Vouchers opposition
Clinton council passes resolution opposing state funds for private schools
From left, Historic Downtown Clinton Executive Director Katherine Birkbeck and Clinton City Schools Fiscal Ser- vices Director Scott Rhea talk to Director of Clinton City Schools Kelly Johnson after a Clinton City Council meeting during which the council passed a resolution against state funding for private schools. (photo:Ben Pounds )
It says that the council opposes school vouchers and education savings accounts.
The Tennessee General Assembly met the same evening in Nashville to discuss the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, which would, if passed in its proposed form, pay for students to attend private schools.
The Clinton council resolution passed unanimously among the members present at the January meeting. Council members David Queener and Matthew Foster were absent.
“Vouchers and education savings accounts threaten the district’s ability to maintain the quality of its educational offerings as ESAs would ultimately divert state funds to private actors and disrupt local control of education,” the resolution stated.
“It has some major damaging ramifications on our jewel of a public school that we have in Clinton city,” said Director of Clinton City Schools Kelly Johnson. “We just cannot afford two educational systems and maintain quality in both of them.”
While the initial proposal did not take funds from public schools, Johnson said it would be “just a few years” before the state “significantly decreased” its funding for public schools. She said this decrease for public education had happened in other states with voucher programs.
Both the resolution and Johnson cited the school system’s approximately 25% “economically disadvantaged” students, and 18% “identified as “special needs” students.
Johnson said she worried that a state voucher program might hurt these students because private schools can discriminate against them. She dismissed the argument that it was about “school choice” for parents.
“It really is not parent choice,” she said. “It’s not school choice. It’s a school’s choice if a school’s going to accept the child or not.”
She also said that based on other states’ examples, private schools will likely increase tuition by the amount of the voucher the state provides.
“That’s played out in every other state that has accepted this plan,” she said.
This, she said, makes it still as expensive for students to attend but allows for private schools to spend more on other things.
“They take that increase and then they’re building massive sports facilities,” she said. “They’re building things that public schools cannot compete with.”
“I want to thank you for kind of leading the way on this,” said Mayor Scott Burton regarding Johnson’s push against vouchers. and ESAs which he said had spread throughout the state.
