Last year,Tennessee passed a voucher bill targeting only two urban districts, despite the fact that their legislators opposed it. The controversial bill passed by one vote, and the vote was delayed for last-minute arm twisting. Parents from the affected districts are holding a press briefing tomorrow along with civil tights groups opposed to diversion of public funds to private schools.
MEDIA ADVISORY
February 28, 2020
Media Contact: Ashley Levett
(334) 296-0084 / ashley.levett@splcenter.org
Tennessee Parents and Advocates to Host Press Briefing on Monday
TENNESSEE – On Monday, March 2, parents and advocates of public school children in Metro Nashville Public Schools and Shelby County Schools will host a telephonic press briefing to announce steps to address the unlawful diversion of public school funding in Nashville and Memphis to private school vouchers.
During the call, public school parents in Nashville and Memphis will outline their concerns with the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher law, which passed by a single vote in May 2019 over the objections of state legislators, parents and community members in Shelby and Davidson counties – which are the counties targeted by the law.
For call-in details, please RSVP to Ashley Levett at ashley.levett@splcenter.org.
WHO: Parents of public school children in Memphis and Tennessee; the ACLU of Tennessee; pro bono by the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP; the Southern Poverty Law Center and Education Law Center, which collaborate on the Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) campaign
WHAT: Telephonic press briefing to announce steps to address the unlawful diversion of public school funding in Nashville and Memphis to private school vouchers
WHEN: Monday, March 2, 2020 at 1:00 p.m. CT
WHERE: Please RSVP to Ashley Levett to receive the call-in details at ashley.levett@splcenter.org
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Trump Administration is behind the ed reform push for vouchers:
“The Trump administration is encouraging Kentucky lawmakers to pass a controversial school choice bill — and is potentially dangling tens of millions of dollars in federal funding to sweeten the deal.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Education have been in touch with Republican state legislators about a proposal to create a private school scholarship tax credit program, Majority Whip Chad McCoy, R-Bardstown, told The Courier Journal on Friday.
Such a program would give tax breaks to people who donate to groups granting scholarships for students attending private schools.
According to McCoy, federal officials said the Bluegrass State could land as much as $70 million in federal support should the state program pass.”
They’re also involved in the massive expansion of vouchers in Ohio, which is turning out to be a disaster. Ohio ed reformers now take orders from Donald Trump. The Ohio voucher push came right out of DC. Betsy DeVos now runs my state’s education policy.
The Trump Administration has not accomplished one bit of productive work on behalf of any public school student in this country, yet they find endless amounts of time to intervene in states pushing private school vouchers.
Public school families are simply NOT served by ed reformers. They do not contribute anything of value to our schools. We’re paying thousands of them in government and they don’t lift a finger on behalf of the 90% of kids in the unfashionable and ideologically incorrect public schools.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/education/2020/02/28/school-choice-trump-administration-pushing-scholarship-tax-credits/4873495002/
I tell public school families and supporters in Ohio to ask one question of lawmakers when they swoop into our communities looking to be re-elected- ask them to list what they have accomplished on behalf of PUBLIC school students.
For 90% of ed reform politicians the answer will be “nothing”.
Insist they answer the question. You are permitted to expect and demand that the people you’re paying in state government expend some effort on behalf of public school students. This is allowed. They’re supposed to be doing a job and that job does not consist of promoting and marketing ideological schemes to privatize public schools.
They don’t return any value to your students. You should object to that, and consider firing them and replacing with the people who DO intend to serve public school families.
We don’t have to accept such lousy work.
This is a remarkable and much needed response to the many failed efforts to rob these communities from any voice in determining education policies. Those efforts have come strings attached to money from billionaires and unethical educators who are quite willing to sign on to the agendas set by those unelected self-annointed directors of policies.
We’ll have to start watching ed reform’s influence on CTE. It’s the newest gimmick they’ve seized upon, and we can expect a bunch of poorly considered, faddish, expensive junk to be pushed into public schools under the guise of CTE.
Public school leaders have a duty to their local communities to not fall for every sales pitch these people launch. Ask yourselves why the ed reform echo chamber are suddenly vitally interested in CTE programs in public schools, when they never before have supported any public school programs.
Don’t get snookered again. Use your own judgment. Collect your own information. Don’t rely on the echo chamber for reliable or worthwhile information. Protect your students from adults who come calling to sell them junk. Is CTE that comes out of ed reform likely to be any higher quality than any of the other things they push? Why would it be?
https://www.the74million.org/article/jeb-bush-students-need-robust-cte-pathways-to-fill-americas-skills-gap-here-are-3-things-states-must-do-to-make-this-happen/
Agree on the CTE emphasis. There is big money in Ohio and elsewhere pushing for this. Old wine in new bottles, with state officials and the corporate world looking a students as human capital to be exploited.
Now that we are in “late stage smash and grab” of the common good, actions count so much more than just words. Community passivity emboldens the corporate vultures, and offense is the best defense. Communities will find themselves having to stand up and fight for traditional public schools. There are so many wealthy groups ready to pounce on public assets. If communities snooze, they will lose.
So SICKENING, too. Makes me PUKE.
No thank you, RePUGNI-cans and DFERS.
in too many cases, already, communities have organized, spoken out loudly, and been very articulate about what is happening to their schools — and yet the reformers and their district and state school boards have steamrolled the game right over everyone
“The controversial bill passed by one vote, and the vote was delayed for last-minute arm twisting.”
The actual arm twisting was that the rep was promised that vouchers won’t make it to his district—and then he voted for implementing vouchers in two other districts, Memphis and Nashville. Wtf.
Let’s add that there are some lawsuits against these new voucher bills as well.
People fighting for public schools shouldn’t ignore the activities of the Tennessee Catholic Conference.
Jefferson, “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own”.