By JC Bowman
Tennessee is entering an important phase in public education funding next year. The 2026–27 school year marks the final year of the transition from the Basic Education Program to the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement formula. Beginning in 2027–28, temporary BEP transition funding will end for districts that have qualified for it.
That does not meet a collapse in education funding is imminent, nor is it an argument for returning to the BEP. Under TISA, Tennessee has invested substantially more state money in K–12 education, and the new formula improved the old system by making student needs more explicit. It could also place a bigger burden on local taxpayers.
But the end of the transition offers us an opportunity to determine whether TISA works as intended without its temporary cushion. Consider it a stress test.
TISA is primarily built around students. Every student generates base funding, with additional funding allocated to address specific needs and circumstances. That makes sense. Students with greater educational needs often require additional resources.
But a formula can accurately measure student needs while simultaneously failing to account for the cost of maintaining the schools necessary to serve those students.
Consider a district experiencing declining enrollment. If one student leaves, the revenue associated with that student may decline. But the district cannot eliminate one-twentieth of a teacher, one-four-hundredth of a principal, or part of a bus route. The school still needs classrooms, electricity, maintenance, transportation, and enough educators to offer required courses and services.
Enrollment can decline gradually. School costs often decline in steps. That distinction matters, particularly in small and rural districts. A district may eventually reduce staffing, consolidate programs, adjust transportation routes, or even close facilities. But those decisions cannot always keep pace with how quickly enrollment-driven revenue disappears.
The answer is not to permanently fund students who are no longer enrolled. Nor should we pretend that every cost disappears when a student leaves. We need a reasonable and predictable path between those two realities.
TISA already includes protections such as the five-percent safety net and a funding floor for eligible districts. As transition funding ends, Tennessee should assess whether those protections are sufficient, especially for smaller districts, where even modest enrollment losses can have a disproportionate financial impact.
The issue of economic disadvantage warrants further examination. Tennessee should assess whether its definition accurately identifies students in need. While government programs can provide insight into economic hardship, administrative classifications often do not reflect actual family circumstances. It’s essential to measure economic needs rather than program participation.
Local fiscal capacity deserves the same scrutiny. Tennessee needs an objective method to determine state and local responsibility for education funding. Mathematical formulas are preferable to political bargaining, but no formula should be beyond periodic review.
The question is whether measured fiscal capacity still reflects a community’s practical ability to fund its required share and provide necessary educational services. Population, property values, income, enrollment, and local economic conditions change. We should test our assumptions against reality from time to time.
Vouchers present another version of the same challenge. The discussion should not be reduced to the slogan that money follows the child. In a student-based system, funding will naturally follow where students are educated.
The more complex issue is understanding what happens to costs that cannot adjust as quickly as student enrollment does –either through growth or loss of students. While funding can shift to follow a student immediately, expenses such as teacher contracts, school buildings, and bus routes take longer to change. This does not mean we should continue funding schools with declining student populations; rather, eliminating these fixed costs will not yield much savings. Policymakers need to address the real economic challenges of operating schools.
This points toward the next step for TISA. Tennessee should evaluate both student adequacy and institutional adequacy. Student characteristics help determine what resources children need. Enrollment, geography, scale, transportation, facilities, staffing, and local fiscal capacity help determine what it costs to provide those resources. A mature school-funding system must understand both.
We do not need to abandon TISA. We need to improve it with the evidence we now have and to seek input from local schools and communities, not just the TISA Review Committee. We must accurately identify student needs, examine funding adequacy, recognize unavoidable operating costs, review protections for declining districts, validate fiscal-capacity calculations, and clearly account for the financial effects of universal school vouchers. We will continue to debate efficacy, financial impact, and call for accountability and transparency.
Most importantly, this should not become another political argument over who can demand the most money. The better question is what Tennessee expects its schools to provide, what it reasonably costs, and how taxpayers can fund it responsibly.
The transition to TISA tested whether Tennessee could build a new funding system. What comes next will determine whether we built a sustainable school-funding model.
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JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee
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