On Thursday, State Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-TN) withdrew his widely criticized bill to reduce welfare assistance for needy families if their children did not perform well in school. The state Senate would have voted on the measure this afternoon, but Campfield pulled the bill after his Republican colleagues refused to support it. Many children’s advocacy groups, lawmakers, and clergy have expressed concern over the plan to cut Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) benefits by 30 percent for students who did poorly in school.

As Campfield walked to the Senate chambers, he was presented with a petition of more than 2500 signatures collected by Clergy for Justice to protest the bill. The deliverer of the petition was an 8-year-old girl, Aamira Fetuga, whose mother, Rasheedat Fetuga, is the founder of a local child advocacy group.

As Aamira prepared to explain to Campfield why she was worried about his bill, Campfield dismissed her as a “prop” and hurried away, repeating over and over again, “Using children as props is shameful” as Aamira and her mother tried to talk to him.

Watch it [courtesy of Eric Patton and Clergy For Justice]:

Aamira eventually told Campfield, “I don’t like the way you take the benefits from people…I’m worried about the light bills getting cut off.” Later in the video, one of Campfield’s constituents tried to talk to him about his disapproval for the bill, only to be dismissed as a “union thug” by the state senator.

Campfield’s plan sparked outrage from a wide range of advocates and politicians who decried the burden it placed on already disadvantaged children. Campfield suggested it would be simple enough for parents to restore their benefits by attending 2 parent-teacher conferences or hiring a tutor, failing to appreciate the time and money constraints on these already strained families.

During the session, many of Campfield’s fellow Republicans stood up one by one to call the measure “troublesome” and express concern about the “unintended consequences” that could put children in danger. State Senator Doug Overbey (R) had a change of heart after hearing from teachers and the state’s Commission On Children And Youth:

I voted for the bill in the General Welfare committee because I thought it was a step in addressing a problem. Since that time, other information has come to my attention. First of all, there’s been comments about how folks in our educational system feel about it. Just this morning I got an email from a teacher in my district that said, ‘Teachers have expressed interest in some form of parent accountability but I can assure you this is not what they had in mind.’ Secondly, I found on my desk a letter from the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth…a 2 1/4 page analysis of this legislation and ultimately urges voting against it.

Once it became clear he could not get enough votes to pass the measure, Campfield asked that his bill go to a summer study committtee before the vote.

The Tennessee Senate will vote Thursday on a controversial bill to reduce temporary welfare assistance to needy families if their children are not making progress in school.

Its Republican sponsors, state Sen. Stacey Campfield and state Rep. Vance Dennis, argue that revoking Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) benefits from these parents will force them to take an interest in their children’s schoolwork. But the bill has been widely criticized by social justice advocates and by clergy for placing a family’s financial burden squarely on children. ThinkProgress spoke to State Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-TN), who teaches children with behavioral and emotional disabilities in Knox County. Informed by 25 years of classroom experience, Johnson is convinced penalizing families for children’s performance can only worsen the problem the bill is supposed to address.

“Pretty much everyone in my class will be affected by this,” Johnson said.

The bill exempts children with diagnosed disabilities, ignoring the many disabled children who go for years without being diagnosed. Furthermore, Johnson explained, many severely disabled children do not have low enough IQs to qualify as mentally handicapped, but also cannot be diagnosed with a learning disability as there is no disparity between their capability and their performance. Johnson also worries that her students, many of whom have behavioral issues stemming from abuse, will be exposed to yet more abuse at home if they cannot get their grades up. “Teachers have told me, knowing families where there’s abuse in the home, they will not fail the students,” Johnson said.

Parents would have their TANF assistance restored if they attend parenting classes or get their kids tutoring, expensive and time-consuming conditions Johnson deems deeply unrealistic. “Because I deal with kids who have emotional disabilities, there’s a lot of mental illness in the homes as well. We’ve got mental illness, we’ve got parents working two minimum wage jobs, or single parents,” Johnson explained. “And [Republicans] act as if these things are so easy to do like giving tutoring or coming to teacher conferences.”

