One Tennessee school district is taking advantage of a federal reimbursement program to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students starting in January.
Unicoi County Schools will use the Community Eligibility Provision of the USDA’s school meal program to offer meals at no cost to all students with no application required.
The move comes in a state were policymakers have considered and rejected the idea of providing free school meals to all students on multiple occasions.
It also comes in a state that has a massive budget surplus and can afford to invest more in schools – including ensuring all children at school are fed. Instead, it seems Gov. Lee and his allies will spend surplus dollars on creating a new voucher scheme.
Advocates with the Southern Christian Coalition noted that Lee’s plan would harm the state’s public school system and leave students behind. Representatives of the group said the plan is out of alignment with Lee’s proclaimed Christian faith.
Rev. Brandon Berg, Pastor of Norris and Sinking Springs United Methodist Churches in the Knoxville area, said:
“If Governor Lee claims the Christian faith, and we know he does, then he must change course and start to prioritize the education of every Tennessee child by fully funding our public schools and end this voucher scheme that would create even more inequity in Tennessee schools.”
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Lee moves forward with planned privatization of state’s public schools
Despite mounting evidence suggesting that universal school voucher programs are both expensive and ineffective, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee seems determined to deliver on a promise from his 2018 campaign. That promise? Privatizing public schools.
Gov. Bill Lee is preparing to announce a plan to dramatically expand Tennessee’s controversial school voucher program, allowing K-12 students to receive taxpayer funding for private school regardless of need, according to talking points obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Lee has long been an advocate of using tax dollars to fund unaccountable private schools.
Even though as early as 2016, Bill Lee was extolling the virtues of school voucher schemes and even though he’s a long-time supporter of Betsy DeVos’s pro-voucher Tennessee Federation for Children and even though he has appointed not one, but two voucher vultures to high level posts in his Administration, it is somehow treated as “news” that Bill Lee plans to move forward with a voucher scheme agenda in 2019.
Lee has continued his steady march toward full privatization of schools since 2019. Securing passage of his voucher scheme, advancing legislation that created a charter school commission, inviting Hillsdale to hijack our schools.
He even made a successful push to change the state’s school funding formula to make it more appealing for private schools to accept vouchers.
Now, he’s going for the final blow: A universal school voucher plan.
This plan will be expensive and is not likely to have a positive impact on academic achievement.
Nearly 15,000 students who never attended public school suddenly receiving vouchers would mean a state cost of $98 million. That’s $98 million in new money. Of course, those funds would either be new money (which is not currently contemplated) or would take from the state’s BEP allocations in the districts where the students receive the vouchers.
Since then, two things have happened.
Lee’s plan envisions 20,000 students AND the guaranteed minimum voucher amount has increased.
The cost now would be $141 million. That doesn’t include any local offset for lost local funding (estimated to be about $8 million in Davidson County alone back in 2017).
If the state absorbs the cost, rather than passing it on to local taxpayers, there would need to be a fund of at least $100 million to cover those costs.
So, at minimum, Lee’s plan creates a voucher school district costing an additional $250 million a year.
All while our state remains in the bottom 10 in school funding.
Oh, and if the state does not create an offset fund, local taxpayers would be footing the bill – which would mean either local property tax increases (as happened in Indiana) OR a decrease in services offered in traditional public schools.
Lee is delivering on his promise, even though it’s expensive and even though data from other states and early data from Tennessee suggests it won’t improve student achievement.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Gov. Bill Lee’s handpicked charter school commission reversed a decision by the Jackson-Madison school board and approved locating a Hillsdale charter in the district.
The Commission also rejected an appeal for a Hillsdale charter in Maury County, noting that the application just “wasn’t there yet.”
The Hillsdale charter in Jackson-Madison will be the second in the state after Rutherford County’s school board approved an application from the charter network earlier this year.
Lee outlined his plan to partner with Hillsdale for the development of up to 50 charter schools in the state back in his 2022 State of the State Address. In that address, Lee made clear his allegiance with the ideology of American Exceptionalism and his comfort with Christian Nationalism.
An analysis of the fiscal impact of charter schools found that the Hillsdale charters, as envisioned in their applications, would drain roughly $7 million from each district where they operate.
If Lee’s dream of 50 Hillsdale charters is realized, more than $300 million could be transferred from state and local taxpayers to the charter network.
