• • House sponsor delays voucher vote amid flurry of amendments
• • Tennessee House delays school voucher vote
• • Haslam rejects talk that he's twisting arms to get school voucher bill through House

House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin, center,confers with Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, right, and Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, at the legislative office complex in Nashville, Tenn.,
Erik Schelzig, Associated Press

Updated 6:14 pm, Monday, February 8, 2016

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Proponents of a creating a limited school voucher program in Tennessee first feared that snow flurries would keep enough supporters from arriving for a House floor vote Monday.

But it ended up being an avalanche of proposed amendments - including a last-minute change proposed by the bill's main sponsor - that caused Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, to put the vote off until later in the week.

Dunn told colleagues before the floor session that he now only wants the bill to apply to the state's four largest counties: Shelby, Davidson, Knox and Hamilton. But he said he wants to take a more comprehensive approach to finding a version that can pass "instead of taking up 22 amendments."

Even Dunn's normally routine motion to delay the vote illustrated how closely divided the House is on the measure. It received just 51 votes - or two more than the minimum to be adopted.

The bill would make the vouchers available to low-income families whose children attend the state's worst-ranking schools. Those families could apply the about $7,000 voucher toward paying private school tuition. The companion version of the bill was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate last year.

Dunn said the school voucher program would be like the GI Bill or other federal and state college grants, "which allow you to go to public schools, private schools, religious schools."

Several rural lawmakers have expressed concerns about diluting scarce public school funds to create vouchers that could be spent on religious and other private schools.

Republican Rep. David Byrd, a retired principal from Waynesboro, said a dip in enrollment in public schools causes financial hardships for administrators.

"We had to run fundraisers to be able to change our countertops in our bathrooms or fix other maintenance problems, because we didn't have the money," said Byrd, who also noted that Tennessee's education ranking has been improving even without a voucher program.

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The House sponsor of a bill to create a school voucher system in Tennessee delayed a floor vote on the legislation after nearly two dozen amendments were proposed at the last minute.

Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, on Monday pulled his bill from the House's calendar, citing as many as 22 amendments that were brought forward prior to the bill being discussed on the floor.

Although Dunn would not reveal the specifics of the various amendments, he said, "Some are serious and some are silly. Some are to make a point. But I'm down here to make a difference."

House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, said some of proposed amendments "would've made a terrible bill a little better but not good enough to vote for it."

Opponents of the bill, including Fitzhugh, objected to no avail to the vote being delayed. The legislation, moved to Thursday's calendar, was expected to have a close vote, a point which Dunn conceded Monday.

"I was very happy with the 51 folks who stuck with me," he said.

Some believe Dunn's move was necessary due to the absence of some lawmakers who have been supportive of the legislation, including Rep. Jeremy Durham, R-Franklin, who is in the midst of a two-week hiatus from the legislature.

Durham submitted a letter to his House colleagues on Jan. 28 saying he was taking two weeks away from legislative work. His two-week hiatus is scheduled to end Thursday.

Also absent from Monday's floor session were Rep. Tim Wirgau, R-Buchanan, and Rep. Marc Gravitt, R-East Ridge, who could vote in favor of the plan.

Dunn and anti-voucher Rep. David Alexander, R-Winchester, both said ahead of Monday's floor session said they believed their sides had enough votes.

House Bill 1049 provides a limited program offering government-funded scholarships that can be used for private school tuition.

To be eligible for the program, students would have to qualify for free or reduced lunches and be zoned for or attend a school that is in the bottom 5 percent of all schools in the state. The bill caps the number of students who can apply, with an eventual expansion to 20,000 vouchers.

If there are unused vouchers, the remainder may be awarded to students who reside in a district that contains at least one school in the bottom 5 percent of schools. Dunn has said those students must be at-risk.

Pro-voucher groups have spent big ahead of the vote, with two groups -- Tennessee Federation for Children and Tennessee Parents/Teachers Putting Students First - donating more than $131,000 to 66 members of the General Assembly in the last seven months. A little more than 50 of those are House lawmakers

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NASHVILLE - While he's backing a school voucher bill scheduled to hit the House floor today, Gov. Bill Haslam dismisses talk by some lawmakers he's doing a little arm-twisting to get some reluctant fellow Republicans to vote yes.

