students in the Nashville and Memphis areas are enrolled in the program, and 1,500 more have begun applications to be enrolled. The program will be open to no more than 5,000 students for the 2023-2024 school year.
We have no idea how many local parents will apply for a voucher for their children. We don’t know how many will be able to pay the difference between the voucher amount and what full tuition is. We don’t know how many local private schools will participate. But if one student thrives by moving from a public school to a private one, we think it is worth it.
Indeed, we are amazed any politician would vote against providing choice and opportunity for students, given that this voucher program has no impact on a school district in which a student leaves for a private school for the next two years.
How many times have you heard the lie repeated that the program has taken money from public schools? We lost count several years ago. But the Basic Education Program funding lost by the school for an individual student who leaves will be returned through a state school improvement grant. And even after the next two years, money for each student who leaves will be returned to districts that have priority schools. That’s in the law.
State Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, is among the legislators who frequently repeat this mantra.
Only last week, he said, “What happens for those in public schools where dollars are being siphoned off? How does that help students in those schools where monies are being siphoned off?”
Hamilton County, according to the state Department of Education, has eight priority schools, meaning they academically scored in the bottom 5% of schools across the state in standardized testing during the 2021-2022 school year. That the number of county priority schools increased last year is what made state Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, propose that Hamilton join Shelby and Metro Nashville in the voucher program.
Gardenhire, a strong supporter of public education but also of vouchers, did not support Hamilton County being a part of the ESA program when it was passed in 2019 because the county at the time was in the midst of a separate program of sorts to help the then-five local schools get off the state priority list. Since that program is no longer viable, despite the state plowing some $20 million into the low-performing schools, the state senator made his move to sponsor this year’s legislation.
Over the just-completed legislative session, Knox County was added to the bill but, at the last minute, removed when a Knoxville House member objected because the original pilot program hadn’t had a chance to run its full five-year course.
We have appreciated from the first that the ESA is a pilot program. While we have supported various types of vouchers in the past to give parents and students more educational choices, the reduction of the original voucher bill to Shelby County and Metro Nashville concerned us.
The need is great, but if it can’t be shown by the end of the ESA program that the majority of students enrolled benefited from moving to a public to a private school, the legislature should rethink how it awards vouchers.
In the meantime, we appreciate that the potential of the ESA program has enthused 2,000 (enrolled and applied) Nashville and Memphis parents. State Rep. Bryan Richey, R-Maryville, said as much to the Tennessee Conservative.
“Five hundred families deciding to send their kids through this particular program in that short period of time shows that it is something that is needed,” he said. And the addition of 1,500 applications proves “the increased desire for folks across the state” for school choice options.
And if one or five or maybe 1,000 improve because of the program, isn’t that worth the effort?