For the uninformed, the BEP is how the counties in Tennessee are allocated the state money to operate the schools in their county. It is a formula, not a spending plan. Simply put, if you want to hire 50 teachers or administrators over the BEP allowance, you may do so, only you have to have local funds or grants or in our case, taxes, to pay for them.
Several schools in Hamilton County have a student teacher ratio of one to 25, while others at the same level are at one to 12. I wonder why? This is closely guarded information and hard to come by. The same thing can be said about ACT scores and state testing information. All of this information should be readily available to the public.
At the top of the food chain is the Central Office. From the information I have, the chain of command chart furnished by Hamilton County Schools, the number of "bosses" in the central office, has increased from 29 in 2017 to 79 in 2018. These positions are not paid at the teacher level, they are much higher and most are not funded by the BEP. This number does not include secretaries, of which there are too many to count I was told by a reliable source that additional mailboxes have been added to carry the load. So these positions must be funded by our local government. The worst part is that they do not touch one student.
I think the teachers should be given the five percent raise without any further tax increase because of the $8 million tax payment the schools received at the end of this year. If Bryan Johnson really feels like our teachers and principals are important like he said, he needs to hand out the raise, stop the central office growth and the school board should back him. Put your money where your mouth is.
Ernie McCarson
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Mr. McCarson writes, “For the uninformed, the BEP is how the counties in Tennessee are allocated the state money to operate the schools in their county. It is a formula ... .” I’ll take his word for that, precisely because I am uninformed. But I remember something about that formula.
I remember a couple of things about Tennessee from the not-so-distant past. One of those things was very public; one of them has been kept pretty private, pretty quiet. When I first moved here in 1967, Tennessee auto license plate numbers began with a digit or two that indicated the county’s population ranking in the state. Hamilton County (Chattanooga) was number 4 in the state, after Shelby County (Memphis), Davidson County (Nashville), and Knox County (Knoxville). That pattern continued down through all 95 Tennessee counties, publicly displaying their sizes. There were a few relatively populous counties, and dozens of much smaller ones. Marion County, right over the hill west of me, was number 49.
Even now most Tennessee counties have populations less than 50,000, and many are below 20,000 total citizens. For reference, the Hamilton County education setup involves nearly 50,000 individuals on one side of the desk or the other. That’s right, our county’s school system population is larger than most entire Tennessee counties.
Now, the not-so-well-known fact: Perhaps 20 or 25 years ago, teachers in some of those small and far-out rural counties of Tennessee complained that they weren’t receiving anything like the big salaries of teachers in Shelby, Davidson, Knox, and Hamilton Counties. Never mind that their counties refused to tax their citizens the way larger counties do; never mind that property values were way less than in the more populous counties; never mind that their cost of living was less than in the counties with larger cities. Never mind all of that – it simply wasn’t fair. They deserved bigger paychecks.
So the benevolent dictators in Nashville simply decreed that some of the “education” money the state confiscated (and still confiscates) from the populous counties with high taxes must be given to those cheapskate counties with low taxes so they could give their teachers bigger paychecks, just like in Hamilton County, etc. Yes, of course that happened; it just wasn’t overly publicized.
I may be uninformed, but I’m willing to assume that situation has not changed, and certainly hasn’t been remedied since it was instituted two decades or so ago. After all, who ever heard of anything like a tax or entitlement being reduced, reversed, or discontinued? It’s a safe bet that a fair (unfair!) amount of Hamilton County “education” tax money is still being taken from us by the state and sweetly bestowed upon Podunk County for the benefit of Podunk’s teachers.
And if our local situation is any indication, it’s also a safe bet that the “education” money transferred from overburdened Hamilton County taxpayers to irresponsible Podunk County “for teachers” gets misappropriated and misused, with neither their teachers nor their students getting much benefit from it. As Mr. McCarson says of the local situation, “This is closely guarded information and hard to come by.”
Think for a moment about all the tax money that is taken from Tennessee to Washington D.C. in the name of education; not all of that money comes back to Tennessee, no way that would ever happen. Just think of all the money that is taken from Hamilton County and Chattanooga to Nashville in the name of education; not all of that money comes back down here, no way that would ever happen. And just think of all the money that is granted locally in the name of education–it’s becoming more and more obvious that most of it isn’t really used for teachers’ salaries or for the education of students. No way is that happening, and no way will it ever happen until some real accountability and control is put in place.
And for that to happen – for real control and accountability to be imposed upon the local school system – oh, even to think about such a thing amounts to a genuine revolution, an honest taxpayers’ revolt, doesn’t it? It's certainly nothing the politicians will ever suggest.
Larry Cloud
Lookout Valley
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Unless I misread the information on the Tennessee Education Lottery webpage, why doesn’t any Tennessee Lottery revenues go to anything, education-wise, besides post-secondary education?
Why, like Georgia, doesn’t our state divert some of the gambling revenue to Pre-K? Doesn’t it seem to be beneficial, as well, to spend some of the billions in lottery revenue on all public education from Pre-K through high school, trade schools (which we need back), and colleges? When and if the kids manage to graduate high school, why is it then that the Lottery funds kick in?
I might be off the mark here, but is that unreasonable to consider?
Richard Smith
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Mr. Smith,
The reason why lottery funds do not go to K-12 education is that when the lottery was approved by the voters as an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution, the funds were to be used for post-secondary education. That is what the citizens of Tennessee voted for in the foundational document of our government. If we want to change that, then we need to amend the Constitution again.
To the original point, the BEP, as it is currently set up, is very unfair to Hamilton County. I seem to remember that Williamson County, the most prosperous county in the state, gets more BEP money than Hamilton County because of the way that the funding formula is set up. I could be wrong about that, but that was the case a few years ago.
Bottom line, education funding in Tennessee needs to be overhauled so that it is fair to all, causing the “cheapskate” counties to cough up their fair share of education funding as well.
Wayne Cook
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Mr. Cook, you are quicker than MC Hammer with “You can’t touch this” concerning the Tennessee Education Lottery.
I suspect that you or a family member is tied to it for you definitely know the intricacies and are quick to defend and say “hands off”. Therein lies the problem, we the public are constantly told that “the children” need more money and that we should support any additional taxes for such but we see piles of money here and there that can’t be touched and never is. See once a law, tax or public/private partnership is started it then becomes un-touchable, un-changeable and un-stoppable.
You state that the BEP formula needs to be revisited to bring equity but I wouldn’t hold your breath for that happening and just as you see the inadequacies of BEP funding there are several who see the “investment” of Lottery money which is to be “for the children” needs to be looked at and re-directed.
You see money corrupts absolutely and I dare say that the TEL has corporate luxury boxes at Nissan Stadium, Bridgestone Arena and Fed EX Forum all “in the budget” as advertising expense and furthermore I’m sure our state legislators function just as Washington and receive favors and re-election money from lobbyists of which can be easily hidden in a budget of over a billion dollars.
So you see you have made an argument that something needs to be done and the “sacred cow” or should I say “cash cow” of TEL money should not be off limits and if legislation needs to be changed then so be it. And as I have previously said the only way that we can know where our money goes and that is to have an audit.
Jay Reed
Falling Water