Chambers Differ on Approach To Retaining Lottery Scholarships

With state revenues looking dim, Tennessee legislators are reduced to fighting over how to distribute scholarship funds coming in from the state lottery, and the fight looks to be turning into a partisan one.

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey is outlining a bill that will allow Hope scholarship students to continue to receive the scholarship, even if their grade point average falls beneath the 3.0,

“B” average. The bill requires recipients to average at least 2.75, but then raise their GPA back to 3.0 by the senior year.

Ramsey is also suggesting that students whose average falls below a B receive a smaller scholarship.

“This is not a make-or-break idea, for me, to actually give a less-scholarship at 2.75 than

you at 3.0. I think that still has merit. I know [Senator] Randy McNally likes that idea too

so when we get to Finance [Committee], something like that may happen.”

Both the senior year 3.0 requirement and the suggested lower scholarship amount are ways

to keep the cost of changes to the program down. But House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh says the lottery can afford to make the change to 2.75 – immediately and across the board. He says the state is seeing too many students lose their scholarship…

“The whole idea of the lottery and Hope scholarships is to educate as many Tennessee students as we possibly can. To make them taxpayers instead of tax-takers.”

The probable next arena to fight the issue is the House Education Committee next week

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House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh points out that his chamber passed a lottery scholarship bill last year to reduce the GPA needed to 2.75.

“Now I know that there are a lot of people that got a lot of different ideas about what to do about the lottery. As y’all may recall, last year we did pass an omnibus lottery bill, like 96 to one, that did reduce the grade point average to two-point-seven-five, cause we felt it was necessary to keep as many students in schools as possible.”

That bill was never acted on in the Senate.

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey says he thinks a compromise can be worked out this year.

“Though we still have some differences, in the fact that, I think the way the Senate passed it out of their subcommittee, that, by the senior year you have to go back up to three-point-oh, as [opposed] to two-point-seven-five the rest of the time. But I think we’re getting close enough now to where there will be a compromise before we get to the end.”

House Democratic Leader Gary Odom sees partisan elements in the fight over how to spend the lottery proceeds.

“I think this is a real clear philosophical difference between House Democrats and the Republicans. I think, if you look at it, this is a Hope scholarship, it was never intended to be an academic scholarship, it was a Hope scholarship.

We’re forty-sixth in the nation in percentage of college graduates. And as the chairman [Education Chair Les Winningham] said many times, the three-point-oh that was used originally was used just to make sure we didn’t over-commit the money, those profits from the lottery. It was a means of control.

Now we know what we can do better. We know we’ve got a mature lottery, and we know what the recurring revenue stream is, and the bottom line is: We can offer more scholarships, and that’s what we should do. The students are passing. Obviously. I mean, and I think that’s where the philosophical difference is.For some reason, and this is kinda consistent, the Republicans don’t want pre-K, for those who want it. We’ve got an opportunity to give more scholarships, and they’re trying to put roadblocks up.”

Whether that argument will continue or not, it is clear that House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, aren’t yet agreed on the details.