Board of Education 101
LISA HOBBS – News Editor
The county’s Education Committee met on Monday and Director of Schools Dr. Grant Swallows provided a review of the school system’s budget and outlined the duties of the Warren County Board of Education and that of the Warren County Commission.
“I am excited about the opportunity to talk to you tonight,” he stated. “Oddly enough, I’ve looked forward to this the last couple of days. I enjoy talking about the budget. I think it’s a great opportunity to really education ourselves. I’ve been doing this now for seven years, and this budget is so intense that I probably learn something every time I go through it. Every year, it changes, because you’ll have an audit that says you need to move this from this line to this line.”
The school system is under Maintenance of Effort (MOE), which means, each year, the county government must budget at least as many local dollars for school operations as it budgeted the year before. There are exceptions that would allow the county to decrease its funding: declining enrollment, state funding cuts, consolidation, and one-time money in a written nonrecurring agreement between the commission and the BOE.
Warren County adopted the County Financial Management System of 1981 in 2011. The 81 ACT went into effect on July 1, 2012, and it consolidated the finance departments of the county, school system and highway department into one Finance Department. The county’s Financial Management Committee oversee the department.
“We feel that centralized finance works here. There have been some problems… lawsuits Boles v. Gross, Morgan County and Putnam County there have been lawsuits over centralized finance. Let’s just hopefully agree that we are never going to get to that. So far, in my seven years, we have had a good working relationship with that.”
While the County Commission decides how much local funding education receives, the BOE decides how those dollars are used. Under the 81 ACT, the commission may alter only the total of the school budget. The commission’s authority over the BOE ends there.
Efforts to generate the school’s fiscal year budget begins in January, says the director, who added, “The board will determine the priorities that they want to see put into the budget or changed in the budget. My office will take that information, and we’ll take what County Executive Bell says are the estimates that we will have for revenue and basically, like with any budget, you start to build that out.”
Once the budget is approved by the BOE, it is then submitted to the county’s Budget and Finance Committee for its consideration. It is also presented to the county’s Education Committee.
The school system also receives funding from the Tennessee Investment and Student Achievement (TISA), which allocates funding based on enrollment.
“I think we had 5,900, or maybe 5,800, last year. I can’t remember exactly. Those students will determine what your TISA allocation should be. For Warren County 2027, our allocation was $61.44 million.”
Of that amount, 83 percent is the state’s share for local education ($51.2 million) and 17 percent is the county’s share for education ($10.24 million).
Warren County government actually provided $14.92 million, which is the current MOE. The county can provide more than dictated by TISA, but it cannot provide less.
Dr. Swallows presented Education Committee members Commissioners Carlene Brown, Scott Kelly, James Zahn, Chris Rippy and Caleb Graves with copies of the school system’s 2026-27 budget and explained the line items in detail.