My husband and I are in the thick of it. With two toddlers and a baby on the way, we have spent the past several months touring classrooms, interviewing admissions directors and comparing tuition. Like thousands of families across Chattanooga, we are navigating a question that sounds simple but is anything but: Where should we send our kids to school?
Chattanooga has options. Charter schools, magnet programs, private institutions, homeschool co-ops. But options and access are not the same thing. Magnet schools have wait lists. Charter lotteries let only a lucky few in. Private tuition requires financial sacrifice not every family can make. And the default option — your zoned public school — may or may not align with what you believe is best for your child.
This is the problem that Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarships (EFS) are designed to address. This spring, it was at the center of one of the most heated policy debates in Nashville. The legislature has now acted, and the result is a significant win for Tennessee families.
(IN THE NEWS: Hamilton County senators split on expansion of state-funded private school subsidies)
Critics, and even the program’s own description, frame vouchers as the government directing “state funds” to private schools. This gets the economics exactly backwards.