SB6001 / HB6004 - Voucher
Vouchers represent an unfair shift in funding of your tax dollars from public education to private schools. Wilson County gets around $5300 per student a year from the state. The voucher program gives families $7300 a year. So that’s an extra $2000 that is going to a Wilson County Student at a private school vs the $5300 the county gets if that same student were at one of our public schools.
So let’s take a real world example: Mt. Juliet Christian Academy, tuition for K-6 is $12,515, so a parent who wants to move their child from a Wilson County School would still need to come up with $5,215 on top of the voucher in addition to application, acceptance, and various fees.
Now, despite the disparity around costs associated with vouchers and how they so quickly balloon in cost as expansions occur, let’s turn our attention instead to accountability.
Currently in TN schools who accept these vouchers have zero accountability.
And that’s the real problem. How many students who were given these vouchers were already enrolled in a private school and whose parents could afford it? How many schools raised tuition disproportionately in expectation of receiving vouchers? Are their teachers certified? Is their curriculum accredited? Are the facilities at or above standards? Are they a 1:1 school with technology? Is the technology they use properly secured and monitored? What about the physical security of the buildings?
Right now there is zero accountability. Beyond the cost, this is the number 1 issue I have with these vouchers. As it stands, in TN, you can’t currently have a religious charter/magnet school. Vouchers is the way around that. Without any accountability that’s what I have to assume.
You see, there’s nothing wrong with religious schools if that’s what you want your child to go to. I have friends who went to private christian schools, my mom taught in a few before going to public school, and I went to college at one. Those schools had accountability even without state funding. So why can’t we require schools who receive voucher funding do the same?
