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By Buzz Trexler
Star Correspondent

Elizabethton Board of Education members were told Thursday night the system faces more than $1 million in increased expenditures — largely due to a state mandate on minimum teacher pay — with only $85,000 in increased revenue as the 2025-2026 budget talks continue.

Director of Schools Richard VanHuss reviewed a handout that showed despite an estimated $709,388 in cuts, the system would still need to find $260,747 in reductions to balance the budget.

“What’s included in there is a salary increase for all certified staff, as well as classified staff,” VanHuss said, going on to explain that the state is not providing enough money to keep up with the state-mandated increase in teacher pay.

In 2023, the Tennessee General Assembly passed — and Gov. Bill Lee signed — a bill requiring a minimum certified teacher salary of $50,000 per year, beginning with the 2026-27 school year. In a first step toward gradually meeting the state-mandated pay rate, the school board passed a 2024-2025 budget increasing the annual salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree from $43,500 to $46,638.

“If you think about it, there’s a shortfall every year we have an increase, every year there’s another increase, so that shortfall just becomes bigger, just continues to compound on itself,” VanHuss told board members. “We’ve been very fortunate up until this year to be able to keep up with that. This year, regrettably, we’re not able to do that.”

The director said if the system is to compete with others in the state in continuing to attract top teachers, Elizabethton City Schools must be above the $50,000 benchmark when the mandate goes into effect. “So, part of that effort of this year is to try to get at or slightly above $50,000 a year early, with the intention that next year whatever amount that they provide us for teacher rate we would take that amount and spread that out as best we can over the pay scale,” VanHuss said. The director went on to say that trying to absorb the teacher pay changes is the “biggest hit” in the budget.

The budget workshop handout broke down the estimated increases in revenue, expenditures, and proposed cuts as follows:

Estimated Increases in Revenue: Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) funds, $10,000; and sales tax and property tax, $75,000, for a total $85,000 in increased revenue.

Estimated Major Increases in Expenditures: Salaries and benefits, $934,296; and medical insurance, $120,839, for a total $1,055,135 in increased expenditures.

Estimated Cuts: Textbooks, $387,735; buses, $129,653; capital expenditures, $92,000; and general supplies and staff development, $100,000, for a total $709,388 in estimated cuts.

Earlier this month, VanHuss sent a letter to City Manager Daniel Estes requesting a $250,000 increase in the 2025-2026 operating budget and one-time funding for two 66-passenger buses in the amount of $230,000 “to replace retiring buses.”

“The operating increase is necessary to provide pay increases for our support staff,” VanHuss wrote. “The Tennessee Department of Education provides for increases for teachers. However, we all know that it takes all employees to properly educate children. We need high-quality staff to ensure that we maintain the standard of excellence for our students and community.”

In May 2024, the school board passed a $36,259,561 budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, a $4,872,455 decrease from the previous year’s budget due to federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding that ended in June 2024. The cut in funding caused the system to consider the impact on tutoring, class-size reduction teachers, and counselors.

ABOUT TISA FUNDING
The 2024-2025 academic year is the first full year the system is under the TISA student-based funding formula used to allocate state funds to school districts. The state funding formula for K-12 schools replaced the Basic Education Program (BEP).

TISA has four components: base funding, weighted funding, direct funding, and outcomes funding. It requires local matching funds and districts to be responsible for 30 percent of the base funding, which is subject to annual appropriations by the Tennessee General Assembly. For the current academic year, the base TISA funding amount is $7,075 per Average Daily Membership (ADM), a formula the state uses to capture student counts. The count is not a raw number of students but takes into consideration a student’s enrollment and daily class assignment for each of nine reporting periods throughout the year.