Governor Bill Lee Speaks with WLX About the Education Freedom Act

Governor Bill Lee has announced a Special Sessions meeting for Monday, January 27th. The Tennessee Legislature will address the Education Freedom Act, Hurricane Helen and Disaster Relief, and Illegal Immigration. WLX reached out to the public for their response to the Education Freedom Act and many were against it. After a live interview with the Governor on WLX, we were able to conduct a series of questions to help the community better understand the voucher bill. When asking the Governor, “Why do you want to push this”, the Governor said, “This is a Governor who cares deeply about Tennessee and about the public school system. It would not go well for Tennessee if we cannot continue that commitment and you’re going to see it. If you look at my budget this year, you’re going to see another significant, historic investment in the public schools across our state. Even after a school choice license passes, as we’ve seen in other states, the majority of people are going to keep going to public schools because they like their public schools and we want them to. So, we will want to make our public schools the best there are in the country. We just also believe that if a parent has a desire for something other than their child then we ought to allow them to do that.”. When asked “How does this affect the average public school in Tennessee”, the Governor responded, “Legislatures guarantee that no public school will lose any funding because of a child that might leave the public school. That guarantees that not only will we put more money in public schools but we guarantee that they won’t lose any money, there’ll be nothing taken away from a single public school across the state of Tennessee”. The act intends to create scholarships, ensure state funding to school districts will not decline from disenrollment, and provide bonuses for teachers. After being asked “Will there be any strings attached to the money or state oversight”, the Governor said, “Well there’s a couple of things there’s accountability, so when a child gets a scholarship but it’s not a voucher, know that because we are not taking any money away from the funding formula for public schools. A couple of years ago we had a 30-year-old formula that was outdated everyone knew it needed to be changed so, we did that and created a Tennessee investment achievement funding form. Which is how all the dollars are flowing through to public schools across the state. This program doesn’t touch that funding formula. It’s not attached to it in any way”. The Education Freedom Act was introduced in November. This will be one of the main topics of discussion in the upcoming meeting with a motion to pass the act. You can hear the full interview conducted by WLX on the WLX Facebook page. For more information and details about the different topics to be discussed, you can visit TNEducationFreedom.com.