EXCLUSIVE: White House Roundtable To Highlight School Choice With Top GOP Govs

The White House will host a Friday roundtable on school choice with top Republican governors amid sweeping victories on the issue across the country, The Daily Wire has learned.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who spearheaded a major victory for school choice in her state after taking office, will moderate the National School Choice Week Roundtable at noon on Friday, according to a White House official. Also at the table will be Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, where the legislature just passed a universal school choice bill, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Texas, where school choice legislation is also expected to pass.

“The White House is excited to honor National School Choice Week with this roundtable,” a senior White House official told The Daily Wire. “President Donald Trump wants parents throughout the nation to be empowered to direct their children’s education.”

Universal school choice is a policy that gives parents access to public money to use towards a wide range of education options for their children, including private schools. Currently, three major bills on the topic are poised to become law in Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. Twelve states already offer universal school choice: Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina.

Republican governors Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Jeff Landry of Louisiana will be in attendance at the roundtable on Friday, which will take place in the Roosevelt Room, according to the White House official.

The roundtable comes two days after Trump signed an executive order on school choice, ordering his administration to develop a plan for how federal funds can be used to “expand education freedom for America’s families.”

“Parents want and deserve the best education for their children,” Trump said in the order. “But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school. It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children.”

Other expected attendees include Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and his wife Erika Donalds of the America First Policy Institute, longtime Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, Archdiocese of New York Chancellor John Cahill, Susquehanna International Group’s (SIG) Jeff Yass, and American Legislative Exchange Council’s Jonathan Williams.

Trump has consistently advocated for school choice in his time on the campaign trail and in government, emphasizing that he wants every American parent to be “empowered to send their child to public, private, charter, or faith-based school of their choice.”

“A child’s fate should be determined by their love of education, by their parents, by so many factors,” he said on the campaign trail in 2024. “But it can’t be determined by a ZIP code. And no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government-run school.”

Photo by OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images

He also promised last year:  “I will support UNIVERSAL SCHOOL CHOICE. We will let federal education dollars follow the child instead of propping up a woke federal bureaucracy.”

During the 2016 presidential election, he similarly promised to establish a national goal of “providing school choice to every American child living in poverty.”

“If we can put a man on the moon, dig out the Panama Canal and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America,” he added in September 2016.

The roundtable will likely dive into some of the top legislation on school choice making headlines around the country.

That includes the Education Freedom Act, which passed the Tennessee House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday, and would award over $7,000 per child to parents for those children to attend a K-12 private school.

In Texas, legislation expected to pass soon would allow universal school choice eligibility immediately, serving as many as 100,000 students in the first year and giving parents $10,000 for private schools, $11,500 for special needs students, and $2,000 for homeschool students.

In Wyoming, the Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act passed the House on Wednesday and is expected to pass the Senate. That bill would give parents $7,000 per year for every student.