Tennessee seniors age in their own homes, with better-paid home health aides, Meals on Wheels, senior transportation, and elder abuse prevention.
Tennessee has rebalanced its long-term care spending to roughly the national average. But 15,000 Tennesseans still live in nursing facilities, and by 2040 the oldest cohort will grow 72%. Nursing home care costs approximately $108,000 a year through TennCare. Home and community-based services cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 for the same person.
We'll expand the CHOICES program to meet actual demand instead of capping enrollment. We'll also raise home health aide wages from Tennessee's $14.65 average and build career pathways from aide to licensed nurse. Lastly, we'll increase funding for Meals on Wheels, senior transportation, and elder abuse prevention. The upfront investment is $75 million in Year 1. By Year 5, shifting 400 people a year from facilities to home care generates $181 million in gross Medicaid savings.
Smaller class sizes, more counselors and special education aides, and retention bonuses for teachers at the schools that need them most.
In 2025, Tennessee surveyed 42,000 educators about their needs. The top answer wasn't pay. It was working conditions: planning time, discipline support, and class sizes.
We'll repeal the Education Freedom Scholarship program and redirect $144 million a year into public schools. Combined with $200 million from the Future Families Fund, we'll pay for behavioral health specialists to bring counselor ratios to national standards, enforce class size caps by hiring more teachers, paraprofessionals for every self-contained special education classroom, and pay retention stipends at the schools that need them most. The package starts at the 108 lowest-performing schools and expands only after independent evaluation proves it works.
A sovereign wealth fund for Tennessee that invests in our future by funding childhood development, forever.
Every child in Tennessee deserves the best possible chance to learn, grow, and develop into a caring and capable Tennessean. Many challenges stand in the way, like our lack of school funding for which we now rank last in the nation. But we cannot realistically alter course without new revenue.
To solve this, we will create the Future Families Fund, a permanent sovereign wealth fund modeled on Alaska's Permanent Fund. Four dedicated revenue sources will initially feed it: cannabis legalization and taxation, and a tobacco excise increase, a succession contribution on estates (with after $5M for family homes $5M and $25M for and family farms and businesses), and a capital gains contribution on realized gains above $250k excluding primary homes. Combined annual revenue is projected to reach $1B at maturity. Every year, the Fund pays for current programs and invests surplus in a long-term portfolio. Once returns cover costs, the Fund sustains itself.
Programs will only launch when funding is confirmed. And for Tennesseans who want to do more, the Tennessee Volunteer Roll lets individuals and families contribute tax-free before or after paying any obligation.
Refresh Tennessee's 10-year-old wellness curriculum and require a half-credit of financial literacy to graduate, so students learn how to budget and read a lease before they sign one.
Tennessee's Lifetime Wellness standards haven't been updated since 2016. Meanwhile, the state has no financial literacy graduation requirement. Students can graduate without ever learning how a credit score works, how to read a lease, or what compound interest does to a car loan.
We'll refresh the K-12 wellness curriculum with updated nutrition science, mental health literacy, and digital wellness content. We'll add a half-credit financial literacy requirement modeled on Utah, Indiana, and Iowa, all red-state precedents with durable bipartisan support.
This investment will pay dividends as kids who knows how to handle stress, feed themselves well, and manage money grow up to be better prepared for real life.
