Latest news with #SenateBill0836
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
TN undocumented students bill passes another committee
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — A bill to allow Tennessee public schools to charge tuition to children illegally in the U.S. or deny them enrollment passed another state Senate committee Tuesday, though again with multiple 'no' votes from Republican members. A new amendment to the bill appears to reinstitute a mandate that all state public school systems document the citizenship, visa or legal immigration status of each child seeking to enroll. A previous amendment from last week would have given school systems an option to not check that status and to continue serving all students regardless of legal status. The current bill does make the decision whether to deny enrollment or demand tuition optional for school districts. Senate Bill 0836, sponsored by Hixson Republican Bo Watson, passed the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee 7-4 and will now head to the Senate Calendar Committee. News Channel 11 emailed Watson's office Tuesday morning for clarification on the documentation issue but had not received a response by late Tuesday afternoon. We also requested an interview March 26 after Watson's previous amendment but did not receive a response. Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) was in Tuesday's meeting and told News Channel 11 in an afternoon Zoom call that he interpreted the amendment to mean school districts would be required to develop systems to document citizenship/legal status. 'Trying to determine as a matter of law what someone's immigration status is a thorny endeavor that usually requires a lot of expertise in both the way the documents work from other states and what the law says,' Yarbro said. He said if the law passes he expects school systems will need to seek outside legal counsel to enact it. 'It's going to be a massive expense that's genuinely an unfunded mandate,' Yarbro said. Yarbro's assessment contrasts with Watson's remarks during the committee meeting, during which he said school districts already collect the addition to Democrats London Lamar and Yarbro, Republican Senators Ferrell Haile and Page Walley voted against the bill. Watson, John Stevens, Joey Hensley, Jack Johnson, Bill Powers, Paul Rose and Ken Yager, all Republicans, voted in favor. Advocacy groups have expressed strong opposition to the bill, which would likely wind up in court if it becomes law due to its implicit challenge to the 1982 Plyler v Doe Supreme Court decision. That 5-4 ruling found that all children in the U.S., regardless of legal status, have a right to a free, public K-12 education. Monday, when the amended bill still made checking student status optional, Johnson City School Board Chairman Jonathan Kinnick told News Channel 11 the system would not set up such a system if it was optional. 'I can't imagine any system that would do that,' Kinnick said. 'I know for sure Johnson City will not.' Watson produced a chart showing sharply rising costs to provide English Language Learner (ELL) classes. Because school systems don't track the number of undocumented students they teach, he said he's using that as 'a correlation of what may be happening in the undocumented community.' 'I have long felt that we need to have a conversation about the costs imposed upon the citizens for funding ELL,' Watson said. Neither Walley nor Haile asked their fellow Republican Watson any questions before casting their 'no' votes, but Yarbro and Lamar had numerous questions and comments. Yarbro said he believed the bill would create significant administrative costs for school districts to set up documentation systems centered around citizenship verification. He added that school systems would likely keep most of their ELL staff in place to continue teaching what he estimated is the vast majority of ELL students with citizenship or legal status. 'If you talk to districts and think about what it means to convert all 1,800 public schools into institutions that review the citizenship status of every student every year, that is going to be massively expensive,' Yarbro said. Watson disagreed, though he said the Tennessee Department of Education's promulgation of rules regarding the process would provide the most specific answers to cost. He held up enrollment forms for the Metro Nashville Public Schools that ask for a birth certificate, passport, I-94 or other paperwork related to a person's place of birth after Lamar also expressed concerns about the difficulty people might have getting the required documentation. 'These things are already being required,' Watson said. 'I'm not adding anything to that. So the challenges that you describe would exist today.' Lamar asked Watson whether school systems 'will be required to call ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) if a student attempting to enroll can't show citizenship or legal status. Watson said the legislation doesn't address that. 'That would be considered in the rules and regulations that the Department of Education would promulgate relative to this legislation,' Watson said. Lamar said she didn't find that answer sufficient. 'I just want to point … to the dangers of how we're creating another avenue for law enforcement to come in and take children away based on something they cannot control,' she said. The fear of ICE entering schools is real enough that Johnson City Schools have at least prepared for that possibility, Kinnick told News Channel 11 Monday. 'We've already got protocols in place in case ICE shows up at the school,' Kinnick said. 'The administrators know what to do, to send them here to Central Office. The Central Office knows what to ask credential-wise and authority-wise. So we're prepared if anything strange does happen.' Yarbro said during Tuesday's meeting the legislation has 'a moral cost,' and said getting at the number of undocumented people in Tennessee could be done by penalizing companies that hire undocumented workers. 'That would at least be going after the people who are relying upon and in many cases profiting from undocumented labor,' he said. 'But instead we are in this legislation punishing kids. Children. For conduct that, regardless of what you think, here certainly isn't a 6-year-old and 7-year-old's fault. Depriving people of the ability to become literate, to learn the language of the country where they are living is … unconscionable.' Watson said schools that choose not to enroll students won't lose state funding for those slots. He said the state's other K-12 students would gain if undocumented ones pay tuition or aren't enrolled, 'to the extent that the per pupil funding for the students who are documented is increased, which increases what people have been screaming for across the state.' The bill has mostly been in Senate committees so far, and from those votes, it appears Senate Republicans will be at least somewhat split on it. Republicans, though, hold a 27-6 advantage in that chamber, and at least 11 of them would have to defect from a full Senate vote to defeat the bill. 