News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
As legislators begin discussions on vouchers Monday, Putnam County Director of Schools Corby King said rural Republican lawmakers are troubled over the bill’s impact on rural schools.
King said rural districts face fewer educational options. Some fifty Tennessee counties do not offer a private school. With smaller student populations, the loss of any students could be harmful to funding for the overall student population.
“If I lose hundred students and I’ve got twenty schools and if I lost all hundred of them at one school, then I could cut personal, I could make programming decisions, and things at that school,” King said. “But if I lose ten across ten schools, I’ve got to find a way to fund those with seven hundred thousand to a million dollars less than I would of received if those students has still been in my system.”
King said state officials have said systems would be held harmless for students losses, but it’s not clear how that would work. King said he also has concerns that the governor’s plan to fund teacher salaries by 2026-27 would already cause financial pressures on county funding bodies. The voucher bill, King said, could make it worse.
“Those are concerns that I have, and I know that the conservatives and republican lawmakers in the rural districts have that concern for their districts, and they should,” King said. “And that’s a very fair concern and one we are all grappling with.”
