One of major selling points in last year’s passage of the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) Act was that it would lead to teacher pay raises.
Wednesday afternoon Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn explained how those raises will work next year to members of the Senate Education Committee.
TISA reformed the Basic Education Program (BEP) system the state uses to fund public schools and added a billion new dollars to education. That includes an additional $125 million that Commissioner Schwinn says will have to be spent on teacher salaries.
“The big difference between the BEP and TISA is that the money has to go to teacher pocketbooks, it can not be used to add staff or materials,” said Schwinn. “The districts will have that pot of money specific for salaries and then the school district will decide how they want to allocate that funding towards teacher salaries.”
Commissioner Schwinn says that money will provide an average increase of $1,250 for each teacher in the state, but not everyone will see that much. Some teachers will receive a smaller raise while others will see a larger one depending on how their school district decides to allot the money.
Schwinn says local school districts will have the sole discretion of deciding how they want to spend the new salary dollars, as long as they ensure all of their teachers receive the new state minimum base salary of $41,250.
“You might have a district that wants to really incentivize retention of their veteran teachers. So they might say we’re give every teacher from year zero to year fifteen a $1,000 increase but we’re gonna give our teachers from year twenty-five to thirty-five, we’re going to give them a $3,000 increase. They’re able to do that as long as it goes to salaries,” said Schwinn. “The state does not dictate how those salary schedules work.”
TISA goes into effect in July for the 2023/2024 school year.
