Bedford County's public schools

• Bedford County Schools is the county's public school district. Its official website is bedfordk12tn.com, which publishes a list of schools, district calendars, and a board members page.
• The Board of Education has nine members. Its own minutes of June 18, 2026 record the full roll: Michael Cook (Chairman), Glenn Forsee, David Brown, Dan Reed, Andrea Anderson, Shanna Boyette, Brian Crews, Barton Williams, and Lana Craig — seven present in the room, Williams attending by Zoom, Craig absent that night.
• The Superintendent is Tim Harwell. The same minutes record him thanking "the board members for appointing him as Superintendent" — the appointment is the board's, not an elected office. The district posts a Superintendent's Office page.
• The board's policies are public. The district links its Board Policy Manual, hosted by the Tennessee School Boards Association.

School money in Bedford County shows up in two different official records that must not be added together or directly compared:

• The county budget. The adopted FY2026–27 county budget appropriates $106,880,711 to the General Purpose School Fund (fund 141) — the largest single appropriation in the county budget. Three more education funds are budgeted separately: Child Nutrition ($8,433,071), Education Capital Projects ($6,590,432), and the School Age Care Program ($672,282).
• Most school operating money is state money. Of the School Fund's $95,535,306 in estimated FY2026–27 revenue, $79,690,194 is the "State Education Funds" line — money that arrives under the state's Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) student-based funding formula. Local taxes contribute $14,521,522 to the fund, and about 27 cents of each county property-tax dollar goes to the Schools levy. The full fund-by-fund picture is on this site's Money page.
• The audited record counts schools separately. In the county's audited FY2024–25 financial report, the School Department is a discretely presented component unit — its statements sit beside, not inside, the county government's. The audit reports School Department expenses of $121,457,301 for the year ended June 30, 2025, on a government-wide full-accrual basis. That is a different scope and a different accounting basis than the county's fund-level budget figures above; the numbers answer different questions and cannot be summed.
• The district's own site routes budget questions to the county. As of 2026-08-07, the "Budgets & Audits" link in the district site's Board menu points to the county government's Audits & Budgets page; the district does not host its own budget document on the pages we track.

The statements below were made in public meetings. They are quoted from the auto-generated caption tracks of the county's official meeting videos, with filler syllables omitted; each links to the video at its timestamp and to this site's caption mirror so you can check the words yourself. They are what the speaker said — not figures Open Bedford has verified against documents. Where an official document exists, it is linked; where one hasn't been located, that gap is listed in the table further down.

Superintendent Tim Harwell, invited to the Bedford County Planning Commission's July 28, 2026 review of the draft comprehensive plan's education section:

"On average, over the last couple of years, in total we're down about 270 students. We've seen preliminary numbers — right now there is a little bit of an uptick, but we're still nowhere close to where we were a couple years ago." — Tim Harwell, Planning Commission, July 28, 2026 (video, 35:13 · caption mirror)

"Our budget is about as tight as it's ever been, and our capital outlay debt don't roll off for a long time — I mean, to 2037." — Tim Harwell, same meeting (video, 39:31)

"We have some very old buildings, just with issues — sewer issues. A lot of our buildings are just near the end of their life, as far as them being safe for our students to be in." — Tim Harwell, same meeting (video, 39:56)

"There has been discussion — that's not on here — some of those things I've talked about is potentially consolidating some of these schools and making them a little bit bigger. That would require some rezoning. I know Liberty['s] on here as well: if we built a Liberty High School, which would be over $50 million — probably more than that now, because material costs and things like that continue to go up." — Tim Harwell, same meeting (video, 40:27)

"It was built for 800. We're running around 650 right now, and I think our capacity is 800." — Tim Harwell, on Cartwright Elementary, replying to a commission member's capacity estimate in the same discussion (video, 43:16)

"We did a master plan for Cascade High School and a master plan for Community High School, in order to have all athletic facilities — fieldhouse, football field, soccer field, baseball field, softball field. That alone, we're looking at mid-20s as far as in the millions — $25 million — to do all of that." — Tim Harwell, same meeting (video, 46:13)

"If we said right now we wanted to build a new school anywhere, we're probably at least three, three and a half years out before students would be walking in that building. And like you said, you are correct: every year costs go up." — Tim Harwell, same meeting (video, 45:20)

On why enrollment is moving, Harwell pointed to homeschooling, the district's web school, a new private school, and the state's voucher expansion — "Governor Lee passed 35,000 more vouchers, which basically that's $7,500 per student … we have not been impacted in Bedford County by those vouchers yet" (video, 38:04). Later in the same meeting, a speaker reviewing the draft plan's facilities table said of the county's school buildings that "all these — those schools are 51 years or older … the majority of your school[s]" (video, 1:03:59; the auto-captions do not identify this speaker by name).

At the Planning Commission's June 23, 2026 meeting, during discussion of the draft plan's education pages, a commission member (not identified by name in the auto-captions) said:

"With the 2,300 lots that the city has approved, that will probably be developed over the next seven years, we're looking at close to 3,000 students that will impact our schools. We just spent $38 million building Cart[w]right Elementary that is about 600-plus students right now. Most of that development is on that corridor and [Highway] 41." — Planning Commission member, June 23, 2026 (video, 1:01:46 · caption mirror)

"The kids on 41 will go to East Side and Southside. Southside is 76 years old. This is a big impact on our community." — same speaker, same meeting (video, 1:02:09)

Context for those statements: the county's draft comprehensive plan is a 20-year planning document still under commission review, not an adopted school plan. Harwell told the commission the plan's education data was "two-year-old information" and offered to update it, and said the school board maintains its own five-year and ten-year plans (video, 34:46). One district document related to Cartwright capacity is public: the district's Rezoning for Cartwright Elementary School page.

