The Tennessee House Finance, Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday moved an amended bill that would grow the state’s Education Freedom Scholarship voucher program to a cap of 35,000 seats for the 2026-27 school year. Before sending it on, lawmakers stripped out a controversial requirement that school districts collect immigration status data.
Rep. Ryan Williams led the rewrite, bringing an amendment that both scaled back the size of the expansion and reworked the program’s accountability language. He then removed the immigration reporting piece before the bill cleared the committee. Supporters said the changes clarify how districts will be held harmless and spell out how applicants will be prioritized. The revised plan is estimated to cost the state about $114 million in recurring funds, according to the Nashville Banner.
The immigration language had appeared earlier in a subcommittee amendment that also trimmed the House’s original expansion plan. That version added 15,000 new scholarships and capped the program at 35,000, compared with the 40,000-seat cap the Senate favors. Critics warned that tracking immigration status would create implementation and privacy headaches and further politicize school funding decisions, as reported by Nashville Scene.
That subcommittee version also layered on new transparency requirements. It directs the state education department and local districts to report applicants by county, prior public school enrollment, kindergarten entrants, and household income. Backers said those reports are supposed to show whether vouchers are actually reaching low-income families. The reporting details and subcommittee action were first outlined by WSMV/Action News 5.
The Education Freedom Scholarship program was created in 2025 with roughly 20,000 seats, and debate over how fast to grow it has focused on costs and how districts are protected from losing funding. Legislative records list the original act as enacted in 2025, and national reporting has highlighted how immigration questions were handled when the program began; see LegiScan and AP.
House Leader William Lamberth said the revised bill “ensures that no public school will lose one red cent of money because of the education freedom scholarship program,” while Speaker Cameron Sexton called it “a more concise version that allows better stewardship of taxpayer money.” Voting no were Reps. Mark Cochran, David Hawk and Gary Hicks, along with all Democrats on the committee, according to the Nashville Banner.
Legal questions
Civil-liberties organizations and education advocates warned that tying hold-harmless reimbursements to proof of lawful presence could clash with federal protections and create real-world verification problems for districts, raising constitutional concerns under Plyler v. Doe. Local coverage and advocates have pressed the basic question of how schools would obtain or verify such records without federal access, a concern highlighted by Nashville Scene.
What’s next
The amended House bill now heads to the floor and is widely expected to land in a conference committee with the Senate, where lawmakers have pushed for a quicker expansion and a 40,000-voucher cap without any immigration reporting mandate. Supporters said the tightened prioritization language, which sequences awards first to current voucher recipients and then to households below specified income thresholds, is meant to ease immediate budget pressure while keeping expansion on track as negotiations continue. Earlier committee moves were reported by WSMV/Action News 5.