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As Tennessee prepares to consider two bills to reduce welfare assistance for needy families whose children are not doing well in school, a Change.org petition has popped up to fight the measure. The petition was started by Clergy for Justice, a Tennesse-based organization of clergy that has previously advocated for causes including immigration reform, health care, and anti-bullying laws. Within 36 hours, their petition garnered over 2,000 supporters from at least 145 cities and towns in Tennessee.

HB 0261 and SB 0132 would make family benefits from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program conditional on a child’s educational performance. While Tennessee already ties welfare assistance to students’ attendance, this new proposal would essentially make poor children responsible for keeping their families afloat.

In an email to ThinkProgress, Clergy For Justice co-organizer Kathy Chambers highlighted one petition comment by Melissa Jennings, a former TANF recipient who pointed out that the bill penalizes children who are already being left behind by schools:

The public school system fails our kids time and time again, not reaching out to the children that need it, not being available to tutor, and leaving behind the children that may need just a little more time to catch on to something. The children’s grades are just as much a responsibility of the teachers and the school system – thus the government – as it is the parents and the children themselves. [...]

I have been on assistance since I was laid off 3 years ago, and chose to go back to school. If not for that help, my children and I would have starved. I have not been through a drive through or eaten a restaurant in over 2 years. [...] My kids don’t get to go to McDonald’s or Dairy Queen, but that assistance has provided me the only way I have to “treat” my kids, and cook them healthy meals.

Furthermore, the school is ALWAYS having parents bring in food for this or that, on sports teams there are snack schedules parents are assigned to, and for holidays each child is supposed to bring in certain food items, or for culture/history projects, they are required to cook certain dishes for the class. For over the half of the school year, my children could not participate in any of it, grades suffered for it, and the embarrassment for them was heartbreaking. This assistance has allowed me to allow them to “fit-in” and take part in what is asked of them.

Now I am graduating in 1 month, as a provider to the community, and will more than pay back my share of the benefits given to my family. It has been a needed and appreciated stepping stone for me, and not everyone abuses the system. I will gladly pay my share of taxes to help support those in need, because if my fellow community had not done the same for me, what would my kids have done?

Research shows that children from impoverished homes tend to struggle more in school than children from economically secure households. Social and economic instability during formative years can cause chronic stress and stunt basic skills other children take for granted. As one petition signatory, a former teacher, noted, “I have seen first hand what lack of food does to a child in an educational setting. When you are hungry, you cannot learn. It is just that simple.” Threatening to cut off a family’s already meager source of sustenance can only harm children’s educational prospects, not improve them.

Two Tennessee lawmakers introduced legislation that would tie welfare assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to the educational performance of students who benefit from it, and the legislation was approved by committees in both the state House and Senate last week.

Under the legislation brought by two Republicans, a student who doesn’t not make “satisfactory progress” in school would cost his or her family up to 30 percent of its welfare assistance, the Knoxville News and Sentinel reported:

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, and Rep. Vance Dennis, R-Savannah. It calls for a 30 percent reduction in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits to parents whose children are not making satisfactory progress in school.

As amended, it would not apply when a child has a handicap or learning disability or when the parent takes steps to try improving the youngster’s school performance — such as signing up for a “parenting class,” arranging a tutoring program or attending a parent-teacher conference.

When Campfield introduced the legislation in January, he said parents have “gotten away with doing absolutely nothing to help their children” in school. “That’s child abuse to me,” he added. Tennessee already ties welfare to education by mandating a 20 percent cut in benefits if students do not meet attendance standards, but this change would place the burden of maintaining benefits squarely on children, who would face costing their family much-needed assistance if they don’t keep up in school.

TANF, meanwhile, is failing students and their families. It serves fewer impoverished families and children than its predecessor did before the 1996 welfare reform law was instituted, and it especially failed during the Great Recession, when the rate of families served fell in 35 states despite increases in both poverty and unemployment. And Tennessee’s welfare program is hardly robust — the maximum benefit is $185 a month and hasn’t changed since 1996. Given that low-income students already struggle to keep up in school, further reducing the already-modest benefits they receive from TANF isn’t likely to improve educational outcomes. It could instead make them worse.