Tennessee’s public school funding overhaul passes key committees, headed to full House and Senate

(The Center Square) — A bill that would rework how Tennessee funds its public schools passed two key committees on Tuesday and will now head to the full House and Senate.

House Bill 2143 is called the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) and passed the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee while its companion Senate Bill 2396 passed the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee.

“This is a step and a step in the right direction,” Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain said before the vote on the bill.

The new funding formula would provide a base per-student cost of $6,860 and add weights based on a students’ learning needs, whether the student lives in a low-income household or area or if the student lives in a rural area.

Additional funding also goes to schools for student achievement or participation in programs such as career technical education (CTE).

When asked if districts would be required to spend literacy funds on literacy programs, Department of Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said “While there is not a requirement that they spend that on literacy, through conversations with administrators it’s clear they will spend that and more on literacy.”

“They will be under much deeper scrutiny than they have in the past,” Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, said on literacy requirements in TISA. “That is a good thing.”

The state currently funds schools through its Basic Education Program (BEP), created in 1992, which funds districts based on the number of students and ratios for teachers, principals and more. But many of the teachers or staff currently in the schools are funded separately, through grants or by local governments.

Bill sponsor Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, said there would be opportunity to hone in on the details of funding to make sure it works correctly during the Department of Education’s rule-making process.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, said that he isn’t opposed to a new formula but offered suggestions, such as requiring that the base student funding number rises each year with inflation and that TennCare eligibility be used as a way to determine student need, which is currently determined by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the proposal.

Yarbro said that only two states spend a lower percentage of the state’s total gross domestic product (GDP) on public education than Tennessee and that the state can’t add funding into the program without adding large funding requirements from local governments and “we’re not fixing that problem, at all.”

“I want to be for this but I’m just not sure that we’ve got the math in the place where it needs to be,” Yarbro said.