One member of our local school committee, Steve Stycos, sends out updates about our schools to an email list. In the most recent update was this:
MORE MONEY PROBLEMS
According to information presented at last night’s meeting between the city council and school committee, a new state law bars the school department from submitting a budget which is more than 5.25 percent higher than this year’s budget. The school administration, however, presented a budget projection for next year that is 8 percent higher than this year. The leading causes of the increase are a five percent increase in wages (caused by contracts which generally provide a 3.5 percent general increase and an additional step for top paid employees), a ten percent increase in the cost of health insurance and a 12 percent increase in pension costs. Superintendent Scherza will present a proposed and detailed budget to the school committee in late January. On Tuesday January 9 he will deliver a state of the schools address which will certainly touch on finances at 7 PM at Western Hills Middle School.
For those of you who missed this (and I was one) there is a new law in Rhode Island regarding how much schools can increase their budgets. Here is an excerpt from the Governor’s press release upon signing the bill:
Under the new law, local spending is reined in by reducing the city and town tax levy cap from 5.5 % to 4.0% by Fiscal Year 2013. The bill also establishes a cap on the budget adopted and presented by any school committee at 105.25%, beginning in FY 2008, of the previous year’s allocation. The cap would be reduced to 104% by FY 2012. To help reduce the cost of unfunded mandates, future state mandates to school districts would be required to be fully reimbursable by the state.
First of all, I have a question: How did this this new state law get passed without any chance for discussion by parents, teachers, and school departments throughout the state? I do not remember seeing anything in the media about this proposal, nor any news about it being passed.
I am all for doing something about the problem of sharply increasing local property taxes in Rhode Island. But it seems to me that this answer may cause more problems and hardships for our schools.
The goal, as far as I see it, should be for all of us to rise up and have a “Million Parents” march on Washington where we would insist that our national government begin funding the educational mandates set out by No Child Left Behind.
But the reality is that it will probably be a long time, if ever, before we see the kind of money coming from the national government that is needed to shore up these problems. Many in Rhode Island think it is time to ask teachers to accept the sacrifice of parity with members of the private sector in terms of contributing to their health care and retirement benefits.
I believe that teachers should be among our most highly paid professionals. However, I have a mother who is 81 years old, and I see firsthand how the sharp increases in taxes can hurt someone on a fixed income. Luckily, she can afford it, at least for now. Most people her age are not so lucky.
Something has to be done. I don’t know what we will do here in Cranston to bridge the gap between 5.25% that is the allowed increase and the 8% that the schools are requesting. I hope we can find solutions that do not include closing our community elementary schools, ending our sports, or limiting our high quality special programs such as music and enrichment.
Kmareka.com 
Keirsten,
The bill was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Paiva-Weed. It was a counter/complement (depending on one’s point of view) to the House’s “flat tax� for less than 1000 taxpayers in Rhode Island. Whether intended or not, at least those in the Senate could argue that they were standing up for middle-income taxpayers while the House catered to the wealthy. In the end, both got passed.
The reality of it is that these tax policies are not worth the paper they’re written on. The tax break for the wealthy, as I have commented before in any venue that would have me, would lead to no economic gain for Rhode Island. With the State Budget in a deficit of over $ 100 this year largely due to inflated revenue expectations from Lincoln Downs and Newport, the reduction of tax revenue from the wealthy w/ no economic gain is like throwing kerosene on the proverbial fire.
Everyone likes tax reductions – myself included. But the problem w/ the property tax “relief� is that there is no commensurate policy design to cope w/ the new calculus of revenue vis-à -vis the programs and services it supports. Waiting for the state to increase general revenues (a favorite “promise� of politicians running for office) is a fool’s errand. Forget the Fed. In short, there’s no Santa when it comes to funding social/educational/public programs and services.
The problem isn’t tax cuts – it’s tax policy. The tax policy ought to have some relation to the programs it’s designed to support. That requires an integrated approach to governing, policy design and policy implementation. That can’t happen when too often tax policy is used for political rather than public purposes.
I have no child in the public schools – she’s older now, graduated from college and working. But as a former public school teacher I know the impact that the reduction of funding will have on already strapped systems, which are also constrained by contractual and political realities. As they say, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.