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Committee advances bill requiring school districts to post itemized budgets and prior-year spending
Summary
A bill backed by Leader Williams would require each LEA and charter school to submit annual planning and expenditure reports, breaking down revenue by source and spending categories; sponsors said the change promotes accountability while opponents sought inclusion of private voucher schools.
Leader Williams told the committee that HB 2121 (as amended) would strengthen transparency and accountability in K–12 spending by requiring two annual reports from each local education agency and charter school: a planning and budgetary report for the upcoming year and an expenditure report for the prior year.
"The revenue of this report must be clearly broken down by local, state, and federal dollars and recurring versus nonrecurring funds," Williams said, listing consistent categories for spending such as instructional costs, personnel, operations and maintenance, professional development and direct TISA allocations.
Representative Johnson said she appreciated a detailed local example from Knox County and urged wider transparency. Representative McKenzie asked whether private schools receiving public voucher dollars could be required to produce the same reporting; Williams declined to add them to this bill and suggested colleagues file separate legislation if they wished to extend the requirement.
The committee adopted the amendment and voted to move HB 2121 to Finance (18 yes, 1 no). The bill requires posting the reports on the school's report card website and mandates at least two consecutive years of posted data for public comparison. Sponsors framed the measure as a tool to match spending patterns with school-report-card outcomes to inform policy decisions.
