This bill revises provisions of the Tennessee Education Savings Account Pilot Program and the basic education program calculation, as discussed below.
Under present law, to be an "eligible student" for purposes of the program, a student must:
(1) Be zoned to attend a school in an LEA, excluding the achievement school district (ASD), with 10 or more schools:
(A) Identified as priority schools in 2015;
(B) Among the bottom 10 percent of schools; and
(C) Identified as priority schools in 2018; or
(2) Be zoned to attend a school that is in the ASD.
This bill adds, as an alternative to eligibility under (1) or (2) above, that a student will be eligible if the student is zoned to attend a school in an LEA that, during the three-year period immediately preceding September 1, 2025, or thereafter, did not offer students 180 days of in-person learning for a school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Present law provides, as one of the criterion for calculating the BEP, the cost differential factor (CDF) must be funded at 25 percent in fiscal year 2016-2017 and eliminated from the formula in subsequent years as increases are made to the instructional salary and wages component. This bill rewrites this provision to instead provide that the cost differential factor must be funded at 16 percent in fiscal year 2022-2023 and reduced in the formula in subsequent years as increases are made to the instructional salary and wages component; provided, that the cost differential factor must be eliminated from the formula in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Statutes affected:
Introduced: 49-6-2602(3)(C), 49-6-2602, 49-3-307(a), 49-3-307
Current Version: 49-6-2602(3)(C), 49-6-2602, 49-3-307(a), 49-3-307