We’ve been talking about this issue for a while now. And well, so has the Governor. And he currently has everyone on the edge of their seats as to whether or not he is going to call for a special session on school choice. Current rumor has it that a special session is to begin on January 27th. Of course, to keep up appearances and to garner a few more East Tennessee votes for his pet voucher project, speculations are that the special session would also deal with Hurricane Helene relief.
But if the Governor was serious about helping hurricane victims, he should have called that special session in Sept/Oct of 2024. Why now? Well…we know why.
As the regular session is set to begin this week on Tuesday, we are asking you to begin contacting your legislators now to oppose HB1 / SB1, the Education Freedom Act of 2025. This is the Governor’s voucher bill, which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with “freedom.”
Perhaps you have heard the argument, and you are on the same page. Vouchers are a terrible deal for Tennessee.
- Only available to 2% of the student population.
- 51 counties will have NO ACCESS to the voucher program, yet they will pay the taxes.
- It’s a massive wealth redistribution scheme and legally defined in the law as welfare.
- It creates new standardized testing requirements for private schools, including new state reporting.
- New regulations for private schools and the strings attached come in the form of new rules from the Dept. of Ed and not by future actions of your legislature.
If somehow you are still not convinced, we’ve developed a new resource to lay out the case against school vouchers. The new book Strings Attached is a short 30-minute read that gives all of the details as to how vouchers actually work and the inherent dangers within. And we’ve made this book incredibly easy to get.
It’s available on Amazon now for only $3.99. (Worth noting that our profit on that from Amazon is $0.09). We are giving this away because we want the information in your hands. You can also download the book to your Kindle for $0.99.
But wait…there’s more! 😀
We are also making a download of this entire book available for absolutely free in PDF format. So, feel free to get it now, read it, and share it!
With the threat of a special session looming, time is of the essence for you to get fully educated on this issue and TAKE ACTION with us to oppose the Governor’s voucher bill.
Lastly, we’ve put all of these resources together at tennesseestands.org/vouchers – We are depending on you to share this link far and wide with your networks to spread the news.