To our Legislative Representatives,

As Tennessee homeschooling parents, we are writing to inform you of both our stance against school choice and offer bullet points explaining why we oppose Governor Lee’s Education Freedom proposal.  We know that you have many bills to consider and are pressed to delve into each one as deeply as you might want. We have written longer essays on this issue if you want references and more details.

Our Governor has proposed (though the final bill is pending at this time) a plan to extend the current limited school choice program to 20,000 students across the state and then to extend further in future years.  We oppose the legislation for the following reasons:

1. This legislation will draw public and private education together through a single funding source.  Sharing a single funding source will bring them under the same government control thereby limiting education freedom rather than extending it.
2. We have reviewed the available literature from multiple scholarly sources and found that the studies evaluating other state programs are not impressive.  There appears to be little return on investment for the large sums of money being poured into this idea.
3. In other states, the public funding has created religious liberty issues for the religious schools receiving the money.  This resulted in a 2-year court battle for a Maryland school.  The religious liberties of parents may be hindered as well depending on regulations attached.
4. In other states, school choice bills have been passed only to be later modified by future legislation OR state education departments adding regulations which were not there in the original bill.  This is a reminder of “pass the bill so we can see what is in it” as well as the ways bureaucracy can “mold” the bill to fit their own ideology.
5. Homeschoolers are generally very leery of government money directly to them or to their category IV umbrella schools that could bring regulatory strings.  Most want nothing to do with this government money nor do they want to be caught up in secondary regulations springing from it.
6. This is ultimately an entitlement program which has the potential to grow into a monstrous expense for taxpayers as seen in other states we researched.  We should say no now rather than wait until projections of 100s of millions become a burdensome reality on taxpayers.

Parents have been assigned by God the primary role in directing the upbringing and education of their children.  We do not want the government to extend its control any further into parental freedoms to educate our children.  The proposed but unfiled legislation by Governor Lee will ultimately lead to State Choice of children’s education rather than Parent Choice. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Eric and Jennifer Potter