Chattanooga Times Free Press

A top committee of Tennessee educators wants lawmakers to include special education prekindergarten students in the state's public school funding formula. The recommendation follows pleas from school boards and superintendents who say they've been saddled with the price tag of an unfunded mandate because federal and state laws require local school districts to serve students with disabilities as young as 3. "The problem is, they've legally compelled us to serve kids for whom they're not proportionally funding us," said Bob Nardo, the executive director at the Libertas School, a Memphis charter school, during a TISA Review Committee meeting this month…