School-Funding Law Causes Confusion for R.I. Communities (RI)

June 10, 2011

When state leaders pulled millions of dollars in state aid from cities and towns last year, it gave them “tools” intended to help them deal with the cash loss.

One such option freed communities from a state law that requires them to give their school districts at least as much money in local taxes as they did the prior year.

Instead, municipalities were granted permission to cut school funding back to 95 percent of what it was in their 2009 budgets.

Now there’s a debate as to whether cities and towns can still use that cost-saving option as they put together their budgets for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

No, says Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist. But legislative leaders say yes.

Several communities are stuck in the middle of that conundrum, with the disagreement coming to a head this week in Warwick.

In Warwick, the School Committee is c rying foul because the City Council just approved a new budget that only gives schools exactly what they got in city dollars this year — which is 95 percent of what the district received from the city in 2009.

School officials contend that the option to revert back to 5 percent below 2009 funding, about $117.7 million, was a one-time deal from the state. To give anything less, they say, is a violation of the state’s long-standing “maintenance of effort” law which says that local funding of school districts can never be less than the year before.

Warwick schools received $123.9 million from the city in fiscal 2010 and the School Department based its budget request for the coming fiscal year on the assumption that it would get at least that much from the city and, hopefully, a little more.

School Committee Chairwoman Bethany Furtado said that, based on information from the state Department of Education, the school board felt it was on solid legal ground earlier this spring when it put together a roughly $154.3-million budget proposal supported by at least $124 million from the city.

She said that, in February, Gist had sent all school districts a letter reassuring them that the legislature’s action last year was only a temporary abatement of the maintenance-of-effort law and does not extend to this year.

Last month, however, House Speaker Gordon D. Fox and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed contradicted Gist. In a letter to George Caruolo, chairman of the state Board of Regents, Fox and Paiva Weed said that legislatures intended the cost-saving option to extend to fiscal 2012 budgets.

They state that communities that dropped their level of school funding last year can remain at that level.

“No offense, but I’d rather go to the people who sponsored the original bill to find out what it means,” Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian said Thursday. “If this is, in fact, reversed , we would need to raise an additional $6 to $7 million and it would make the School Department nearly 70 percent of our total city budget.”

Furtado said that Gist’s reading of the law is the only interpretation that’s relevant and having to cut upward of $6 million from Warwick schools will be devastating.

“She is the commissioner of education and she’s our boss,” Furtado said. “I honestly don’t know where we’re going to find the money; we’re already down to the bone.”

Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees, said there is concern that some of the districts that took a hit include urban areas such as Pawtucket that are already struggling.

“Some of them were our urban core communities where the students are already so far behind,” Duffy said. “And some of these districts are already running deficits. [The Fox-Paiva Weed interpretation] will only put them further behind the eight ball.”

On Thursday the state Department of Education could shed no light on the dispute. Spokesman Elliot Krieger said that Gist has not responded to the letter from Fox and Paiva Weed.

Caruolo was not available for comment.

According to data from the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, at least 10 communities availed themselves of the opportunity to fund their school districts this year at less than what they received in 2009, whether it was by 1 or 2 percent or the full 5 percent allowed. Those districts include Pawtucket, West Warwick and Newport.

Furtado said the matter is most likely going to have to be settled by the courts.

“I’m just not sure it’s going to be through a suit filed by us or another school district,” she said.