Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Republican leaders — predicting passage of a private-school voucher bill in 2025 — will have to outflank conservative groups as well as opponents such as the Tennessee Education Association.
Tennessee Stands, a far right advocacy group run by Gary Humble of Franklin, balked at the governor’s voucher plan during this year’s session and plans to continue fighting it in 2025. Likewise, the Tennessee Firearms Association run by John Harris is against the governor’s proposal, which in its second year would provide $7,000 each for every student in the state to enroll in a participating private school, possibly costing $800 million.
Definitely we’ll be prepared to oppose … and when I’m speaking (at events), I’m in strong opposition to vouchers. I know this isn’t going to go away, so I’m quite confident this will be the talk of the session leading into 2025 and on and on until they get something done,” Humble said this week.
Accused this year of aligning with the Tennessee Education Association, Humble noted he isn’t siding with the teachers’ union but is “fundamentally” opposed to putting tax dollars into private education
State Rep. Scott Cepicky tried to massage the House version of the voucher bill late in the 2024 session to satisfy homeschool parents and remove them from the bill. If a final bill had surfaced, it likely would have exempted homeschoolers, which Humble said he supports.
He pointed out education and teaching regulations are “bound to follow” into private education and homeschools if state money is shifted to those schools, because “strings are always attached to tax dollars.”
Humble’s stance puts him in direct conflict with Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, who said he is “aligned” with the governor on private-school vouchers. Johnson narrowly defeated Humble in the 2022 election, and they are expected to clash again.
Harris, whose group is considered more of a gadfly than a power broker in the General Assembly, nevertheless, caught some people’s attention with a Facebook post saying the government has a role to play in public schools but not in private education.
The post claims the solution for improving public education is not to shift tax dollars to allow parents to enroll their children in private schools, calling such a move an “abdication of the legislator’s duty and stewardship.” Further, he said private-school vouchers would open the door to allow Islamic extremists and Chinese interests to fund private schools.
“Truly conservative legislators would not abdicate the duty to make sure that the public school system is operating with excellent [sic] and efficiency,” Harris’ post said.
He added that lawmakers who are backing the governor’s proposal instead of trying to repair the public school system are “just evidence of legislators who perhaps do not need to be legislators.”
With elections looming this fall, pro-voucher groups are expected to flood the field with funds to boost the chances of Lee’s plan passing in the 114th General Assembly.
