Bredesen to propose $35 million for teacher equity pay
NASHVILLE (AP) — Gov. Phil Bredesen will propose adding $35 million to next year’s budget to help equalize teacher pay between poor and rich school districts, The Associated Press has learned.
That’s far less than the hundreds of millions of dollars that may be needed to balance salaries, but Bredesen has said he will solve the problem with small steps over time.
The governor will release his plan Monday in his budget address. Several people who have seen the proposal gave the details to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Bredesen’s plan will not include two long-term recommendations made by a task force he appointed.
One of those proposals, to redefine a local school system’s ability to pay its share of education costs, had a price tag of more than $200 million. The other would have given more resources to at-risk children.
The $35 million is on top of $27 million added last year in what Bredesen described as a ‘down payment’ to keep the state out of trouble with the state Supreme Court.
In October 2002, the court ruled — for the third time — that Tennessee’s funding system for K-12 education was unconstitutional.
The state now pays about $2.8 billion a year for K-12 education. The $35 million for teacher pay equity will be on top of Bredesen’s recommendation for a $57 million general increase in K-12 spending next year.
The governor’s proposal is tailored to the Supreme Court decision. One administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent is ‘to get the court out of our hair’ and clear the way for long-term solutions later.
In keeping with the court ruling, the governor’s plan would add teacher salaries to the funding formula for K-12.
The state now pays 75 percent of the $28,000 per year allotted for each teacher, or $21,000. Under the governor’s plan, the state would pay 65 percent of $34,000, or $22,100.
The administration says the increased funding will raise the average teacher pay in Tennessee to $43,127 a year, which would be higher than the Southeastern average of $41,888.
No local school system will have to come up with more money than it is currently adding to teacher salaries to meet the higher percentage next year. But in the future, local schools would feel a larger pinch whenever the state raises salaries, because the required local match would be higher.
The governor’s proposal also requires the Legislature to review teacher pay every year, as ordered by the court.
But there is no requirement for the Legislature to do anything about an imbalance. Lawmakers could review the numbers every year and then do nothing.
Administration officials said they will offer guidelines for the Legislature to use when judging if teacher salaries have reached a level of inequality the courts might find unacceptable.
Salary inequities happen because some local systems put far more money into salaries than others.
Bredesen’s plan does not cap the contributions of local systems, but it has no other hard-and-fast mechanism to keep the inequities from returning. The administration says it will address that problem in a subsequent plan.
The state’s 136 school systems essentially break down into three categories: rich schools, poor-but-trying, and those not trying very hard.
The commerce-rich areas, generally the urban centers, export tax income to other school systems because they have a greater ability to pay.
The poor-but-trying systems don’t have the tax base to pay what the big cities pay, but tax themselves heavily to be as competitive as they can.
The others may or may not have a significant tax base, but in any case lack the political will to raise enough money to pay competitive salaries.
The administration recognizes the ‘down payment’ last year in many cases rewarded systems for not trying as hard as their neighbors. The new proposal spreads the additional money around more evenly because it is funneled through the funding formula, which takes local ability to pay and other factors into account.
Dealing with the disparity in effort among local systems is another aspect of the eventual solution the administration says must come later.
Officials say the proposal gives local school systems a larger share of responsibility for salaries, and that should slow the tendency toward inequality, but is unlikely to stop it.