Members of the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board of Education approved a proposed $55 million budget increase during Tuesday’s meeting. The board voted 7-1, with District 9 Board Member Abigail Tyler the lone dissenter, to pass a budget for the 2026-2027 school year totaling $1.437 billion.¶
The new budget includes funding increases for cost-of-living adjustments, additional before- and after-school support, and the retention of an extended calendar for support staffing.¶
Employee Raises Approved
Employee pay remained a priority for the MNPS board, with the budget including cost-of-living step increases totaling $22 million, though funding for raises fell short of what teachers requested. The minimum salary for full-time certified educators in the district is now $53,610 for those with a bachelor’s degree and $58,109 for those with a master’s degree, moderately higher than the state minimum pay of $50,000 for full-time teachers.¶
The budget includes a total salary step increase of more than $10 million to move all eligible employees to their next pay step, and all MNPS employees will receive a 1.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment, which accounted for more than $11 million of the budget. Health and pension benefit costs also increased by more than $15 million.¶
Aspirational investments topped out at nearly $6 million, with $2 million of that going to employees, including stipend increases and additional work compensation.¶
Last-Minute Pre-K Cuts
During the board’s budget meeting earlier that day, the biggest concession was the removal of an investment in pre-K seats at Hillwood Early Learning Center. Those funds will instead be repurposed to pay for the district’s share of an external performance audit required by the Metro Council.¶
Prior to the vote, Tyler proposed repurposing just $470,100 toward the audit, with the district set to pay $550,000 in total, but the motion failed.¶
She said that if paying for the audit was necessary, it should have been accounted for in the original budget.¶
The board also mulled reducing the proposed extended calendar for support staff from two days to one, which would have saved the district around $1 million, as well as redirecting a $591,000 increase in funds that the budget allotted toward teachers’ professional development stipends. Neither ended up materializing.¶
Board member Rachael Anne Elrod weighed reducing pre-K seats or teacher stipends to balance the budget and argued that teacher pay is more important.¶
“I very much believe in the power of pre-K and how it has academic coherence, and it's deeply desired by our families, including that we have over 1,400 people on the wait list,” Elrod said. “Those are priorities for the board, but it has not been the main priority of the board, and the main priority of our board has always been employee compensation.”¶
Board member Cheryl Mayes defended keeping support staff on for two days rather than one, saying she feared they might not feel valued if the board “continued to kick the can down the road.”¶
“We have folks that are depending on us to continue to support them,” Mayes said. “The difference in one day or two days to some people will make a huge difference in what they are able to do in their households, and I definitely want to remind us that without these individuals, we can't really run our schools the way we need to. Our children are dependent on the support team, and they deserve to be paid for what they're doing. We value them, and we need to show them that we value them.”¶
The budget must still be approved by Metro Council.¶
