NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A Senate report on federal education funding answered a piece of the crucial question of whether Tennessee lawmakers should reject those dollars.
Lawmakers from both the House and Senate met in November on a joint taskforce designed to answer if the state should keep receiving that money. However, Senators wrote that federal requirements could still apply to Tennessee schools even if legislators said no to the money.
"Because of its broad application, the requirements associated with that broad definition of federal financial assistance could still apply depending on the scope of the state's rejection of any federal dollars," the five senators wrote in a report provided to NewsChannel 5. "It is also important to consider that many of the requirements attached to federal dollars align with state policymakers' goals or are integrated into the state's own requirements."
Per the report, Hancock County uses the most federal funds while Williamson County uses the least.
Sumner, Rutherford, Robertson, Wilson and Davidson Counties school budgets contain nearly 14% of federal funding during the 2021-2022 school year.
Directly speaking, Metro Nashville Public Schools received $33.5 million that year in federal dollars.
Sen. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, said the Senate wanted to ahead and file its preliminary report on Tuesday.
"We didn't find as many strings as I anticipated," Lundberg said. "It was also a valuable session, and we learned a lot from a lot of different departments. When the session starts like it does, 1,500 bills will be introduced. Will someone introduce something related to this? Sure, they can. But from my perspective, education funding is business as usual."
House Speaker Cameron Sexton's office said the House will create its own report.
"The House agreed with Senate’s options for consideration, however, the Senate would not agree with the House’s actionable recommendations moving forward," said Connor Grady, spokesperson for the Speaker's office. "Unfortunately, each body will be filing their own report, which will be very similar but not identical."
Where this came from
Sexton first raised the issue of federal education funding at the beginning of the 2023 session. Months later, after both the regular session and the special session, he set up a task force to address the question.
As it stands, Tennessee receives around 30% of its annual budget from federal money, but as he said in February, Sexton would like to remove just over $1 billion from that percentage. Federal dollars are also at least 10% of the state's education budget. Sexton has not said specifically what requirements he is worried about regarding federal funds.
NewsChannel 5 is reaching out to lawmakers to hear their feedback on this report.
Fostering Hope provides Christmas for kids in foster care. I'm delighted to see Fostering Hope expand this year to expand their reach to now include kids in Foster care in metro AND foster kids in East TN hard hit by Helene.
-Bree Smith
