Rep. Charlie Baum wants to reduce the “lag” growing school districts face receiving state funding

State Representative Charlie Baum (Photo by Charlie Baum's campaign)

Monday morning Rutherford County Schools (RCS) School Choice coordinator Jeff McCann reiterated a complaint his district’s leaders have been making for several months about the way the state funds public schools.

The monthly payments the state is sending school districts now are determined based on the average enrollment last school year. Districts won’t receive payments based on this year’s enrollment until until next August.

Rutherford County Schools School Choice coordinator Jeff McCann (Photo by Rutherford County Schools)

McCann argues the difference is especially noticeable in a district like RCS where enrollment is expected to grow by 1,200 students this school year.

“We’ve historically grown by over a thousand students each year. We’re known as a fast growth school district and our 2024/2025 enrollment grew by 1,037 students. The result is $10.9 million in funding that we will actually not receive until after school year 2024/2025 is over,” said McCann during a hearing on public charter schools Monday. “We don’t see that money until next year but these students have to be served now.”

Under the state’s new Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) dollars follow students to the school they’re attending and the funding formula provides districts with $6,860 for each student enrolled, along with extra money to serve specific needs like students who are economically disadvantaged.

McCann estimates those extra 1,200 students represent more than $10 million his district will have to wait to receive.

What McCann and other RCS leaders have failed to mention while making this complaint, the lag in payment is nothing new. The prior Basic Education Program (BEP) funding formula the state had been using to fund schools since the 90s also included a lag in funding for the current year’s enrollment.

Still Representative Charlie Baum, R-Murfreesboro, believes the time has come to look for ways to shorten that funding lag.  He’s currently working with state education officials with the goal of sponsoring legislation next year.

“When the school districts report to the state how many students they have, it takes the state a little while to process that information and then process the payments to the local school districts,” said Baum. “I understand the district’s concern that they received the payment with a lag and so the legislation I’m considering would attempt to shorten that lag. I think there will always have to be a little bit of a delay in the timing between when the school district gets the state enrollment numbers and when the state is able to get the money in the school district’s hand, but we want that delay or that lag to be as short as possible.”

Representative Baum says he’s open to incorporating multiple solutions into legislation to address the funding lag, including potentially adding accountants working on state funding with the Tennessee Department of Education.

Baum also tells the Tennessee Firefly that he hopes the discussion over the funding lag doesn’t give residents in fast growing school districts like Rutherford County Schools the wrong idea about TISA. Lawmakers passed the new funding formula in 2022 and Baum says the change has absolutely been beneficial to Rutherford County.

“TISA is helpful to the state of Tennessee because it adds approximately $1.1 billion new recurring statewide dollars to public education and Rutherford County’s portion of that for the Rutherford County School System is $57 million more additional recurring dollars per year. And the Murfreesboro City Schools system is receiving $9 million additional recurring dollars every year,” said Baum. “Those are increases that were provided by the TISA formula beginning last year, over and above what the prior BEP funding formula had been providing.”