"No, I really haven't," Haslam told Times Free Press editors and reporters last week, though he says he's freely given his opinion to anyone who asks.

"We obviously are supporting the bill," he said. "I haven't personally been pulling anybody in the office lobbying for it. I do think it's the right thing to do."

The governor added, "As you know, it kind of mirrors the bill we proposed two years ago for folks with low-income kids in lower-performing schools."

While Republicans have a supermajority of 73 in the 99-member House, both sides say the vote tally is extremely close. Some lawmakers and lobbyists said last week Haslam was seeking to persuade several Republicans who were opposed. The bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate last year.

Asked about predictions of a "war" on the House floor, bill sponsor Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, quipped, "Pack your supper."

The measure would allow low-income families with children are in failing public schools to use taxpayer dollars to attend private schools, including religious schools. Vouchers are projected to be worth nearly $7,000 annually per student.

Of Tennessee's 141 school districts, five have schools on the state's "priority" list of failing schools. Hamilton County has five schools on the priority list.

The bill up for a House vote tonight mirrors Haslam's 2014 bill in that it starts with 5,000 students in the first year and scales that up to 20,000 in the fourth year.

But unlike Haslam's bill, this version would allow parents of low-income students in some better-performing schools to use vouchers if those in the worst schools don't use them all.

Haslam introduced a limited bill two years ago but yanked it after Senate Republicans sought to substantially expand the number of children it would cover.

Last year Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, introduced a new version and has kept it closer to Haslam's original proposal.

Gardenhire's bill is what passed the Senate last year. If an amended bill passes the House, it would go back to the Senate for concurrence.

Haslam expects to sign the bill if it hasn't been dramatically expanded. If and when that happens, Tennessee would become the 14th state with a voucher program.

The bill is opposed by associations representing school boards, superintendents and county commissions, as well as all but one of the 26 House Democrats. Opponents are hoping 25 Republicans will join them in voting no.

The Tennessee Education Association, which represents many teachers, opposes the bill, but a number of outside voucher advocacy groups back it. In the 2014 cycle, those groups dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Tennessee races, money that helped defeat a Democratic representative in the general election and toppled a Republican opponent in his GOP primary.

Voucher legislation was bottled up for five years in the House but finally burst through a restaffed Finance Subcommittee this month and scraped through the full committee by a single vote.

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When voucher legislation began systematically moving through committees this year in Tennessee's House of Representatives, the momentum seemed unstoppable. A bill that historically became mired in House committees appeared to be hurtling toward the governor's desk, where it was certain to become law.

This week, however, the momentum faltered under an avalanche of proposed amendments - and falling snowflakes that kept some pro-voucher legislators at home. As a result, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Bill Dunn, opted to delay Monday's scheduled vote until later this week, likely on Thursday.

Speaking on the House floor, Dunn announced that he wants to revise the bill so it would only apply to the state's four largest counties: Shelby, Davidson, Knox and Hamilton. The Knoxville Republican said he also is reviewing other amendments in search of a more comprehensive bill that also could pass the House.

Known as the Choice and Opportunity Scholarship Act, the bill would provide parents the option of using public funding for private school tuition for students who are in the state's lowest-performing schools. The legislation has the backing of Gov. Bill Haslam. (Read Chalkbeat's explainer on the voucher bill.)

The amendments, filed mostly by Democrats, include several designed to build accountability into the voucher program by, among other things, requiring private schools to refund voucher tuition money if the majority of its participants don't show sustained improvement in academic achievement. Others would terminate private school participation for the same reason or halt the program altogether.

"There were 22 [amendments]," Dunn said following the decision to hold the bill. "... Two of them were not timely filed. I think your amendments may have merit, but I want to look closer at them."

One new amendment came from Dunn to restrict the voucher program to Tennessee's four largest counties - likely in response to a handful of school boards in smaller towns that recently have passed resolutions urging their representatives to vote against the bill. Public school leaders argue that vouchers would divert enrollment and state funding from traditional public schools to private or parochial schools.

But even if the program's footprint is restricted to urban areas, school leaders in the mostly rural state worry that a voucher law would open the door to expansion later to other students.

The voucher vote is expected to be close, and three lawmakers considered "yes" votes were absent on Monday evening, as snow fell and concern increased about potentially hazardous road conditions.