School districts across the state of Tennessee are pushing to reach a state mandated teacher salary by 2026.
Many city schools have already reached the mandated number and have started to exceed it, but rural school systems have a different challenge.
The Teacher Paycheck Protection Act was a crowning achievement for Governor Bill Lee back in 2022, with a goal of raising the base teacher pay to $50,000 by 2026.
Now, the clock is ticking for school districts.
Unicoi County Director of Schools John English says, raising teacher pay is a no-brainer but, for rural school systems, finding the funding can be a challenge. Where some counties raise property taxes to come up with their local match, it isn’t that easy in Unicoi County where more than half of their land is either state or federally owned.
Other rural districts like Hawkins County are also facing difficulties getting up to the $50,000 mark.
“We have found that the state funding for this minimum teacher pay to be in affect fully by the 2026-2027 school year covers roughly 60% of what’s needed,” Director of Schools Matt Hixson said.
Director of Schools Matt Hixson told News 5 Hawkins County is nearing the mark at $48,000 but because the county is so spread out geographically they’ve had to keep more staff and according to Hixson they’re considered ‘overstaffed’ by the state which limits the funding they can receive.
“It’s been extremely tough to come up with that additional 40% over the course of these last four years to make those games we’ve had to put more local monies and local dollars in and through attrition really look at every position to see if we really need to backfill those or to staff them,” Hixson said.
The same can be said for Unicoi County Schools, with some tough decisions this year to help close the gap.
“We made some cuts this year for sure we had a little bit of decline in enrollment so you know that that impacts your funding as well and so yeah, we made cut it at every location either certified teachers or non-certified personnel,” Director of Schools John English said.
English says not only will school districts have to close the state mandated gap by next year or there could be repercussions from the state, school systems are also facing uncertainty over federal funding through the department of education.
“We count on those dollars just like everybody else and so we don’t really have clarity just yet on exactly what that looks like. We have some ideas but yeah that’s definitely a concern as well, you know, looking at programs and services that we provide our kids and whether that funding is going to be there to be able to continue,” English said.