School funding surfaced in the County Commission's June 9, 2026 debate over a proposed senior property tax freeze (the motion failed on a 9–8–1 roll call). What follows is how the commission's own adopted minutes summarize the school-funding statements — these are commissioners' claims, recorded by the county, not findings of Open Bedford:

• Commissioner John Boutwell — in the minutes' words: "Boutwell noted that Tennessee is last in the nation for per-pupil spending for public schools and that Bedford County is almost last in Tennessee." On video he attributed the national ranking to April 2026 reporting by the Nashville Banner and WSMV (video, 11:51), and added a claim of his own research: "adjusted for inflation, Be[d]ford appropriated less money in fiscal year 2025 for the day-to-day operation of schools than it did 10 years prior" (video, 13:01).
• Commissioner Keith Davis — in the minutes' words: "per TISA, adoption of a local property tax freeze does not change Bedford County's state calculation TISA funding requirements, but it risks creating a structural deficit … TISA establishes a strict local contribution expectation. If the county commission fails to fund the minimal requirement the state will withhold TISA allocations and the state comptroller will not approve the county's overall budget" (video, 14:22).
• Commissioner Eric Maddox — in the minutes' words: "Maddox said that the school budget will not be impacted," and, per the minutes' account of his figures, a tax freeze would reduce revenue from a hypothetical 10% tax increase by $63K.
• The commission holds the purse. The exchange also recorded the mechanics: the school board proposes its budget, and the commission approves and funds it. At the same meeting the commission approved Board of Education Budget Amendment No. 4 unanimously.

• Board meetings are listed, with agendas and minutes, on a public portal. The district's site links its meetings to BOE Connect, a Tennessee School Boards Association system. As of 2026-08-07 the portal lists each meeting's date, time, type (Regular, Working, Special), and location, with a published agenda for every meeting and searchable HTML minutes — including roll-call votes by member — for past ones.
• Recent meetings, as the portal lists them: a Regular meeting July 14, 2026 at 6:00 PM; a Study Session July 9 at 5:00 PM; a Special Called meeting June 30 at noon; and a Regular meeting June 18 at 6:00 PM. Most listed meetings show the Central Office Board Room, 500 Madison Street, Shelbyville as the location; the June 18 minutes record the chairman announcing the July 14 meeting would be held at Community High School, with the date moved for the board's Summer Law Conference July 16–18. The board approves its meeting calendar annually — it did so 8–0 on June 18, 2026.
• No recordings are linked on the portal. The meeting listing fetched on 2026-08-07 offers agendas, minutes, and a "projector" view — no video or audio links. Whether the district publishes board-meeting recordings anywhere is an open item in the table below. (County Commission and Planning Commission meetings, by contrast, are on the county government's YouTube channel — see this site's Meetings page.)
• Two bodies, two rooms. What the schools do is decided at the Board of Education; how much county money they get is decided at the County Commission, which approves the school budget and its amendments.

Each open question below is answerable by a specific public document. As those documents are obtained, this page fills in.

Open question	The document that would answer it
Does the district publish video or audio of school board meetings?	A recording link from the district (its meetings portal listed none as of 2026-08-07)
What is in the school board's current five-year and ten-year facilities plans that Superintendent Harwell described to the Planning Commission?	The plan documents themselves, from the district or in a board agenda packet
What do the Cascade and Community athletic master plans (the "$25 million" figure) actually specify?	The master plan documents referenced by the superintendent on July 28, 2026
What is official enrollment, school by school, and how has it changed?	The Tennessee State Report Card district profile (an interactive state application; figures belong to it, not this page)
Which board member represents which district, and when is each seat on the ballot?	The district's board members page (its content loads in the browser) and the county election commission's candidate filings
What does the School Department's own detailed budget contain, beyond the county budget book's fund summaries?	A district-published budget document (the district site currently routes "Budgets & Audits" to the county's page)

Every source this page uses is public:

• Bedford County Schools — the district's official site: schools, calendars, board pages.
• BOE Connect meetings portal — every board agenda and minutes, with roll-call votes.
• Board Policy Manual — the rules the board operates under.
• Tennessee State Report Card — the state's district and school profiles (the link the district itself publishes).
• TISA funding formula — the state's official explainer of how school money is calculated.
• County Audits & Budgets page — budget books and audit reports, including the school funds.
• FY2024–25 audited financial report — the School Department's audited statements, Tennessee Comptroller.
• July 28, 2026 Planning Commission video — the full meeting the capacity statements above come from.

Quotations on this page are transcribed from the auto-generated caption tracks of the county's official meeting videos; filler syllables are omitted, bracketed text corrects caption spellings, and every quotation links to its timestamp so you can hear the words yourself. Statements made in meetings are attributed to their speakers and are not asserted as verified fact — an enrollment or cost figure spoken at a podium is that speaker's figure until an official document confirms it. Open Bedford presents the record without interpretation and takes no position on school funding, construction, consolidation, or rezoning.