Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, January 31, 2025 "With School Vouchers, Follow the Money"

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

“With School Vouchers, Follow the Money”

This column is going to be challenging for the next four years. I don’t even know what to say. Every time I think I have a topic something even crazier happens- though that is, no doubt, by design. So this week I am going to start with the local, and expand it to the national.

As I write this the General Assembly is in special session, taking up (LONG overdue) hurricane relief for East Tennessee, and tying it to Governor Bill Lee’s favorite chew toy, school vouchers. He tried to push it through last year, and failed, so this time he is tying it to something else that people actually do need, hurricane relief, and something they think they need, a statewide immigration agency, and I fear his odds of winning this time are better than before due to the current political climate. But they shouldn’t be.

To be specific: Lee is calling for a $424 million dollar voucher program that would, in the first year, give awards of $7,000 each to 20,000 students, half of whom must be low-income. But that last part is misleading. First, because their definition of low-income is under $170,000 per year. In what universe is someone making $169k low income? Second, the average cost of private schools in Tennessee is about $12,000 a year, higher for high schools. Now, I was low income for most of my life, and at no time did I ever have an extra five thousand dollars to send my kid to private school, which is what these truly low-income families are going to be stuck with. There ARE cheaper schools, of course, but with that you get what you pay for, which is not much. This is why, on average in this state, public school kids score higher on assessment tests than private schools do. In other words, unless you have the money to pay for an expensive school -even with the $7,000 -your child will actually be getting an inferior education compared to public school students. So what is the point?

Follow the money. In politics -especially Republican politics -always follow the money. Since this isn’t really going to help working class families much, because they still won’t be able to afford the quality schools, who will it help financially? In other states that have adopted such programs, 75% of the people who take advantage of them are folks who already have the money to be sending their kids to private schools. Meanwhile, it is going to be taking money from public schools and therefore from YOUR kids. First, this money could be spent on public schools instead so your overworked teachers wouldn’t be having to pay for school supplies out of their own pockets, and your kids could take music and art classes like we all did. Second, public schools get their funding according to how many students they have, so draining away students will cause an even greater financial burden on the public school system. This plan is only going to help those who already can afford expensive private schools, and those few who want their kids in a religious school, and make things harder on public school teachers AND their students. And the benefits will mostly be in the counties where the money already is.

In other words: the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

By the time this reaches print, the decision may already be made. But you all know who your representatives are, and do not forget how they vote on this issue come election time. If it hasn’t been decided yet, as soon as you read this reach out to Paul Bailey and Paul Sherrell and tell them what you think, and remind them who keeps them in office. It isn’t Bill Lee and his fat cat buddies, many of whom reap financial benefits via their companies from all the tampering Lee (and his predecessor) have done with our school systems.

Haven’t you had enough of this? If your representatives won’t protect our public schools, next time vote in somebody who will.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE