“We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” — Donald Trump
You know who else loves the poorly educated? Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the GOP-led Tennessee Legislature. In fact, they love the poorly educated so much that they’re determined to make a lot more of them. Let us count the ways. It’s a multi-pronged approach.
Earlier in November, the GOP formed the very seriously named “Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding” to consider whether Tennessee should become the first state in the nation to turn down federal education funds, which amount to more than $1 billion per year.
On its face, such a move seems really stupid, since we Tennessee taxpayers contribute to that $1 billion with our federal tax dollars. And since much of that rejected funding would have to be replaced by state money, we taxpayers would take a double hit if it were rejected.
But don’t forget, this is the same bunch of loons that votes to reject billions of dollars in federal healthcare funding every year because it has “strings attached,” even as the state’s rural hospitals are folding in county after county due to lack of funds. Brainiacs, they are not.
Similarly, many Tennessee Republicans think the state shouldn’t accept federal education money because, well, “strings” — the strings in this case being requirements that some of that funding must be used for low-income students, students with disabilities, Title IX (which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender), and school lunch and breakfast programs. You know, the communist stuff.
At any rate, when the very serious task force wrapped up its meetings last week, Republicans had not yet made a determination one way or the other about accepting the education funding, but pledged that more hearings are possible in 2024, and that they planned to invite the U.S. Department of Education to testify before the legislature.
But it gets worse. Much worse. Get ready to say hello to Governor Lee’s new statewide voucher program. He’s scheduled to announce it this week. Here’s how it works: For every school-age child in your household, you get a $7,000 voucher which can be applied to pay tuition at any school in the state — religious, secular, charter, you name it. For a wealthy Tennessee family with, say, three kids at high-tuition private schools, this amounts to a $21,000 gift from the state to go toward sending Aiden, Heather, and Maverick to Hutchison and MUS.
Or, should you choose to do so, you can spend that $7,000 per child voucher to send your kids to Billy Bob’s Jeebus Academy, where science classes are based on the Old Testament. The state doesn’t care. The GOP is doing anything it can get away with to help destroy our public schools. If it also happens to help out the state’s wealthier citizens and its evangelicals, well, so be it.
It’s wrong. It’s even unconstitutional. Article XI, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution declares that the state recognizes the inherent value of education and mandates that the General Assembly provide for the maintenance, support, and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools.
Government funding of religious schools strikes at the very heart of the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which keeps the government from establishing an official religion or supporting a specific religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Which means if my neighbor wants to send his kid to a Muslim school — or a Catholic school or a Baptist school — I shouldn’t have to pay for that with my tax dollars.
It’s really simple: Public funds should go to public schools and private schools should be funded privately — by those who attend them. Governor Lee and the Tennessee GOP are determined to underfund our public schools, dumb down the children who attend them, and give our tax dollars to parents to help pay for their kids’ tuition at religious and private schools.
It’s bad policy and it’s bad math. It doesn’t add up.
