Will the governor’s proposed budget ease challenges for schools across the state that are bracing for lost COVID funds and the Rhode Island Department of Education no longer forgiving districts for declining enrollment?
Add to the lost federal and state funds, there are concerns in some communities that town or city councils will level fund school districts, meaning they will provide no increase to the school budgets, while those school systems face rising costs.
“The declining enrollment numbers will still result in most districts receiving less,” says Newport Schools’ Superintendent Colleen Burns Jermain.
Gov. Dan McKee’s proposed budget would increase the state funding formula aid $19.2 million, raising per-pupil funding to $12,335, an increase of $459.
Is it enough? “The increase in per pupil (funding) will help lessen the pain,” Jermain says. And, of course, the proposal needs to survive legislative scrutiny.
Meanwhile, the governor’s proposed budget also suggests additional funding for multilanguage learners; $15 million to improve outcomes in math and English arts, including professional development opportunities; and adding 35 pre-k classrooms (seven hundred seats); enhancing school meal programs for 6,500 students; and emphasis on out-of-school programming.
Kids Count, in a letter from its Executive Director Paige Clausius-Parks, has praised the budget for addressing “items that will affect the well-being of Rhode Island’s children, youth and families.”
Superintendents of schools we spoke to find the proposals promising, question how they might be funded or accomplished, and whether they will do enough.
To the proposal for an additional 35 pre-k classrooms, Jermain asks “sounds good – wondering how this would be accomplished?”
And she wonders “what funding will be eliminated” to support the transition of 6,500 students from reduced-priced breakfast and lunch to receiving both meals free.
“The bottom line is that our COVID monies plus RIDE’s harmless provisions for declining enrollment, plus the town’s plans to level fund us again, creates great challenges,” says Westerly Schools’ Superintendent Mark Garceau. “The provisions in the governor’s budget present some degree of ‘offsets’ to the hits we will take.”
In this post-pandemic era, schools are facing enormous challenges, catching up on lost learning, grappling with rapidly advancing technological innovation, growing mental health concerns, declining enrollment, increasing multilanguage learners, staff shortages, and aging school facilities, among the issues.
Gina Picard, Chariho Regional Schools’ Superintendent, talks of the considerable shortage of mental health staff. Garceau says mental health is among priorities in our schools.
Picard also faces the challenge this spring of trying to convince voters in the district’s three towns – Hopkinton, Chariho and Richmond – to approve a $150 million bond to replace three eighty plus year-old elementary schools. Voters in all three towns would have to approve the bond, and it appears that it is an uphill battle.
In South Kingstown town officials last year pulled a bond for school construction from the ballot.
Garceau put it in perspective. “What we were trying to make up for, much of our COVID funding was targeted at closing learning and support gaps for our kids in terms of ensuring equity of access to technology, additional academic and mental health supports. We also used funds for professional development to staff on how to best ensure that our kids and their families get what they need to regain what they lost and to be successful going forward.
“With COVID monies coming to an end, and with districts like ours continuing to experience declining enrollment (for which we were largely held harmless during the pandemic), the questions become about how we continue to address the needs of our most vulnerable populations and our overall population with less money? What do we recognize was critical during the last few years and how, with the money going away, do we preserve those things?”