'It's remarkably uncommon to see this level of opposition to a bill that's brought by leadership of the Republican party,' Yarbro told News Channel 11. Four out of 15 Republican senators in committees have cast 'no' votes on the bill, and three House Republicans (out of 14 voting) voted 'no' in an Education Committee meeting last week — including Sixth District Rep. Tim Hicks of Gray. 'I think that you've seen a lot of people who are motivated by their faith conviction, motivated by just their sense of what's right and wrong who are going to stand in opposition to this bill and think that this is a bridge just way too far,' Yarbro said. So far, in committee, the ratio has not equaled that 16-11 level. A total of 11 Republicans have voted yes in committee, and four have voted no: Haile, Walley, Mark Pody and Kerry Roberts. In addition to the seven who voted in favor Tuesday, Education Committee members Rusty Crowe of Johnson City, Dawn White, Bill Powers and Adam Lowe have cast yes votes. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
TN bill may not make schools check students' legal status
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Tennessee school systems would no longer be required to check all enrolling students' citizenship or legal immigrant status if an amendment to a Senate bill stays in place — and at least one area system would opt out. Woman charged with vehicular homicide in ETSU graduate assistant's death 'No,' Johnson City School Board Chairman Jonathan Kinnick told News Channel 11 when asked Monday whether the system would begin requiring students to prove citizenship or legal residency. 'I can't imagine any system that would do that. I know for sure Johnson City will not. If the students are here, we're going to teach them.' Until a week ago, Senate Bill 0836 and its House companion bill, House Bill 0793, had language requiring all school systems to set up such systems. Sen. Bo Watson (R-Hixson) has amended his version, though it still allows schools to check students' status and then deny undocumented students enrollment if they don't pay tuition. That leaves the bill, whose House version currently maintains the requirement for all systems to check student legal status, almost certainly on track to land in court if it becomes law. The 1982 Supreme Court's Plyler v Doe' decision established, in a narrow 5-4 vote, that all children in the U.S., regardless of legal status, have a right to free public education. 'This issue will quite likely create a lawsuit, which Tennessee does not shy away from,' State Rep. David Hawk (R-Greeneville) told News Channel 11 Monday. 'Tennessee has been part of some Supreme Court decisions here recently where we have challenged what might be the status quo,' Hawk said. 'This is, I feel the time and place to go into this issue and see if the Supreme Court still feels the same way they did back in the 80s.' Hawk recently added his name as a House co-sponsor and said he did so after seeing Watson's amendment. 'I'm not about forcing local government to do anything,' Hawk said. 'If it's deemed to be an issue within their communities, then I feel they need a right to do that. But nothing will force a school district to participate in this program.' PREVIOUS: Educators, lawyer speak on TN proposal to require schools to check students' legal status That will be true only if the Senate version's opt-out makes it into a final bill that then passes both chambers of the General Assembly. If that does happen, Hawk said he believes it will represent the will of many of his constituents. 'Empirical data that says illegal immigration is a top three issue with the economy and education,' Hawk said, pointing to local polling. 'Illegal immigration always sits somewhere near the top three or four in terms of issues that my constituents want me to look into.' That doesn't mean Hawk expects any school districts in Northeast Tennessee to opt into any new law that results. 'Northeast Tennessee, our communities may or may not want this tool in the toolbox, as the old cliche goes, but some communities across Tennessee are asking for that,' he said. Watson and Rep. William Lamberth, the House sponsor, both have claimed that English Language Learner classes have been putting a heavy strain on some school systems' budgets. But Kinnick said that hasn't been the case in one of the more demographically diverse systems in Northeast Tennessee. 'I lost count of the number of languages, but I think 60 or 70 different languages,' Kinnick said. 'But they're here. We're going to teach them.' He said the legal advice his board has received is to follow the current law of the land. 'We want to teach them,' Kinnick said. 'Our take from our attorney is that we're going to honor the Supreme Court decision with Plyler versus Doe and it doesn't matter what the immigration status is.' Local immigration attorney McKenna Cox — who said she believes the amendment was added to 'potentially pacify people who were very up in arms about it from all political sides' — isn't surprised at Kinnick's approach. 'In my experience, most schools aren't particularly excited about having additional requirements added to them and/or about not being able to educate as many children as they can,' Cox said. And while Cox vehemently opposes the bill in any form, she agrees with Hawk that it's likely to have much broader implications if it becomes law. 'I think that's really what this will become, is kind of a microcosm of a nationwide conflict funded by many different groups on both sides, to try to set this aside or make it the law of the land.' That would require at least one school system to opt in, which wouldn't surprise her. 'It gets to the very heart of established precedent and law in this country,' she said. 'It gets to the very heart of the political moment that we are in, which is, we're seeing all kinds of anti-immigrant legislation across the country. ''Can we discriminate' becomes a major question right now. The Supreme Court in the past has said, 'no, you can't,' and we're going to have to see if that changes.' Widow seeks answers after getting wrong ashes from funeral home Hawk said he believes the financial pressures on some school systems justify the effort. 'If a local government is seeing a financial burden with illegal immigration in their educational system, then this is a good way for them to take action,' Hawk said. 'You may see five to 10 that may participate in that because … they are such fast-growing school districts that it may be a financial burden to them, more so than other school districts.' The bill is on Tuesday's Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee calendar – where it's already been deferred twice. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
