Tennessee’s School System Budgets Authority and Accountability
"Ensuring That the State’s Responsibility for Public Education Is Carried Out Responsibly
The General Assembly, over the course of a century, has repeatedly affirmed the need to separate the funding of schools from the operation of schools. The school budgeting process in Tennessee, where local legislative bodies rather than independent school districts raise taxes to fund school systems, is unlike that in the majority of other states. In all but nine states, most school boards have their own taxing authority independent of the local jurisdictions within which they are located. Tennessee’s approach provides more oversight of school system expenditures by assigning responsibility for funding schools to counties and cities and giving authority to decide how to operate them to locally elected school boards that are accountable to the state for student achievement."
Evolution of Authority and Accountability for School Funding
- "Educating citizens is one of government’s most important functions. Not only does it consume a large portion of state and local government budgets, it affects everything from economic development to the health of citizens. Tennessee’s constitution, Article 11, Section 12, declares both the state’s intent and its responsibility for educating children:
- The State of Tennessee recognizes the inherent value of education and encourages its support. The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance, support and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools.
- Although this language was added in 1978, Tennessee’s constitution has included provisions declaring the importance of education and making it the General Assembly’s responsibility since 1834. The General Assembly has delegated this responsibility to local elected school boards, given authority to operate schools and holding them accountable for their success, but unlike legislatures in most other states, does not allow school boards to fund schools. That authority lies with the general city and county governments for all but the fourteen special school districts created by the legislature.
- Because school systems often consume the biggest portion of local revenue, there is a natural tension between school officials who want to provide better educational services and county commissions or city councils who want to keep taxes as low as possible, and their members often question how school systems spend taxpayers’ money. Administrative costs, like other costs considered outside the classroom, are subject to particular attention perhaps because their value isn’t as obvious as the value of teachers. "
Accountability for State and Federal Requirements related to Education
"Tennessee’s legislature, exercising its authority to create a statewide system of education, has given school systems considerable authority to meet the standards imposed on them and asks local legislative bodies only to fund them. Local legislative bodies do not carry the weight of responsibility—are not accountable—for meeting the state’s education standards other than its funding standards. Under Tennessee’s system, school boards have both the authority and the responsibility to educate children and are the entities the state holds accountable for the success or failure of its children.
The importance of providing sufficient authority to meet accountability standards when delegating responsibility to subordinates is widely recognized. As E. F. Ortiz says, “Delegation of authority is a prerequisite for the successful implementation of results-based management. To be accountable for results, managers have to be duly empowered through the clear delegation of authority in all areas. . . .”
George Jones and John Stewart writing in Public Money and Management describe the link between responsibility and accountability thus:
Where there is responsibility there is a need for accountability as to how that responsibility has been exercised.
Responsibility defines the boundaries of accountability. One should not be held accountable for matters beyond one’s responsibility, but one should be held accountable for matters within it.
To fulfill its constitutional obligations for public education, the General Assembly has passed a host of laws, comprising an entire title of Tennessee Code Annotated. In 1992, responding to a lawsuit filed against the state by 77 small, rural school systems,8 the General Assembly passed the Education Improvement Act, perhaps the most sweeping school reform legislation in Tennessee’s history.
With that Act, the General Assembly met its responsibility to provide for a system of free public schools by establishing a new funding formula, creating a new local governance structure for public education, and enacting a new accountability system requiring local schools and school systems to meet state standards and goals.
The Act created a burden of accountability and a level of scrutiny not imposed on any other public entity. If school boards do not meet the state’s standards, the state can take control of their schools.
In exchange for increased levels of state oversight, however, the General Assembly and the State Board of Education gave local boards greater autonomy to manage their school systems by removing earmarks on state funding10 and repealing 3,700 rules and regulations and “allowing individual schools to determine everything from how many minutes to teach reading to the appropriate square footage of classrooms.”
In addition to meeting state requirements, school systems must also comply with federal laws, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (reauthorized in 2001 as the No Child Left Behind Act), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. Each of these laws carries with it a set of complex regulations that school administrators must understand in order to deliver needed services to students and protect their rights and privacy. "
Source: Report of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations Tennessee School System Budgets Authority and Accountability for Funding Education and Operating Schools 2015
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tacir/commission-meetings/2015-january/2015Tab%203SchoolBudget.pdf
