NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) – As Governor Bill Lee’s Special Called Session began on Monday, he talked with News Channel 11 about his priorities involving the topics being discussed.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act, commonly referred to as school vouchers, has drawn opposition from many Northeast Tennessee school boards.

“I also believe that you can have the best commitment to and ultimately the best public schools in the country, and still allow parents to have an option about what’s best for their kid,” Lee said. “Parents know what’s best and when we can give them that choice, then we should do that. There may be a family in a county in Upper East that believes that for whatever reason, their child might do better in some other school than the one that they’re zoned for publicly. And yet they may not be wealthy enough to afford that option. This would remove that disparity and allow that parent to make a choice.”

Lee said public schools will not be negatively impacted by his scholarship act.

“By the way we’ve constructed this so that it by statute, by law, it has a guarantee that there isn’t a public school system in the state that will lose a dollar as a result of a child leaving for one of these choices that their parent might make,” Lee said.

News Channel 11 asked Lee how Northeast Tennessee counties that do not have private school options or limited options would benefit from vouchers.

“I will say that one of the things we’ve seen is that more options become available as time plays out, when you have a state that has school choice as part of its policy,” Lee said. “More options develop over the years and actually those more options elevate the quality of all schools, public and private. I think that’s what we see in states like Florida.”

However, Representative David Hawk from Greene County is still opposing the vouchers.

“We have robust school systems in our counties,” Hawk said. “We have municipal school districts. We have very strong homeschool entities in Northeast Tennessee, as well as some strong private schools. Right now we’ve got abundant choices. The voucher plan as proposed, really doesn’t do much for us to help move the needle in terms of education in Northeast Tennessee.”

Hawk hopes other legislators listen to their constituents when voting about vouchers.

“We’re never going to please everybody in our districts when we take a vote,” Hawk said. “But the old 50% plus one rule, if the majority of your district says you need to vote that way, then we need to vote that way.”

Hawk made clear that voucher legislation is not connected to Hurricane Helene relief funding.

“We have never felt the pressure that hurricane relief was going to be tied to a voucher bill,” Hawk said. “I told the governor to his face that I’m a no vote and he respects that and understands that. He’s assured me that there is zero connection between a vote for or against vouchers and hurricane relief. I’m confident that my colleagues across the state of Tennessee are going to overwhelmingly vote for and support hurricane relief funding for Northeast Tennessee.”

As far as disaster relief funding, Lee said he directly talked to President Trump about Northeast Tennessee’s damage.

He said Trump understood the severity of the damage in Northeast Tennessee and offered to work together for federal funding.

“We’re hopeful that there will be more now with this new administration and their desire to improve the efficiency of federal funding,” Lee said. “But we are going to fill in the gap for a portion of the difference between the federal funding and what these counties have to pay.
That’s the purpose of this special session.”

Lee said there is a disaster relief grant fund that lowers the amount counties will have to pay.

“When they have an expenditure and they get reimbursed by the feds, by FEMA, for example, FEMA might reimburse 75% and the county and the state share that last 25%, usually split it,” Lee said. “But in this situation, we’re going to actually take and go from 12.5%, go from splitting it to the state paying for the vast majority of it, counties will only have to pay 5% of their expense for a loss like that. Those are big dollars that are going to be really beneficial.”

With illegal immigration, Lee said Trump’s administration’s efforts are targeted toward removing violent illegal immigrants.

“There has to be a way for the locals and the state to coordinate with the federal government that we’re setting up an office of immigration, a centralized immigration office that will have a point person and a structure in place to coordinate with the federal government on their strategies for the country that would include Tennessee,” Lee said. “That is really what this effort is about, is putting some money, some dollars and some people into creating an office and a structure that says we are ready to assist the federal government in Tennessee with the things that Tennesseans want us to address.”

Hawk agrees that the biggest aspect of illegal immigration is focusing on those who have committed violent crimes.

“You’ve got folks that are in the country illegally, but who have done illegal acts while they’ve been here or committed egregious acts where they came from,” Hawk said. “That’s really the crux of what I’m seeing at both the state and federal level, is the safety of our Tennesseans to ensure that people are here for the right reason and people are here legally for the most part. But if they’ve come here and committed violent acts, they need to go back to where they came.”

Hawk said he hopes immigrants who have come to Northeast Tennessee are here on good merit and are here legally.

“I would hope that they’ve got a work visa. I would hope that they’ve come in for the right reasons,” Hawk said. “We’ll leave it up to their conscious if they’ve done the right thing. We’ll see what goes forward on the violent criminals, if some criminal act has happened. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen to folks who have come here illegally, but they seem to try to be assimilating themselves to the communities in which they live. That’s still out for discussion right now, but legal is legal, and illegal is illegal. There are certain things that our constituents expect us to do to ensure the safety of our citizens.”

Hawk said legislators will break out in committee meetings on Tuesday.

The education committee will meet about the voucher bill at 1 p.m. central time. The committee for disaster relief will also meet at 1 p.m.

Hawk sits on the education committee and is the vice chair of the transportation committee.

“Which will be talking a lot about the hurricane relief that’s coming before us in the legislative process,” Hawk said.

Hawk expects voting on the house floor to start on Wednesday night.