The BEP Review Committee meets again on Wednesday in Nashville, where there are several items of interest on the agenda. One is a discussion of the impacts of alternative fiscal capacity scenarios, including a proposal by Jim Guthrie of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt.
The basics of Guthrie’s proposal are in the tax base methodology document, but there are no numbers yet. I’m working on it.
I won’t be able to attend this one, but I’ll get a report from someone by Thursday.
“City School Districts
The city tax base is the school district tax base.”
So what are to become of the county contributions to education? Does Anderson and Roane County have any input of money for ORS? What about the Federal and State contribution? If the fiscal policy is going to fall onto the local district, why do other districts collect my tax and call it for education in their district? This seems to be very complicating.
Can we as citizens be informed of where these children are coming from, like those kids being driven in from outside the city or crossing the border illegally?
With this alternative fiscal policy, what happens to the original? Is the wording the same, NCLB rules?
It is really funny that you have reports a few days later but citizens do not have the same for weeks later. Do not get me wrong; you do play in the game and thanks if you can get that report by Thursday.
When is BEP going to get back to the problem, children not graduating?
Under this proposal, the State would eliminate sharing of education funds between the County and City school systems — Anderson County would contribute nothing to Oak Ridge for Education, but Oak Ridgers would not pay the portion of the Anderson County property tax devoted to education.
The City would have to raise property taxes to make up for the funding lost from the County, but since property values in the City are higher, the increase by the City would be less than the decrease in County taxes. However, we would receive less from the State, and the County would receive more.
Since there are no numbers yet (I will have them Thursday), I don’t yet know if this a positive change, but I do know it’s better than the previous system-level proposal by TACIR.
Getting this information early was simply a matter of asking for it. Anyone could do the same — but it helps that I went to the last two (open to the public) meetings so that I knew what to ask for and who to ask. I know that most people aren’t interested enough to trek to Nashville for a day, so I go, and I share.
Thank you for saving me the embarrassment of asking for information that has matured.
Somebody must be conversing to ORCC about covering immediate funding issues. Let’s hope these abatements are built realistically, those tangent projects can always ask for them specially and go through a midnight session with ORCC where it should be. I like the idea COR wholly funding everything here. Those asinine mandates tied with our money damage more city school districts everyday.
BEP is not what I would describe universal. The high school drop out rate is horrible. Why are we unable to trade off mandates for state funds? I have not seen the grants available for school districts, but once again we are making silk and some cotton out of a stock of horsehair. It would only seem logical that what funds we overqualified for would count as a reward towards receiving a large portion of future excess funds; for example, Tennessee’s Rainy Day Fund those schools receiving the every day funds will have something to reach for. Tennessee schools would do well if the state came up with their own scorecard; I know they already have that power, but a scorecard without the federal presence failing our schools. We really need to get these graduation rates up, and only Tennessee can accomplish that. My suggestion, get more pathways.