Fiscal Year 2018-19 Verification of the Basic Education Program (BEP) Calculation
September 2018
Author: Carolynn Polanchek
The Basic Education Program (BEP), Tennessee’s funding formula for K-12 public schools, distributes over $4.7 billion to school districts and makes up over a quarter of all state dollars in the budget. For the third year in a row, the Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) checked the formula, and found several revision points for the fiscal year 2018-19 calculation. The identified revision points and resulting changes were negligible: $242,000 in underallocations to 55 districts and $131,000 in overallocations to 26 districts amounted to a net state underallocation of $111,000.