Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.A top committee of Tennessee educators wants lawmakers to include special education prekindergarten students in the state’s public school funding formula. The recommendations follows pleas from school boards and superintendents who say they’ve been saddled with the price tag of an unfunded mandate because federal and state laws require local school districts to serve students with disabilities as young as 3.“The problem is, they’ve legally compelled us to serve kids for whom they’re not proportionally funding us,” said Bob Nardos, the executive director at the Libertas School, a Memphis charter school, during a TISA Review Committee meeting this month.Lawmakers established the committee last year. Made up of top education officials and public school leaders from around the state, the committee is tasked with recommending revisions to the state’s overarching K-12 funding formula and will issue its first report later this fall. A survey completed this summer showed the majority of committee members ranked special education pre-K funding as a top priority, in addition to revising how the state identifies economically disadvantaged students. “Early childhood education is widely recognized as an important factor in long-term academic success,” committee member Ron McPherson said in the summer survey. McPherson serves as the finance director at Knox County Schools. Reworking TISA, the state’s funding formula, would require legislative action. The formula currently only funds Tennessee K-12 students. “Change the rules about who we’re required to serve, or fund us for the kids we’re required to serve,” Nardos said, noting that his school has an “acute population” of special education students with “severe” needs.It’s not clear how much weight the TISA Review Committee’s recommendations will carry with state lawmakers. A previous legislative effort to fold these pre-K students into public school funding stalled in 2025, likely over funding concerns. The legislature estimated that fully funding the programs could cost the state more than $159 million annually.On Thursday, state Board of Education Chairman Bob Eby sent a formal list of TISA recommendations to Gov. Bill Lee.The pre-K funding recommendation wasn’t included in the official list, but Eby noted it at the end of the letter. “This topic, being outside the K-12 formula, was omitted from the list, as it is not necessarily authorized by the statute creating this Committee; however, we wanted you to know of this high level of interest from the committee members,” Eby wrote.West Tennessee school leaders said last year that they’ve encountered “fundamental” misunderstandings of how special education pre-K programs work and are funded, even among state officials responsible for education oversight.Tennessee has an $18 million grant fund for special education pre-K costs. But district leaders say the grant program is less stable than recurring funding streams, and it’s still not enough to cover the costs of their special education pre-K classrooms. “Yes, the grant program exists, and I’m very grateful for it,” Nardos said. “But it’s not actually proportional to the need.”Special education costs for pre-K classes can balloon quickly, school leaders say. Lakeland School System in Shelby County currently has 29 special education students to whom it is federally required to offer pre-K services, including specialized teachers and therapies. But these students must also be educated alongside general education peers to meet federal and state class size and inclusivity regulations. Lakeland is serving an additional 30 general education students in those pre-K classrooms as peer models for its 29 special education students.Lakeland’s 59 students are spread across four classrooms, each with a special education teacher and two special education assistants. The cost to run those classrooms? More than $621,000, according to data provided by the district. The district is receiving $15,058 in federal funding and another $124,660 from the Tennessee special education preschool grant, which together cover about 22% of Lakeland’s total costs. That means Lakeland must dip into its TISA funding — calculated and intended for K-12 students — to pay the remaining $481,282.Other district officials said the existing funding models do not factor in the costs of peer students and the enrollment increases they bring. “That’s where we’re getting in a bind,” said TISA Review Committee member Eddie Pruett, the director of schools at Gibson County Special School District. “We have to provide this, and don’t have the funding we need to do it with.”Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.
