By JC Bowman
Director of
Professional Educators of Tennessee
Teachers are the critical element in improving education. It’s not about more programs, more standards, or more tests. It’s about that relationship between an adult and a child. Moving education policy is a lot like the game Jenga. If you remove the wrong piece the structure collapses. This is especially true in education funding. Without skilled personnel, education cannot succeed.
Teacher salaries
The proposed raise, while appreciated, does not get Tennessee near the southeastern average on teacher salaries. Many have argued that adjusting for inflation and continued increases in insurance, public education is now less appealing and less competitive with other careers and provides little incentive to remain in education.
Career and Technical Education
We must do a better job tracking our students from enrollment to certification to jobs.
Additional computer science and coding is a critical investment.
Charter School funding
Funding should be attached to existing or already approved charter schools, not future schools that may move into the state. We need a more transparent look at their finances if the state is funding them.
Education funding
The school funding discussion has been long overdue. The current formula does need adjustment and modernization, but we need to study potential ramifications before moving completely away from our current system. If not, we will spend years plugging holes again, trying to fix another broken funding system. Ten years from now the headlines will still be how our state is still not fully funding the student-based funding formula.
We need simplicity. If you can’t explain it, people cannot easily understand it. We should not pass legislation for a new funding formula without full knowledge of all the components. The state should keep the current Basic Education Program (BEP) formula, and increase funding to the current system, while we study the new proposal.
JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the association are properly cited.
