A bill that nearly doubles the number of school vouchers in Tennessee narrowly passed both chambers of the state legislature this week amid concerns that this rapid expansion jeopardizes the state’s financial future.
The Tennessee Senate passed SB2247 by a vote of 18-14 on Thursday, which increases the number of vouchers – also known as Education Freedom Scholarships – to 35,000 for the 2026-2027 school year. The statewide voucher program debuted last year with 20,000 slots. Each voucher gives families a little more than $7,000 to defray the costs of attending private school.
This increase falls slightly short of Gov. Bill Lee’ wishes to raise the amount to 40,000. The Senate originally pushed for this as well, but later adopted the House version, which raised the number to 35,000. The Tennessee House passed the bill on Monday. The price tag for the expansion is more than $150 million.
Clash over reporting social security numbers
On the Senate floor, both Democrats and Republicans questioned the vouchers’ effectiveness, lack of transparency, fiscal risks and impact on rural counties that have few, if any, private schools.
Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, voted against the bill — stressing that he believes in school choice, but the legislature should stick with its original plan of growing the program by just 5,000 vouchers per year.
“I believe that when we pass legislation here it should be something that the citizens can depend on us doing what we say that we’re going to do,” he said. “We passed this program and put guardrails into it so that it wouldn’t increase too much.”
The bill prioritizes students already enrolled in the program and new applicants with household income levels at or below 100% of the federal free or reduced price lunch threshold. The measure also includes mandates that the Tennessee Department of Education annually reports to the legislature information about scholarship applications, including breakdowns by county enrollment status.
Others, like Sen. Charlane Oliver, D-Nashville, took issue with an amendment that alters the hold-harmless provision enacted last year, which is supposed to prevent school districts from losing funding when students disenroll for any reason. Under the amended bill, however, the state only provides more funding to districts who lost students that provided a social security number.
“Where is that data going? I don’t even provide a social security number to the doctor’s office when they go see the pediatrician,” she said. “We want to trust the districts with this sensitive data? I don’t think so.”
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, clarified that the funding will only be restored in cases where students left public school because they received a voucher, and students applying for vouchers must provide their social security numbers anyway.
Lawmaker says vouchers are subsidies for the wealthy
Johnson praised the program’s success, but others noted that it’s only been in effect for a year and there’s no evidence that voucher recipients are performing academically better than their peers.
Sen. Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, pushed back – saying that test scores and data points don’t tell the full story of a student’s success and public school isn’t a good fit for every child.
Backers of the bill often cite vouchers’ popularity as a reason for the rapid expansion. More than 56,000 families applied when applications became available this spring.
That popularity is unsurprising, according to Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, who said the vouchers serve as subsidies for wealthy families that were already sending their children to private school. A state audit found that approximately two-thirds of voucher recipients were already enrolled in private school.
The problem is that the math isn’t there,” she said. “We can’t obviously continue to fund private school education for all of the children in our state, unless we raise taxes, unless we find some other sort of source of income.”
The bill now goes to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk for signature.
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