Tennessee Higher Education Commission Chief of Staff Lou Hanemann provided members of the Senate Education Committee with a dire warning on Wednesday about the financial condition of funding for the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship programs.
The current lottery scholarship fund covers 13 programs, including the HOPE scholarship, Tennessee Reconnect, Tennessee Promise, and high school dual enrollment, serving roughly 170,000 students across the state.
“In the current financial fiscal year, the financial situation for the lottery is not great,” said Hanemann. “We think that this year we might come up pretty flat, and so no major corrections need to happen right away, but we are very concerned about the fiscal outlook for the lottery for expenditures and revenues for out years.”…