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A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for the upcoming Tennessee legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee plans to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for the second year in a row.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he would introduce the legislation to his chamber on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth to do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. Tennessee’s 114th General Assembly convenes Jan. 14, when Lee begins his final two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the Governor’s Education Freedom Grant proposal stagnate in finance committees because of disagreements over testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs have emerged in several other states.

Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have had a harder time garnering support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, tried to attract votes with a omnibus style bill which also included benefits for public schools. But Senate Republican leaders objected to the scope and cost of the House version.

Johnson recently gave a voucher update to members of the Williamson County school board, which he represents, on the development of new legislation.

Similar to last year’s proposal, The new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of the 20,000 students set to attend a private school starting next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all K-12 students in Tennessee, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“The bill isn’t finalized, but we’re all working together with the governor’s office to come up with a bill that we can all support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.

Liability testing is among the main issues to be addressed

Johnson said the 2025 Senate bill would again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to gauge whether the program improves academic achievement.

However, the Senate bill would eliminate a previous provision that could have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they are not zoned for it. That policy proposal was included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Republican from Bristol who lost his re-election bid in the mayor of August.

Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 would have no testing requirement for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to drastically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.

The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to garner support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for public school teachers’ health insurance by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher pay raises.

Johnson told school board members that the governor plans a “substantial” increase in public education funding in 2025, but did not specify how much or for what.

“I think we’re going to have some things in there that are going to be great for all of public education,” he said, when asked later about the inclusion of costly incentives such as funding for teacher health insurance. “Whether it’s in that bill (voucher) or whether it’s in a separate bill, that’s a great question. We will see. I don’t know the answer.”

Williamson County School Board Repeals Previous Anti-Voucher Resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects a “nominal” impact on Williamson County’s two suburban school systems, south of Nashville, if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees , he said, would be in urban areas that have a lower level. -performing schools and private school options.

Months later, the Williamson County Board, including four newly elected members whose campaigns were supported by an out-of-state conservative political action committee, voted 10-2 to repeal the decision adopted by the previous council opposing Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.

The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant when his local council voted in March to join over 50 other school boards in Tennessee against his signature education proposal.

But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued it was timely to revisit the issue in light of the recent election and proposed rescinding the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won the election ran publicly for more than six months on this issue, so it was there,” Diggers said. “I will not deny the parents of Williamson County the chance to help their children.”

Meanwhile, a pro-voucher Tennessee policy organization released a new poll showing 58 percent of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports letting parents collect public funds to choose where their child is educated, including public, private, charter or home schools. The Beacon Center survey did not use the word “voucher” in the question to voters, which tends to vote worse than the language about “school choice”.

Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has an enrollment of 3,550 in its third year, still below the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both chambers of the legislature on a “unified” universal voucher bill to begin discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that $144 million remains in this year’s state budget for the program, even if the parliamentarians did not approve the bill.

“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to providing Tennessee families with Educational Freedom Scholarships while keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent covering the state for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at (email protected). Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.