On Nov. 28, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced his plan to support vouchers for students wishing to attend public charter, private, religious and home schools.
These vouchers will affect students for the school year of 2024-2025 and will be available to 20,000 low income and special needs students residing in Davidson, Hamilton and Shelby counties in Tennessee.
There are about 1 million students attending public school across Tennessee!
As advocates for constitutionally demanded free public education, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) questions the timing and ultimate goal of a political process doomed for failure and designed to exclude the very children Governor Lee and conservative legislators are saying that will help.
Eight reasons NAACP of Tennessee opposes school vouchers
For the record, please note:
- The NAACP has a long history of supporting access to free public, high quality education for all students.
- We reaffirm our opposition to school voucher programs because they reduce financial support from the already limited public school resources public schools now receive.
- Governor Lee’s announcement promotes siphoning public resources from public school system students and providing that funding to private schools, privately owned charter schools and parents who are home schooling their children.
- Governor Lee says that voucher is going to help low-income students achieve more academically, but in 2025 will open up the voucher program to all families regardless of their financial situation.
- These funds, totaling $140 million will only serve a small percentage of students, if the same amount of funding and efforts were put into the public schools, progress could be made.
- The NAACP stands firm in opposition to any school mechanisms that threaten and deplete resources for public schools. Realizing the importance of the NAACP’s advocacy of giving voice to the voiceless. We serve as the voice for the masses of disenfranchised students.
- With that voice, we reaffirm that any alternative format, such as vouchers, that remove dollars from publicly accountable systems is wrong and should not be allowed.
- We continue to be committed to protect each student’s right to free and high-quality education.
Students’ families face potential financial hardships with private school options
The voices of every parent and guardian are needed to be heard on this proposal. The dollars that will be diverted from our public-school systems will need to be replenished by the local funding bodies who currently fund our public-school systems.
While the operators of public charter, private, religious and home schools have the option to refuse students who are not able to adjust to their new environment, the local public school system does not have that luxury. The public school system must take and educate all students. Replanting students into the public school system would create a financial hardship and staffing issues for local school systems.
Governor Lee and the conservative leaders are saying that parents should be allowed to use their tax dollars to send their children to the schools of their choice. For the record, I do not disagree with the thought, but if you do the math correctly, you will find that children attending public charter, private, religious or home-schools are being subsidized with your tax dollars to attend those facilities.
At the same time, we are being subjected to tax increases to help fund their lifestyles and to house and transport those children to their private destinations.
Vouchers are not designed to provide a better education for students or to make the educational playing fields level.
They are simply a way of resegregating schools. Thereby, allowing a sector of our society to become more bias. Be careful when they approach you with the phrase, “we the people”. Know that that phrase does not include all of us.
Jimmie Garland is president of the Clarksville Branch NAACP and vice president (Middle TN) of Tennessee state NAACP.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NAACP stands against Tennessee school vouchers expansion; here’s why
