Thousands more applied for Tennessee vouchers. What does that mean for Shelby County?
“I look forward to working with the General Assembly to increase the number of available scholarships for the 2026-27 school year,” Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement. (John Amis/AP)
Almost every Tennessee voucher recipient reapplied to get public funds for their private school tuitions in the 2026-27 school year. That leaves more than 31,000 new applicants vying for a little more than 5,000 new slots, according to data Gov. Bill Lee’s office released Thursday, Jan. 15.
New recipients this year could come from lower-income families than last year, due to different eligibility guidelines for the second year of Tennessee’s massive voucher-expansion law creating the $7,295 Education Freedom Scholarships (EFS).
It is unclear exactly what Thursday’s statewide update could mean for Shelby County, where 5,500 students got about $45 million in public funding to use at private schools by participating in the state’s two major school voucher initiatives. Even more vouchers could be on the way.
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Laura Testino
Laura Testino is an enterprise reporter on The Daily Memphian’s metro team who writes most often about how education policies shape the lives of children and families. She regularly contributes to coverage of breaking news events and actions of the Tennessee General Assembly. Testino’s journalism career in Memphis began six years ago at The Commercial Appeal, where she began chronicling learning disruptions associated with the pandemic, and continued with Chalkbeat, where she dug into education administration in Memphis. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Times-Picayune, The Tuscaloosa News and USA Today.
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