This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene. The Nashville Banner is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization focused on civic news. Over the summer, the Banner sent out a community survey to ask what issues mattered most to readers in this election cycle. Visit nashvillebanner.com for the rest of the Banner’s community-focused series and 2024 voter guide.
What kids learn, where they learn it and who makes those decisions have become increasingly politicized questions in Tennessee over the past decade. The answers, to some extent, will be determined by a series of close state House races in November.
In recent years, many Tennesseans have been motivated by a string of national culture wars over whether and how students are educated on race, given access to LGBTQ literature in libraries or otherwise exposed to ideas unpopular with some parents. As these ideas consumed conservative media, they spawned efforts to ban books from libraries and restrict how teachers address certain topics, generally prompting some parents to question who has the final say over what their children learn.
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The confluence of these suddenly hot-button issues, combined with frustration over mask mandates and closed school facilities during the pandemic, have made way for broader changes to how the state debates education issues, including allowing outside groups to pour millions of dollars into state and local elections and converting once-benign school board elections into competitive partisan races.
On the shoulders of the growing “parental choice” movement, Gov. Bill Lee has — with the help of some well-funded political action committees — made sure that his fight to establish a statewide school voucher program is central to the last cycle of statewide elections before his second and final term ends in 2026.
Lee, whose office did not respond to a request to comment for this story, wants the state to give families of schoolchildren the choice to attend public schools or receive over $7,000 from the state in tuition for students who attend private or charter schools. Proponents argue that parents should have the right to send their kids to the best schools, and the money the state spends on public education should follow a student wherever they learn.
“It’s much broader than vouchers, it’s about parental empowerment,” says Tori Venable, senior adviser for Americans for Prosperity’s PAC, AFP-Action.
“We think that parents should make the decision for their children and how their child is going to learn best, whether it’s public school, private school, charter school, homeschool,” Venable continues.
Others, like former Williamson County School Board member Nancy Garrett, worry that a voucher program would undermine public schools that rely on that funding, creating a greater disparity between students who are able to attend private schools and those who are left at now less-funded public schools.
“Why would you give public taxpayer funds to a private school that is not policy-bound to educate all students?” Garrett asks.
After the most recent version of Lee’s voucher proposal died in the spring without making it to a full House vote, the governor went all-in on endorsements for Republicans who supported vouchers, defying other Republicans — including former President Donald Trump — and national PACs like AFP poured nearly $5 million in largely untraceable dark money into more than a dozen state primary races. In the end, Lee won a few new voucher-friendly representatives, but not enough to guarantee his bill will pass in the next legislative session.
Garrett suspects that the increased commotion around “parental choice” is a misnomer — at least when it comes to curriculum or what books are allowed in libraries — perpetuated by those who stand to make money off of the state diverting public school funds to private and charter schools.
“It is the agenda of certain people who will profit from these for-profit schools,” says Garrett, the daughter of a longtime Franklin public school teacher.
Implementation Issues
Within the school-choice debate is also the question of whether students should be allowed to enroll in public schools for which they are not zoned, if space allows.
“I know from a planning position for public schools, that’s difficult, but I mean, if there’s open seats available and the parent wants to transport their child, why should they not be able to just take their child to a different public school?” Venable asks, noting that funding should also “follow the student” to the school where they are enrolled.
Garrett and others have pushed back on the idea of open enrollment, noting that like sending a student to private school with state funding, the process could widen the gap between students with greater means and options to attend other schools and those who are left at their originally zoned schools — which, again, would be losing funding.
“What about when a school can’t exist anymore?” Garrett asks about the potential funding loss and “chaos” for less desirable schools. “So does that school just go away? What does that do to the other students?”
Looking at the politics and the impact of school choice in Tennessee
Garrett says any non-zoning enrollment should be up to the local education authority, which is usually an elected school board, though she notes that a 2021 change making school board elections partisan might tarnish a board member’s ability to vote in the best interest of students.
“I think it compromises your independent thinking,” Garrett says.
Venable says those school-choice Republicans who cleared their August races are as good as elected, noting that most general elections in Tennessee will go Republican.