Even though as early as 2016, Bill Lee was extolling the virtues of school voucher schemes and even though he’s a long-time supporter of Betsy DeVos’s pro-voucher Tennessee Federation for Children and even though he has appointed not one, but two voucher vultures to high level posts in his Administration, it is somehow treated as “news” that Bill Lee plans to move forward with a voucher scheme agenda in 2019.
How did we get here? In 2018 I wrote:
Bill Lee was on the right team and spoke the right, religiously-tinged words and so earned the support of people who will look at you with a straight face and say they love Tennessee public schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Now, a former Assistant Commissioner in the DOE says an A-F school grading system, set to be implemented this school year, is designed to further erode public support for public schools.
New education commissioner ready to implement agenda that undermines state’s public schools
Gov. Bill Lee’s new Education Commissioner, Lizette Gonzalez Reynolds, has been on the job since July 1st and says her priority will be implementing a raft of policies supported by Gov. Lee and passed by the General Assembly.
Three weeks into her job as Tennessee’s education chief, Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds says her charge from Gov. Bill Lee is to implement existing major policy changes — from how reading is taught to the continued rollout of private school vouchers — not to craft new initiatives.
Privatizing the state’s public schools has long been a goal of Lee’s, and it seems he’s now chosen a chief implementer of that policy.
While Gov. Bill Lee “dreams” of being able to pay starting teachers $50,000 eventually and while the state’s schools languish in the bottom 10 in the nation in overall funding, the state continues to rake in extra cash.
Alas, instead of actually taking the yearly surpluses and investing more in schools, Tennessee policymakers seem content to leave us at the bottom:
When it comes to school funding, Tennessee lags far behind our neighbors in Kentucky.
Tennessee Education Association President Beth Brown points out the significance of this disparity in a recent email to educators. In it, she notes:
“It’s not about how the funds are divided, it’s about how many state dollars are put into education,” said TEA President Beth Brown. “To get to the Kentucky level of school funding, Tennessee needs $3 billion added to the state education budget.”
Our state’s schools have a range of needs and our state has a pile of cash. Seems like an easy fix – just use the cash to fund the schools.
So far, though, policymakers and Gov. Lee seem reluctant to do that.
Instead, our education policy is focused on funneling public funds to private schools and extreme charter networks.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Tennessee Education Association challenges Gov. Lee’s attempt at union busting
The Tennessee Education Association is challenging a new state law that prevents local school districts from allowing teachers to have their association dues automatically deducted from their paychecks.
The move by the Lee Administration was tied to a teacher pay raise and widely seen as an effort to weaken the oldest and largest organization advocating for teachers in the state.
In recent years, TEA has been the source of the strongest opposition to Lee’s agenda of using public money to fund private schools.
Tennessee’s largest professional teachers organization is challenging the constitutionality of a new state law that prohibits school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues.
The Tennessee Education Association filed its lawsuit Tuesday in Davidson County Chancery Court on behalf of its local education associations and 41,000 members statewide. The complaint names Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, which pushed for the change, and the state education department as defendants. Several local education associations have joined the suit.
Hillsdale charters gain access to Tennessee tax dollars
Over at The Education Report, I write about how Hillsdale’s charter network has gained access to local tax dollars in Rutherford County – and how this opens the door for them to treat local taxpayers as an ATM in support of their Christian Nationalist agenda.
Ultimately, local taxpayers could end up footing a $350 million bill to support Hillsdale in Tennessee.
Here are some highlights:
Hersch explains that even when there is broad public opposition to Hillsdale’s charters (as has been the case in the Tennessee districts where Hillsdale has applied to operate), the school has found a way to foist its charters on districts.
In Tennessee, that means that even the four rejected Hillsdale charters – in Madison, Maury, Montgomery, & Robertson counties – could end up being approved by Gov. Bill Lee’s handpicked State Charter Commission.
A recent analysis of the potential fiscal impact of Hillsdale charters in Tennessee shows that if all five Hillsdale charters ultimately get approved, local taxpayers could be stuck with a tab of an additional $35 million a year.
If the school ultimately reaches Gov. Bill Lee’s promise of a network of 50 charters in Tennessee, that’s a total local taxpayer bill of $350 million a year.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Students in these districts (Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga) may receive a voucher in an amount equivalent to the state-generated funding provided to their home district for the student. Under the state’s new school funding formula (TISA), each student generates a specific dollar amount based on a range of factors. The vouchers should range from about $8,000 to around $15,000 depending on where a student lives, family income, and a series of other factors included in the TISA calculation.
In addition to vouchers, Lee is attempting to privatize the state’s public schools through a network of charter schools affiliated with extremist Hillsdale College.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
