NASHVILLE - Republican Gov. Bill Lee's controversial private school voucher-like bill barely squeaked through the Tennessee House Tuesday amid prayers, pleas and pressure, even as a much narrower Senate version that removes Hamilton County from the measure won a committee's approval.
The Senate has now scheduled a vote on Lee's education savings account proposal for floor debate Thursday.
Once the Senate bill passes, major differences in the respective measures are expected to wind up in a joint conference committee, where representatives and senators will seek to iron out the chambers' substantial differences in several key areas.
The Senate bill right now removes both Hamilton and Knox counties from the measure, which would eventually allow parents of up to 15,000 children to use an average of $7,300 in state and local taxpayer dollars to pay for private school tuition and related costs and, in the Senate version, home schooling as well.
The House-passed bill removes Knox County, while Hamilton remains included. It doesn't have the home schooling provision and there are other differences, too.
Following the House's passage, Lee tweeted that "every student in TN deserves access to a high-quality education, and with today's House vote, we're one big step closer to giving parents and students needed choice in their education."
The bill has become a major and early test for Lee, a political newcomer who took office in January.
Earlier on the House floor, one of the new governor's top initiatives looked like it had a political belly-flop, despite the best-laid plans of Republican House Speaker Glen Casada.
Lee's bill was left teetering on the edge of oblivion for some 40 minutes on a 49-49 tie vote, one short of the 50 votes required for passage.
With one supporter absent due to an immediate family member's death, Casada held the chamber's big electronic vote tally board open as he, other top GOP leaders and, Republicans say, even the governor scrambled on the phone or in person to find the 50th vote.
They eventually did just that, cutting a deal with Rep. Jason Zachary, R-Knoxville, who won a promise to remove Knox County from the House bill.
Asked later whether Hamilton County might come out of the House bill, Casada told the Times Free Press that "we're going to go to conference committee and it'll be negotiated. Right now, it will take Knox out and that's all I'm committed to."
Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain, the vice chair of the House Finance Committee who voted against the bill on the floor, later said several provisions had her worried about the bill's impact.
"I think everyone's intent is to help these children in these failing schools," Hazlewood said in an interview. "We're agreed on the goal, we just have differences of opinion how to get there."
One of her concerns is the "income level is too high," she said, "and I think it should be just free and reduced lunch [program] children who are eligible. I think that would be fair if we're going to do these ESAs. And I don't think it should be district wide. I think it should be limited to children who are actually in the failing schools."
Moreover, Hazlewood said, much effort by local legislators has gone into nudging the Hamilton County Board of Education and the state into a new collaborative effort called the State Partnership Network, aimed at five failing schools.
During the House floor debate, Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, spoke in favor of the bill, starting by slowly counting to 18.
"Four schools in Hamilton County at a minimum have been on the failing schools list for a minimum of 18 years," Smith said. "Eighteen years. I-zones, opportunity zones, Partner Networks, and tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars later, we've had the status quo."
A nurse by training, Smith said that just as she trusts patients over insurance companies, "I trust parents more than I do the bureaucracy of education."
In a later interview, Smith said she wants to keep Hamilton County in the bill.
Rep. Esther Helton, R-East Ridge, another yes vote on the bill, later said of her support that "I ran on school choice and I will continue to run on school choice."
Helton also favors keeping Hamilton County in the bill, noting that in 2015 "we had five schools in the Opportunity Zone. In 2018, we had nine. They increased."
Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, voted for the bill as well, saying later that he supports keeping Hamilton County in the bill.
Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, voted against the bill, saying earlier during debate that in his view Hamilton County is "making improvements." He said balance was needed to address "the best interests of the children. The children that we're talking about come from a systemic poverty background. And what are we doing if we're layering something on top of this?"
Zachary, meanwhile, gloated to constituents via Twitter over the deal he struck: "Update on my ESA vote Knox County is out, held fiscally harmless and our teachers get their raises!"
But until that happens, the House bill would start in 2021 with up to 5,000 students from Hamilton, Knox, Shelby and Davidson counties, as well as the state's Achievement School District for poor-performing schools.
As amended in the Senate Finance Committee where Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, serves as chairman, the Senate bill only includes Shelby and Davidson counties, as well as the Achievement School District.
Both Watson and Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, voted for the bill.
The Senate bill also softens efforts by Lee and the House to exclude undocumented immigrant children from the bill. That was a major concern of Gardenhire, who for years has unsuccessfully championed getting in-state tuition rates for students who are in the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Gardenhire was also the local legislative delegation's point man on pushing for the new state and local education system's collaborative effort.
Lee's bill originally began with the governor and proponents pitching it as an effort to help students in the state's bottom 10 percent of public schools in terms of student performance.
Five counties met the definition: the Hamilton, Knox, Davidson, Shelby and Jackson/Madison systems, as well as the state-run Achievement School District for troubled schools.
But the language allows parents of students who live in one of the districts to get into the ESA program regardless of whether their children attend a low-performing school or not.
Moreover, income level requirements would allow some middle-class families, say, a four-person family earning about $60,000 annually, to take advantage of the program, even if the children don't attend a low-performing school, critics say.
During testimony in the Senate Finance Committee as Watson and Gardenhire listened, David Connor with the Tennessee County Services Association and Michael Whaley, a Shelby County commissioner, warned of problems for counties' budgets because state and local tax dollars would follow the students to private schools or for homeschooling.
"One of the biggest concerns we have is eventually having to implement a property tax increase," Whaley fretted, later adding, "we can't just tax our citizens to death. There's limited resources."
The bill cleared the committee on a 6-5 vote with Watson and Gardenhire both voting aye, as it excluded Hamilton County.
Lee has proposed providing impacted school systems a collective $25 million annually over the next three years.
But in an effort to win more rural Republican support for the bill, House leaders amended it last week to trim what urban school systems will get. That cuts the urban systems' share to 75 percent in the first year, 50 percent in the second year and 25 percent in Year 3.
Those funds will go instead to a number of rural districts.
According to the County Services Association's estimates on the financial impact of the bill to Hamilton County, when the statewide program hits 15,000 students it would create a loss of about $7.4 million in county tax dollars.
That's because the dollars would follow an estimated 2,116 students using their ESAs for private school tuition or, under the Senate bill, also for home schooling expenses.
Another $11 million in state money normally going to Hamilton would also follow the students.
The Lee administration and bill proponents say the systems would actually benefit financially because the students would no longer be in classrooms, decreasing their costs.
But Whaley and Connor argue that because departures from individual schools and even among grades within a single school will likely be uneven, cutting costs across the board won't work.
Moreover, they contend, it doesn't address systems' fixed costs, such as bonds for buildings, pensions and retiree health costs.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.