“We’re not worried about a Tennessee general election,” Venable says, noting that the group estimates they will have somewhere around 53 or 54 House votes in favor after the November general election and that the voucher bill’s success will come down to committee assignments and whether the bill makes it to a floor vote in the House.
Key Races
There’s truth to Venable’s confidence.
There are three state House races where the Democrats are pouring in national money because they’re close enough to impact the net number of Democrats elected in November. Only one of those could result in a pro-voucher incumbent losing his seat.
In Memphis, Democrat Jesse Huseth, who strongly opposes the so-called “voucher scam,” has a chance at unseating Republican Rep. John Gillespie, who voted to pass the voucher bill through the House Education Committee this spring. Gillespie says he “supports the right of parents to have a strong voice in their child’s education” on his campaign website.
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The other two are tight Middle Tennessee races where Republicans are keeping their voucher stances under wraps as they fight for currently Democratic seats.
With Democratic Rep. Darren Jernigan vacating his seat — which represents Donelson, Hermitage and part of Old Hickory — Democrats are hoping gun control activist Shaundelle Brooks can keep the narrowly split district blue while Lee-endorsed Republican Chad Bobo aims to flip it.
Brooks has unequivocally said she will not support vouchers, telling the Banner in a questionnaire that“redirecting resources to private schools undermines the funding for public schools, which are the backbone of our communities, especially for families who rely on them the most,” and advocating for strict regulations if any private schools do receive state money from vouchers.
Bobo, however, has hedged on the issue throughout the campaign, despite being anointed by Lee. In July, Bobo said he supports “school choice” and answered “yes” when asked if he supported school vouchers, before adding that he doesn’t like the term “voucher.” In the more recent questionnaire, Bobo said “students should receive the best education possible, and we should continue to find ways for parents to make the best decisions for their children.”
Asked to clear up his stance, Bobo would not say whether he supports vouchers or if he would vote in favor of Lee’s voucher bill if elected and would need to see the bill before voting. Asked what he thought of the version that failed in the spring, Bobo, who was working in state House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office at the time, said “not very much, because I wasn’t voting on it.”
“I’m not really trying to have an agenda — I just want to make sure that our children get educated properly,” Bobo says, noting that he would prioritize students in “failing” schools and expressing his support of magnet schools.
Similarly, the race between Clarksville Democratic Rep. Ronnie Glynn and Republican challenger Jamie Peltz has Democrats playing defense after Glynn won the seat with 50.7 percent in 2022 — a margin of just 153 votes.
While Glynn is unabashedly opposed to vouchers, Peltz is an unknown who lists education as one of her top three priorities on her campaign website — though she has not addressed vouchers publicly during her campaign. Asked by the Banner, Peltz says she would not have voted for the latest iteration of the bill, but leaves the door open on the concept of vouchers, also called Education Savings Accounts.
“While I support school choice in principle, I have concerns with the ESA legislation that was presented in the last legislative session and would not have been a yes,” Peltz writes in an email. “As a mother with children in our local public schools, I understand first-hand the importance of ensuring that our education system works for all students, parents and educators.”
Lee’s pitch created a divide among Republican legislators and faced widespread criticism from school leaders
Some Democrats believe they might topple Republicans in some less, but still slightly, vulnerable House seats on the ballot in November — like those held by a pair of pro-voucher incumbents in Rutherford County.
In Smyrna, where pro-voucher Republican Rep. Robert Stevens is up for re-election, Democrats are hoping a growth in population and increase in Democrats will tip the scale toward challenger Jonathan Yancey, a former public school teacher who opposes the voucher program, after Stevens handily beat a primary challenge from an anti-voucher opponent.
Similarly, Murfreesboro’s Republican Rep. Mike Sparks, who supported the last voucher bill, is also a target of Democrats seeking to capitalize on growth in Rutherford County, but would be a long-shot victory.
Even with the die already cast in some races, Garrett urges voters to consider the future of public education when voting in November.
“Don’t be that person who says, ‘I didn’t know what I had until it was gone,’” she says.
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