Priority 06 · Pillar two
Public schools, book bans, rural closures, vouchers.
Tennessee just passed one of the biggest school voucher programs in the country - public money going to private schools. The federal money that rural schools count on hasn’t kept up. Schools across this district are closing. And good teachers are being driven out by laws built to make their jobs harder. Here’s the honest version of what one new member of Congress can do.
Stage 01 · The standard Democratic pitch
“We’ll defend public schools.”
Fully fund the federal money that helps schools in poor areas. Stop draining public schools to pay for private ones. Pay teachers like the professionals they are. Stand against book bans. Stop treating teachers like criminals for teaching honest history. Keep good public schools the normal choice, not a leftover for families who can’t afford private.
I share every one of those goals. So this page isn’t about whether they’re right - they are. It’s about being straight with you on which ones a member of Congress can actually move from Washington, and which ones are stuck somewhere else.
Stage 02 · What actually happened
Tennessee passed a universal voucher law. Rural districts have been losing schools for a decade.
In 2025, Tennessee passed the Tennessee Education Freedom Act1. It set up a voucher program open to everyone - public tax dollars that can be spent on private school tuition, no matter how much money a family makes. State leaders pushed it through even though a lot of Tennesseans spoke out against it. What it does, in plain terms, is pull money out of the public schools most Tennessee kids attend.
Meanwhile, the main pot of federal money for schools in poor areas hasn’t grown in years - not once you account for rising costs - even as the need keeps climbing. Rural schools across West Tennessee keep closing. And when a school closes, a small town loses more than a building. It loses its center of gravity.
On top of that come the book bans, the limits on what teachers can say about race or gender, and the laws that put librarians at legal risk. These laws are doing exactly what they were built to do. Experienced teachers are quitting. New ones are harder to find. Library shelves are getting thinner. Tennessee has turned teaching in a public school into a job designed to push good people out.
Stage 03 · Why it hasn’t been delivered
This was never really about Tennessee. It’s a national playbook.
Tennessee’s voucher law didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s part of a coordinated national push - funded by a small group of donors, run off a template bill that’s been dropped into about a dozen states in roughly the same form. Washington hasn’t pushed back, partly because the federal Department of Education has limited say over how a state spends its own school money, and partly because the Republican majority in Congress likes vouchers.
The federal money for schools in poor areas falls behind inflation year after year, because that budget fight is one of the first things traded away. The Department of Education gets used as a punching bag every budget season - and the families whose kids actually depend on these programs are the ones with the least pull in the room where the deals get cut.
The book bans and the laws targeting teachers work the same way - pushed at the state level by national donor networks. The federal tools to push back are weak, because federal power over schools is limited on purpose. So the damage gets done at the statehouse, and a member of Congress can’t simply overrule it.
Stage 04 · What I can actually do in two years
Protect the federal money. Push the agencies. Make the state answer for it.
- Defend and grow the federal money for high-poverty schools. The biggest federal lever in education is the funding aimed at schools in poor areas - and every budget season, it has to be fought for. A member of Congress from Tennessee, with some of the poorest districts in the country, has real standing to fight for the raise that money has needed for years. The vote counts, and so does saying it out loud.
- Use federal money rules to push back on vouchers. Washington can’t shut down Tennessee’s voucher program. But the Department of Education sets rules about how federal school money can be used, and a member of Congress can push the Department to enforce them - and to publicly document, in plain view, where the voucher program is pulling money away from public schools.
- Steer federal money to rural schools to keep them open. Rural schools closing is not some law of nature. There are federal programs built to help rural districts - and they’re underfunded and barely used. A member of Congress can direct federal funds to specific local projects (an earmark) - real money for rural schools in this district, for buildings, for bonuses to keep teachers, for programs that would otherwise be cut.
- Push back on book bans and the targeting of teachers. The federal tools here are limited, but real. Federal civil rights law kicks in when a book ban targets a protected group. The Department of Education can spell out clearly that teachers aren’t breaking federal law by teaching honest history. And a member of Congress with a microphone, using it on this every week, county by county, raises the political price of the laws Tennessee already passed.
- Stand with teachers and librarians, out loud. Show up to school board meetings. Stand next to the librarians getting targeted by removal campaigns. Use the office to keep a clear public record of which Tennessee officials are driving this and which ones aren’t. That record costs nothing to keep, and it matters.
Stage 05 · Why Pillar 1 comes first
The same money that bought the vouchers bought the book bans.
I can fight for the federal school money. I can push the agencies. I can steer federal dollars to rural schools. I can stand with teachers and librarians in public. What I can’t do, alone, is shut down a national strategy running the same play in a dozen states at once.
That strategy runs on a handful of donors with nearly unlimited spending power. It moves through state legislatures gerrymandered to ignore the parents and teachers it hurts. And it’s been waved through by courts that mostly bless it.
This is where Pillar 1 comes in - the six fights to fix how Washington itself works. Cut off the money, un-rig the maps, and the school fight changes completely. Start with the money in politics, the gerrymandered maps, and the lobbying that writes the template bills.
What I can deliver, I will. What I can’t, I won’t lie about.
Fight for the federal school money every budget season. Push the Department of Education to enforce its rules against voucher money grabs. Steer federal dollars to keep rural schools open. Stand with teachers and librarians out loud. And keep a public record of who is doing what to Tennessee’s public schools - one nobody can ignore.