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A week after amending a voucher expansion bill to include immigration reporting requirements — potentially tying together two of the most contentious topics in the state legislature this year — Tennessee Republicans have reversed course.
Amendment aims to increase tracking requirements for the immigration status of K-12 students
The House Finance, Ways and Means Committee voted 18-10 on Tuesday to advance a bill that would increase the number of vouchers to 35,000 for the 2026-27 school year. The statewide voucher program, which offers public funds for private school tuition, launched this school year with 20,000 seats, and Gov. Bill Lee and Republican leadership have been pushing for a major expansion.
Those voting no were three Republicans — Rep. Mark Cochran (R-Englewood), Rep. David Hawk (R-Greeneville) and Rep. Gary Hicks (R-Rogersville) — and all of the Democrats on the committee.
While the original bill sponsored by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) would have doubled the program to 40,000 vouchers, Rep. Ryan Williams (R-Cookeville) introduced an amendment setting the lower cap, which will cost the state about $114 million in recurring funding.
Last week, Williams introduced another amendment with his changes and a requirement that public school districts collect and report the immigration status of students in order to preserve their state funding, which was originally introduced by House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville).
While the citizenship version sailed through the subcommittee without even any relevant public discussion, Williams removed that component before the full committee on Tuesday.
Plans to grow Education Freedom Scholarship program clear legislative hurdles while facing opposition from both sides of the aisle
After the meeting, Williams told the Banner that his intention had always been to focus on the “pecking order,” or prioritization of who receives vouchers, to reduce the size of expansion and to clarify the state’s hold-harmless clause.
The universal voucher program that passed last year includes a hold-harmless provision that ensures school districts will not lose money under the state’s per-pupil funding formula if students disenroll from public schools. The provision set a funding floor guaranteeing districts the same state allocation that they received the previous year, regardless of enrollment changes.
The newest amendment by Williams clarifies that the state will maintain the funding rate only for students who leave due to the voucher program, and not for any other kind of attrition.
“The original intent was for the floor to preserve local school systems, public school systems, from being impacted [by vouchers],” Williams said, noting that it “wasn’t very fiscally conservative” to fund schools over other types of disenrollment.
The prior version of Williams’ amendment would have provided per-pupil funding only to districts for each student who provided documentation that they were a citizen or lawfully present in the United States. Williams said that would have helped make sure the state wasn’t funding public schools if “a student left or returned to their original home of origin.”
“That’s technically what the other amendment did, but it got too confusing,” Williams said, adding that he “had a conversation with Speaker Sexton” about removing his immigration language, but ultimately “my name’s on it.”
"The new amendment is a more concise version of the previous amendment,” Sexton said in a statement emailed to the Nashville Banner on Tuesday evening, “which allows even better stewardship of taxpayer money.”
Lamberth supported the changes to the hold-harmless provision, noting that the newest version maintained the state’s funding as intended when the bill passed last year.
“This ensures that no public school will lose one red cent of money because of the Education Freedom Scholarship program,” Lamberth said.
The amendment also makes slight adjustments to the income-based priority categories for voucher applicants. Starting in the 2027-28 school year, vouchers would be awarded in the following order:
Students who received a voucher this year;
Students whose annual household income falls below 100 percent of the federal eligibility for free or reduced price lunch;
Students whose annual household income falls below 300 percent of that amount;
Students whose annual household income exceeds 300 percent of that amount, and who are currently enrolled in public schools or entering kindergarten;
All other students whose annual household income exceeds 300 percent.
Williams said some of his prioritization efforts — like capping the number of high-income families who receive vouchers — didn’t make it in the amendment, but that he was “happy where we ended up,” because reducing the number of vouchers in the expansion was most important to his constituents, who were skeptical about doubling the program in its first year.
The new prioritization language also ensures that those earning 300 percent-plus of the income threshold are eligible only after the higher-priority applicants.
“The pecking order was really important, because if you look at the number of low-income families that are actually applying vs. the [others], the number of lower-income families is depleting quickly just like it did with ESA,” Williams said, comparing the universal vouchers to the state’s original, limited voucher program.
“That’s really important, because eventually, when that number of low-income students gets to zero, I don’t see us expanding EFS anymore,” Williams said.
While staunch “school choice” advocates want to ultimately see a less regulated version of the program, Americans for Prosperity Tennessee Director Tori Venable tells the Banner that she is “perfectly happy” with this version of the bill because any expansion is an improvement and she “understands that there are budget constraints.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
