‘Last-ditch’ effort
Bill up for crucial House vote today
Short of the votes to pass a statewide bill, school-choice advocates filed an amendment that would limit vouchers to students in Shelby County Schools.
NASHVILLE — Falling short of the votes needed to pass a statewide school-voucher bill, voucher advocates filed an amendment Wednesday that would limit vouchers to students from the Shelby County Schools system on an experimental basis, then be expanded later.
After seven years of failure, the bill is set for a crucial floor vote in the House of Representatives this morning. It was postponed from Monday when supporters acknowledged they lacked the 50 votes required for passage. The bill in its statewide version won state Senate approval last year; if the House approves the Shelby-only amendment, it must return to the Senate for concur- rence before it becomes law.
Vouchers allow parents to take taxpayer funding from public schools to pay tuition at private schools — about $7,000 per student in Shelby County. The bill would limit vouchers to students attending schools in the lowest 5 percent as defined by state academic achievement standards, and students must be from households with incomes low enough to qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.
The statewide bill provides for 5,000 vouchers in the first year of operation, increasing to 20,000 in the fourth year of the progra m. The a mendment would allow 5,000 vouchers in Shelby County alone and require the state comptroller’s office to evaluate the program and make annual reports to the state legislature, which then could expand the program at any time.
The amendment was filed by Rep. David Hawk, R- Greeneville, but t he bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said he will support it if it wins enough votes to pass a bill. Most Democrats oppose vouchers but the House’s huge 73 -26 Republican supermajority would be enough to pass the bill. But enough Republicans, particularly from rural areas, oppose vouchers and have stymied passage.
A small army of voucher lobbyists — most funded by out- of-state “school choice” groups — worked the legislative office build- ing in hopes that the Shelby-only amendment would sway enough votes.
“If that’s where we are and we can help some kids, we will go with it,” Dunn said Wednesday. “The thing about Shelby County is they have a very large population, most of the failing schools are in that county and also they have many different private schools that have a lot of experience working with inner-city children. So it really is a good place to start it out.”
Asked if he believes the amendment would turn enough votes his way, Dunn said, “We’ll see. I don’t know.”
Tony Thompson, lobbyist for Shelby County Schools, called the amendment “a last-ditch attempt to pass what has been determined by their inability to get enough votes on the original bill as bad policy. The SCS school system is adamantly opposed to the voucher bill, but especially now that it evidently will single our school system out over all others in the state ...
“Shelby County Schools have made great strides over the past several years, with the iZone schools, which are outperforming the Achievement School District, and we are continuously closing down struggling schools, consolidating schools a nd moving students to better schools. This could potentially pull another $17 million out of the SCS school system alone, in a system that is already struggling due to the growth of charters and losing schools to the ASD.”