Tennessee Governor Continues School Funding Status Quo
Lack of leadership means Tennessee trails neighbors
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee delivered his State of the State address last night and made an underwhelming proposal regarding public education. Lee promised to continue the trend of underfunding public schools, suggesting a mere $71 million improvement in the BEP (normal growth) and a 4% increase the BEP’s salary allocation. The BEP is the state’s school funding formula, and it is seriously lacking.
Prior to the speech, Tennessee Education Association pointed out that school funding in the state lags behind all of Tennessee’s neighbors except Mississippi:
“Our funding is so low the only neighboring state we beat is Mississippi,” wrote Brown, a Grundy County teacher. “To meet Kentucky’s per student investment, the state would need $2.6 billion; to match Arkansas, the increase would be $860 million; and to be on par with Alabama would require $560 million this year alone.”
A few important points.
First, Tennessee’s BEP formula is broken. Districts collectively hire at least 10,000 more teachers than the formula funds. In fact, back in 2016, the Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability noted that the state would need to come up with $400 million to meet the gap between state-funded teaching positions and actual positions hired by districts to staff schools.
The state is considerably underestimating the number of educators needed to run Tennessee schools according to its own requirements, says a state comptroller’s report released Wednesday.
And local governments are paying the difference. Statewide, districts employ about 12,700 more educators than the state funds, according to the comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability, or OREA.
Next, the BEP has some pretty serious gaps in terms of what it funds. In fact, the state’s BEP Review Committee has been pointing this out for some time now. Here are some improvements the committee requested back in 2014 along with associated costs:
Change funding ratio for psychologists from 1:2,500 to 1:500 $57,518,000
Change funding ratio for elementary counselors from 1:500 to 1:250 $39,409,000
Change funding ratio for secondary counselors from 1:350 to 1:250 $18,079,000
Change funding ratio for all counselors to 1:250 $57,497,000
Change Assistant Principal ratio to SACS standard $11,739,000
Change 7-12 funding ratios, including CTE, by 3 students $87,928,000
New BEP Component for Mentors (1:12 new professional positions) $17,670,000
Professional Development (1% of instructional salaries) $25,576,000
Change funding ratios for nurses from 1:3,000 to 1:1,500 $12,194,000
Change funding ratios for Technology Coordinators from 1:6,400 to 1:3,200 $4,150,000
The committee also recommended making significant improvements to teacher salaries to bring Tennessee teacher pay in line with the Southeastern average. That change alone would have cost $527 million back in 2014.
Did Gov. Lee address any of these issues in his State of the State? No, no he did not.
We have a state with significant unmet needs when it comes to our public schools. We have a $3.1 billion surplus. And, we have a governor who is unwilling to use that surplus to invest in our schools.
Last night, Lee bragged that Tennessee was the third least taxed state in the United States. That’s fine if that’s what he wants to be proud of. However, it should be noted that we can make a multi-billion dollar investment in our public schools without raising taxes one cent. In fact, making such an investment would likely keep local property taxes low by providing local school districts with the resources they need to actually run schools.
If Lee is not going to make schools a priority when we have this kind of surplus, he’s never going to do it. Anyone hanging on to any hope that Lee actually supports our public schools can go ahead and give that up. He made his position clear last night.
Thank you for explaining why teachers never receive a decent pay raise. Many teachers, as well as the general public, don't understand how our paychecks are funded. We hear that we are getting a raise, but our paychecks never keep up with the cost of living, and they haven't for at least the past 15 years. Given our education, we should be getting a minimum of a 10% raise, if not 15%. No wonder teachers aren't anxious to go back into the classroom. Most of us aren't vaccinated, yet we are asked to risk our lives for what amounts to a 1% (not even a slap-in-the-face 2%) raise.