Contributed photo. Scott Bennett, the board attorney for Hamilton, Bradley and other school systems.Read more
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Hamilton County school board members amended their lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over what they call inadequate funding for a free and equal education for all students.
The amended lawsuit was accepted by a judge on Aug. 6, despite the State's objection.
Seven Tennessee school boards are a part of the lawsuit filed in March, which claims that Tennessee's Basic Education Program - known as the BEP - does not cover the true cost of running a school or employing teachers and deprives students of the education they are entitled to by law.
The state made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in April, saying the complaint has no merit. A judge will hear the dismissal motion and the school boards' request to grant class-action status Aug. 28.
The amended lawsuit argues that the seven school boards are representative of the 136 other local boards of education in Tennessee, and says those boards would raise the same complaints if they joined the action.
"These local boards of education are subject to identical regulatory and legal demands from the State and operate under identical fiscal constraints, all of which have impaired their abilities to fulfill their statutory obligations to the children of their respective districts," the suit states.
The amended lawsuit also restates many claims in the previous motion, such as how more affluent communities can shift the unfunded burden to students and their parents, while schools in areas of more concentrated poverty are forced to cut services due to the lack of funding - creating an unfair educational experience for these students.
"[S]tudent achievement in Tennessee is a function of whether a school is able to fund adequate outside financial support to fund its program," Bennett writes in the amended lawsuit.
But the amended suit goes into more detail regarding the history and intention of the General Assembly when enacting the BEP, and what it calls the failure of the funding formula to keep up with the increase in teacher pay over the years, along with the basic costs of operating a school.
The amended lawsuit notes the BEP Review Committee's report in November 2014, which "concluded that the General Assembly is underfunding education in Tennessee by hundreds of million of dollars," and the failure of the state to fund mandates and the additional costs school boards are forced to take on in order to comply with the state's changing standards.
Contact staff writer Kendi Anderson at kendi.anderson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6592.