Lewis County Schools' funding at crossroads

With a budget of nearly $13 million, leaders of Lewis County schools are finalizing that part of the county’s total budget of $22 million this week.

Meanwhile, the Lewis County School Board’s membership in a statewide association — Tennessee School Systems for Equity (TSSE) — is protecting Lewis County taxpayers’ interest in a lawsuit filed by Memphis against the state. TSSE wants a fair state funding policy for public schools in rural counties.

“Adequate” funding for education is required by state law. Teacher pay is always a concern; more here than in a big city.

“The school budget is always huge because — especially in a small county — schools are the largest employer,” Lewis County finance director Johnny Clayton said.

That’s the crossroads of where state and local budgets intersect and inject money into a local economy.

State funding to county schools usually dwarfs federal education funding. County taxes are the second largest source of money for schools. Clayton said he knows TSSE executive director Wayne Qualls of Hickman County by reputation. Qualls is a former state education commissioner and was a long-time Hickman County Schools superintendent.

As for Qualls and TSSE, Clayton said, “I trust them to look out for the best interests of our small schools.” Clayton is on Lewis County’s School Board.

The 2021-22 fiscal year budget for Lewis County is to be finalized in the last week of July. The lawsuit over whether the state has adequately funded county schools appears headed to a three-judge panel created by state lawmakers just before they adjourned. Top state lawmakers, the governor and the state school board are defendants.

Clayton has been aware of the litigation, but, “It started before my time on the school board,” he said.

Local officials deserve a pardon for not knowing details of the case, in part, because of TSSE’s standing. It’s now a participant — a plaintiff — instead of a side-line intervener with an interest in previous rulings on school funding. Tennessee School Systems “won the original lawsuit for funding” over arguments heard in the 1980s and ’90s, Qualls said.

Nashville is also suing the state with Memphis.

“We felt if two of the largest school systems were suing for adequacy” of school funding, Qualls said, “we needed to protect the original supreme court decision.”

Then Governor Bill Haslam met with TSSE and his top aides so they’d know what schools need, Qualls said.

Subsequently, lawmakers created a special forum for such matters. Since that politically-charged group adjourned until next year, early December has been seen as when a decision on what to do next could be announced, Qualls said. He “wouldn’t be surprised” if that’s delayed to Spring 2022.

Money is at the crux of the case.

“A lot of this is salary equity,” Qualls said. When Ned Ray McWherter was governor, dozens of school systems — mostly rural systems — received a portion — their share — of nearly $36 million from the state for teacher pay, Qualls explained. That annual state appropriation shared by local schools had dwindled to $15 million a couple of decades later.

Lewis County’s school budget receives the so-called “salary equity dollars,” said Qualls, who was Tennessee’s education commissioner in the 1980s and ’90s.

TSSE was formed in 1986 as a result of discussion among three counties’ school superintendents at a professional conference. Those three were Qualls and the now-late Bill Emerson of Crockett County, and Hancock Schools Director Mike Antrican. County schools’ directors are the conduit for TSSE to local governments in at least half a dozen Tennessee counties, Qualls said.

Recently, the Lewis County Herald asked Governor Bill Lee if the state was adequately funding public schools. “The public schools are incredibly important to the future of Tennessee,” he said.

“We evaluate that funding increase” annually, Lee said. “We actually fully-funded the BEP this year, and increased teacher pay because of the importance of public education. We evaluate that funding every year and will do so to make sure that it’s adequate and appropriate because it is the future of Tennessee.”

An overview from the Tennessee State Comptroller’s office explains that BEP — the Basic Education Program — is the funding formula for the state’s public schools (K-12). The BEP is a large part of Tennessee’s budget. The amount of the BEP — $4.8 billion dollars — is greater than a quarter (25%) of the total state budget. It reports $14.5 million in teacher salary equity funds.

Students’ average daily attendance “is the primary driver of funds generated by the BEP,” tn.com states. Other factors include what’s spent on books, assistant principals and an average number of students teachers have in their classrooms. Adjustments for salary, health benefits, insurance and other costs are based on inflation The state and local share for each school system is based on an equalization formula that’s driven primarily by property values and sales tax, applied at a county level.