State House Speaker Cameron Sexton is vowing to bring the state legislature back into a special session to either forbid mask mandates and virtual learning in Tennessee’s public schools, or to give parents the money that the school districts spend on students so that their kids can use that money to go to private schools.
Last week Sexton told reporters: “And I sure hope that a school system in this state, after this data is released, does not shut their schools. If they do, I’m going to ask the governor for legislation to allow those parents in those school districts to take their money through school choice and to go wherever they deem they need to go.”
Good luck with that!
Listen, I get that any loss of funding for our public schools, considering how little we spend per student, is disastrous. But, like, have you looked at the cost of private schools? I’m just having a hard time imagining there are very many private schools in the state looking for an influx of students whose parents can only afford to send them there with the state’s help.
But let’s talk about the state’s help. I spent some time poking around on the state comptroller’s website looking at the per-pupil expenditures in school districts around Tennessee. This seems like the obvious way to find out what the state is spending per student, which ought to give us some idea of the money that Sexton is planning to give parents.
This is what the site says about Davidson County:
Total per-pupil expenditures per school in Davidson County:
$12,374.33Â
This figure represents total school level expenditures
$8,254.69
+
total district level expenditures
$4,119.64
State average: $9,753.74
 ________________________________________________________
Total school level per-pupil expenditures: $8,254.69
This figure is the sum of the following per-pupil expenditures:
School level federal: $398.37Â
+Â
School level state and local: $7,418.79
+
School level school nutrition: $437.53
=
$8,254.69Â
 ________________________________________________________Â
Total district level per-pupil expenditures in Davidson County:
This figure is the sum of the following expenditures:
District level federal: $356.58
+
District level state and local: $3,644.85
+
District level school nutrition: $118.21
=
$4,119.64
At a quick glance, it seems like a Nashville public school student should have about $12,000 to spend on private school under Sexton’s idea. That’s not a lot compared to what it cost to go to, say, Montgomery Bell, but it would pay for you to go to a nice number of Christian schools in town, especially if you don’t have any prejudices about your kids getting a Catholic education.
But what funds does Sexton actually have the right to direct? Just the state funding. The comptroller’s website also has a section that further breaks down all this funding. In the case of Davidson County, 9 percent of our schools’ funding comes from the feds, 30 percent comes from the state, and 61 percent comes from local sources.
That means out of that $12,000 per student Metro Nashville Public Schools gets, the state could only take away from the school district and give to parents $3,600 per student to use at private schools. Don’t get me wrong — this is a large sum of money to the average family. However, it doesn’t cover tuition at most (if any) private schools in Davidson County. In Shelby County, we’re talking $4,840 per student. Even in Cumberland County, part of Sexton’s district, this is still less than $5,000. It hurts these public schools a lot more, because Cumberland County only gets $9,000 per student, but it’s not covering tuition in very many private schools.
I know I’m basically asking one of the leaders of Tennessee's murder-suicide COVID cult to make the whole murder-suicide thing make sense to me — but isn’t the point of a murder-suicide cult to murder and then commit suicide? Because it seems like Republicans are doing whatever they can to kill themselves off and leave the rest of us traumatized and confused.
What we seem to have here in Tennessee is a death cult that tells its most ardent followers, “We’re going to really stick it to those big-city liberals, and they’ll be sorry they defy us,” while they are sticking it to the most ardent followers. And then it really seems like these followers believe, if they are suffering that much, we must really, really be suffering. But that’s just not the case.
I mean, sure, it will be very unpleasant for MNPS if Sexton gives parents state education funds for private schools. It will be devastating for the school systems in his district. It will be annoying for us to have him try to stop mask mandates, but we have a good base of parents who will make their kids wear masks no matter what. Do kids in the rest of Tennessee have that?
It’s just bizarre to me that we have repeated situations in which the cities in Tennessee — usually Memphis and Nashville — want to make good decisions for their residents and the state legislature’s response is, time and again, “Well, if we can hurt some of them, the cost on our side doesn’t matter.”
Tactics like voter suppression and gerrymandering might keep you in power for a while, but eventually, what’s your plan for when either everyone’s had to move to the cities for jobs and health care or they’re dead? If you just want to be king of a cemetery, there are a lot cheaper ways to accomplish that than running for office.