WCSB Meeting with TN State Legislators
On Friday, January 24, 2025 at 9:30am, our school board gathered to meet with our legislators. This is an annual meeting to discuss issues at the state level that effect Williamson County Schools.
Ten board members were present. Jay Galbreath was connected via phone because of an illness and Drason Beasley was absent.
From the legislature, the following were present
Tonja Hibma presided over the meeting, guiding the conversation.
There were 3 main topics covered: age-appropriate materials, gun safety, and funding/vouchers.
Age Appropriate Materials
There was not much time spent on this topic, but Gino Bulso expressed his concern that 5 Williamson County librarians concluded that the books that were banned last month were appropriate.
Joey Hensley jumped in to say that publishers can now be punished for sending inappropriate books to schools.
Gun Safety
Melissa Wyatt cited the recent school shooting in Antioch and asked the legislative delegation about taking action to address the fact that gun violence is the number one cause of death for TN children and that TN is the 4th most dangerous state to raise children link.
Gino Bulso replied by blaming Memphis for skewing our state-wide numbers. He also asserted that the problem is not the guns, rather it is a societal issue. He seemed to pine for a time when there was more prayer in school and divorce was more difficult to attain, implying that gun violence would be stemmed if these societal shifts were rolled back.
Eric Welch asked about enhancing red flag laws to remove firearms from folks who are mentally ill, citing the Covenant shooting.
Jack Johnson said that there is a process to temporarily remove firearms if an individual is adjudicated as mentally ill. In the case of Covenant, that process broke down. It was not a failure of policy, but a failure of implementation.
Senator Johnson and Mr. Welch interacted contentiously for a bit, talking over each other. Ms. Hibma interrupted and moved the conversation to a different topic.
TISA Funding / Vouchers
For some background, the state uses a formula called TISA to determine how much money each school district gets from the state. There are many factors that go into the formula, but a major factor is called "fiscal capacity." That term is basically a measurement of how much money the state thinks that the local government could afford to spend on education. To see each county's numbers, click here. Williamson County has been deemed to have a high fiscal capacity, so we receive less state funding.
Jack Johnson gave us a history lesson on TISA funding. It came about in the 1980s because of a lawsuit brought against the state, saying that it wasn't providing enough funds to smaller, rural counties. Williamson county was a part of that lawsuit because at that time, it was more rural! Now, we have grown a LOT and are on the other side of that equation.
In order to get more money for Williamson County, they added a provision for "fast-growing" districts to receive more money. But then Williamson County stopped growing so much.
So now, they're looking at going outside of the TISA calculation to add funding for high-performing districts.
Eric Welch noted that this is all talking about how the "pie" is divided up. But couldn't you increase the size of the pie?
Gino Bulso said that the state's budget for education is over $7b and the schools are failing. More money won't help. But if we provide vouchers, we'll get better educational outcomes by giving parents more options. "All students" means public school students, private school students, homeschool students - everyone.
Melissa Wyatt cites the fact that 51 of the 95 TN counties do not have a private school option. Also, there are 184 schools in TN that would qualify for vouchers and the voucher amount only covers the tuition for 19 of them.
Senator Johnson says that it's not designed to cover the entire amount, but just to help out. Maybe a family can't pay $11k, but they could pay $4k.
Mr. Bulso also mentioned that there aren't private schools in many rural counties YET. He's confident that the demand will draw in new institutions, including religious schools.
Margie Johnson brought up the fact that private schools don't have accountability. Over 70 TN school districts passed resolutions against vouchers. And the metrics for judging these schools are incongruous. Privates schools are judged on "parental satisfaction" while public schools are judged on TCAP scores.
Jack Johnson: "I reject the assertion that we need to burden these other schools with the same standards we hold public schools to." They don't have to take TCAP - that's the kinda the point of having a private school.
Mr. Welch and Senator Johnson had another heated exchange.
Josh Brown wanted to know about the "hold harmless" clause.
(This is Cory interjecting now with some background) The "hold harmless" clause says that if a school district loses enrollment because of folks using vouchers - or for any other reason - their funding will not be negatively affected. At the institution of the voucher bill, there will be a "floor" of funding established for each district and their funding will not go below that floor. There is some confusion about whether this floor is in perpetuity or whether it gets re-drawn after each school year. Okay, back to the meeting...
Gino Bulso said that the floor will last for "as long as we have an education system."
Senator Johnson even said that if a factory shuts down in some county and everyone moves away, the education funding will remain at the same level.
Lee Reeves said that this was designed to "remove the fear" around the issue.