State should fully fund its share of cost of operating Tennessee's schools | Opinion Taxpayers shouldn't have to cover unfunded mandates and deficiencies in the Basic Education Program for K-12 public school students. Pastors for Tennessee Children and the Tennessee Public Education Coalition A Tennessee family of four, on average, pays over $1,000 a year in property taxes to offset the state’s ongoing underfunding of K-12 education. The state continues to rely on local taxpayers to finance numerous unfunded mandates critical to operating schools, which are glaringly absent from the Basic Education Program, the state’s K-12 funding formula. With unprecedented revenue surpluses and an astronomical amount of money in the state’s reserves this year, it is time for Tennessee’s governor and legislature to remedy funding inadequacies that the Tennessee Supreme Court and the state’s own policy experts have been highlighting for 20 years.