Sumner County’s delegation of state lawmakers is fully backing the governor’s plan to enact private school vouchers statewide, though at least one local school board member opposes the idea.
“There’s much more pressing needs, to me, that our education tax dollars could be going toward besides providing scholarships for private school or homeschool,” Sumner County School Board Member Allen Lancaster said.
The school district in Sumner County just northeast of Metro Nashville is among the fastest-growing in the state and achieved some of the highest test scores in Tennessee, at least before the COVID-19 pandemic, with 14 schools earning the designation in 2019 as Reward Schools with all students and student groups recording improvements in growth and achievement.
All of Sumner County’s lawmakers turned out recently for Gov. Bill Lee’s announcement when he proposed 20,000 private school vouchers the first year, at a cost more than $140 million, and universal vouchers in the program’s second year. The governor did not say how the program would be funded.