White County Board Opposes Voucher Bill

The White County Board of Education passed a resolution Thursday night opposing the 2025 Education Freedom Act.

During a special called meeting, Chairman Bob Young said other states, included Arizona, started their programs with a budget of $65 million but ended up needing to allocate over $200 million more. Young also said the financial concerns is about the risk to local taxpayers.

“Our fixed costs do not change, and so were still, we’re gonna be faced with that,” Young said. “Ultimately who does that impact? Well, It’s going to impact the local taxpayers and it’s going to impact the state taxpayers and it probably end up affecting the local taxpayers first.”

Schools Director Kurt Dronebarger said inflation has to be taken into account as the costs keep rising, and with this bill, the revenue will go down for White County schools. Dronebarger said in addition, the Bill would lead to a decline in student retention rates.

“In White County, the reality is our numbers are down right now, our high school, all across our district were down 200 students from about two years ago,” Dronebarger said. “Two-hundred students at $7,075 is one-point-four million dollars that were down. So every student that leaves is that much more and in theory, we wouldn’t have as many students to teach.”

Board Member Jayson McDonald said the voucher bills do not provide choices and opportunities like the act says. McDonald said instead of choices, the act is all about money. McDonald also said the county has always maintained free choice regardless of any bill.

“We can choose where we wanna go to school, we choose where we wanna live, we can choose if we want to homeschool or not,” McDonald said. “That’s never been, it’s never been about choice, this has been about money, and I’m afraid that’s gonna be the downfall of this.”

The Legislature begins a special session on vouchers Monday.