Entice parents with the cheese and, once they take the bait, close the trap. That is the best description I can think of when describing school choice programs across the nation. Of course, that isn’t how they have been marketed to the public.

The special session in Tennessee ended as expected—the Education Freedom Scholarship Act passed. Our state and many others have officially adopted an agenda whose goal is the destruction of true private education.

In July I sounded the alarm about The Make Homeschool Safe Act. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a Massachusetts-based organization that perpetuates homeschooling as abusive, is pushing for model legislation across the country to further regulate all home education. Pushing for a constitutional change, their goal is to further regulate home-school families.

Free YOUR Children was notified by a follower in November that the Satanic Temple had released a statement regarding The Hellion Academy that would be opening in Tennessee Middle School in Bristol, Tennessee. I immediately addressed the issue in a livestream on the Free YOUR Children Facebook page.

When I see Christians call for their brothers and sisters in Christ to be still, pray and have faith, it leads to a stirring deep within my psyche. All of those actions are a given for Christians, or at least they should be. Statements such as these assume that Christians are not already implementing these tenets of their faith and I feel that many times it is an excuse to not do costly things, such as act.

Over the last several years Free YOUR Children has had a firsthand look at the political process in Tennessee. I have come to the striking and unsettling realization that the voice of “We the People” has been largely silenced by a form of government that Charlotte Isterbyt warned about.

The Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act was recently signed into law in Tennessee. Free Your Children was opposed to this bill for many reasons even though multiple other well-known organizations and individuals that claim “conservatism” advocated for its passage. Although it may seem like a win for uninformed families in Tennessee, here are some things you should know.

The John Birch Society recently posted on social media congratulating Tennessee on passing Senate Bill 2743. They claim, “Tennessee has taken a bold stand against the globalist UN Agenda, reinforcing its commitment to state sovereignty.”

I have been a charter school opponent for quite some time. They are a perfect example of taxation without representation. Their boards are appointed, not elected, and yet they are public schools.

You can’t legislate your way to freedom.Remember the school days of old? At the beginning of the year textbooks were issued and students were instructed to cover those books. Remember saving up brown paper sacks for times such as these? Those textbooks were hauled from class to class, their covers donned with the signatures of classmates, and loaded into backpacks. Hours were spent poring over those textbooks, oftentimes with the assistance of parents who found themselves on homework duty. Those are the bygone days.

This legislative session in Tennessee was one for the history books for Free Your Children. We were laser-focused on several specific pieces of legislation—most notably, the voucher bill.

Have you seen the school choice ads circulating on social media, or received a flyer in the mail or a visit from an Americans for Prosperity door knocker? AFP is the lobbying group behind the expansive propaganda push for school choice in Tennessee.

Your parental rights in Tennessee are in jeopardy. Read that again.

You can’t legislate your way to freedom.

Happy New Year! May 2024 be the year that you take control of your children’s education, if you haven’t already.

The Education Freedom Scholarship Act has been unveiled in Tennessee, though as of the writing of this article the verbiage of the exact bill has not been made available to the public.

Rutherford County’s first charter school isn’t all it is cracked up to be. After researching Rutherford Collegiate Prep, it was clear there are major issues. Parents should do their research. Rutherford Collegiate Prep plans to open as the county’s first charter school. Some good questions for those responsible for approving these schools would be: Have they done their research? Did they read the applications? Do they have any clue in regard to the background of the entities governing these charter schools and their partnerships?

Since 1992, home schooling has been legal in all 50 states. Imagine my utter disbelief when I was introduced to a family in Tennessee that was being denied that right. It was as if I had stepped into a time warp. Pioneer home-school families across the U.S. were subjected to jail, the removal of their children from their homes, threats and intimidation during the fight to legalize home schooling. It was hard to imagine that this scenario could be occurring anywhere in the United States. Yet, in Coffee County, Tennessee, this appears to be what is happening. Parents are being denied their right to home school.

Welcome to Tennessee, the future police state. Governor Bill Lee’s special summer session proved to be everything I said it would be and more. It appears that many of our sellout politicians believe that Big Brother knows best and our state needs more government overreach.

On Aug. 12, 1986, Ronald Reagan made the following statement during a press conference: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.”