Tyler Hansford, superintendent of schools in rural Union, Mississippi, voted for Donald Trump three times.
But Hansford, 36, who leads a district of just under 1,000 students, disagrees with the president on one big issue: using public money to send children to private schools.
“School choice,” as its proponents call it, is a Trump priority that has divided Republicans, drawing support from many conservative governors who see it as an issue of parents’ rights but opposition from small communities concerned about losing much-needed public school funding. Hansford also worries that the private school tuition support proposed in Mississippi wouldn’t help local families who are unable to drive to reach those schools and may not find the special education services they rely on once they get there.
“How is it ‘choice’ when there’s no transportation or special education services provided?” Hansford wrote recently on Facebook about the Mississippi bill. “School choice with no transportation for families without a car is no choice at all.”
Last month, Trump signed an executive order directing the Education Department to identify ways federal funding could support students attending private and faith-based schools. On social media, he has urged legislators in Texas and Idaho to pass proposals to create private school vouchers or similar programs, and Linda McMahon, his nominee for education secretary, has backed the programs, as well.
Idaho’s bill, which would provide up to $5,000 in tax credits for many students attending private school, “has my complete and total support, MUST PASS!” Trump posted Sunday on Truth Social.
Idaho’s Senate did just that Wednesday, and is now set to join the more than two dozen other states that have some form of public funding for private schools, according to EdWeek. The Texas bill appears likely to succeed, as well.
But Republicans in some states where Trump has won by wide margins, including Mississippi and South Dakota, this year chose not to advance bills that would expand financial support for private schools.
It’s one of the few visible chasms in a party that has widely supported Trump’s agenda. Some conservatives see sending public money to private schools as antithetical to the philosophy of less government and less spending, while Trump has framed it as a way to give parents more control over their children’s education. A White House spokesperson said Trump’s executive order aims to allow families to choose schools that “fit” their children’s needs.
To Patrick Wolf, a professor studying education policy at the University of Arkansas, the debate shows a looming battle in the Republican Party “between pushing national policies that they think are good everywhere and respecting their commitment to federalism,” he said, referring to the idea of sharing power between local and federal governments.
The stakes for those who don’t comply with the national party’s view are rising.
“It’s become a litmus test,” Wolf said. “Republicans who voted against school choice do have a target on their backs. It certainly leaves them vulnerable to being primaried.”
That’s what happened in Texas, where at least nine Republicans who rejected previous voucher bills were ousted in primaries last year.
“Politics in Texas is a blood sport,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
This is the first session since those primaries, and voucher proponents are excited about a bill the Senate has passed to give families $10,000 — or more if their children have disabilities — for private school tuition.
“I think this push from President Trump is kind of what the proponents needed in the final 500 yards,” Rottinghaus said. “It’s an accelerant for the last and hardest push.”
The Texas bill also drew strong support from Gov. Greg Abbott, who has crisscrossed the state promoting voucher legislation, appearing this week with a San Antonio legislator who ousted an anti-voucher Republican. The legislation is now before the House, where, Speaker Dustin Burrows said Monday, “the votes are there.”
In Idaho, too, legislators have faced primaries for opposing vouchers. At least four Republican lawmakers who had blocked bills previously lost their seats in the most recent elections. Two of them faced opposition from the American Federation for Children, a conservative nonprofit group, whose Idaho affiliate spent more than $500,000 in Idaho’s elections last year. A Democratic incumbent the group opposed was also unseated. “Politicians should fear losing their seats if they ignore their constituents on this issue,” Tommy Schultz, the group’s CEO, said in a statement.
Between those electoral challenges and Trump’s recent post, “you see why there might be pressure to compromise,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a political science professor at Boise State University.
However, in South Dakota, which Trump won by 29 points last fall, three “school choice” bills have failed this year.
Kyle Schoenfish, a Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said he worried that a proposal to siphon off property taxes to help fund private school scholarships could harm public school districts. That could lead communities to raise property taxes, in contrast with the conservative aim to “look for ways to lower them,” he said.
“It’s not opposition to school choice necessarily, just the question of what should government pay for and what’s more fiscally conservative or responsible,” Schoenfish said.
In Mississippi, where Republicans hold all statewide offices and control both legislative chambers, lawmakers quickly aligned themselves with Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives by passing bills this session to ban such programs in public schools and universities.
But a House proposal to allow children from academically struggling districts to receive state-funded scholarships to private schools died without the chamber’s taking a vote.
Grant Callen, the founder and CEO of Empower Mississippi, which promotes “school choice,” attributed the failure to lobbying from local school officials.
For some legislators, he said, “you’re more concerned about what your superintendent thinks than what your president thinks.”
Hansford, the Union superintendent, agreed. While Trump’s messaging on the economy and “America First” resonates, he said, “when it gets to the minutiae of it, it’s more about what’s personal to people.” And in his town, that’s the Union Yellow Jackets.
