With $410 million sitting in the reserve fund for the Tennessee education lottery, lawmakers have been eyeing ways to expand the lottery scholarship program.
They figure they can count on about 17 to 27 million dollars of new money each year.
Senate Education Committee Chairman Jamie Woodson says she’d like to see some of that money targeted at non-traditional students..
“Our adult learners who for a variety of reasons, didn’t go to college immediately, or ‘life happened’, and they went into the work force and would like to pursue post-secondary at a later date. We have a very very narrow window for those non-traditional students now and I think there’s a great deal of interest in opening up the door for those students.”
There’s likely to be several suggestions on how to best to use the new money, and there’s already disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on how low a grade-point-average a scholarship recipient can have and still retain the scholarship.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM