In his column this week in The Cranston Herald, Geoff Schoos offers some piercing analysis of the social dynamics being enacted in Cranston (and probably elsewhere) as communities scrabble over the dwindling funds for education and other services. From The Cranston Herald:

I’m sick and tired…

Over the past seven years, our schools have been starved of funds. Unfunded mandates, particularly the ineffective No Child Left Behind, come down to local communities from the federal and state governments. Due to the coincident reduction of federal and state aid, municipalities are left on their own to finance with fewer funds an ever increasingly expensive school system. This forces local school departments to juggle and cut program after program until the very core of the system itself is exposed.

Particularly at the local level, the resultant politics cause warring tribes to fight over the remaining scraps of available funding. The interests of municipal workers are pitted against those who work for the school department. The interests of the police and firefighters are pitted against those of teachers. Higher tax levies besiege taxpayers while they receive fewer services. Meanwhile, parents who are concerned with their children’s futures are reduced to appearing before a council finance committee like Oliver Twist politely asking for more gruel.

In response, the council can only listen and mutter comforting platitudes while knowing that there is nothing that can be done that will not offend one or another tribe competing for increasingly scarce resources. Some legislators, notably Cranston’s Hanna Gallo, have been working for years to design a plan by which scarce resources can be fairly and predictably distributed to all Rhode Island communities in order to ensure that each Rhode Island child has the same educational opportunities. [full text]

I was acutely aware of how much financial difficulty we are facing when I received an email reply from Sen. Bea Lanzi saying that, despite our lack of funding for the schools, she would not support a measure for an increase in property taxes to cover education costs. She also commented critically on the school’s decision to pursue a Caruolo actions, saying that this would “cost the schools and city greatly.”

I will be interested to learn what the outcome was of the city council’s Saturday morning meeting to discuss the pending Caruolo action. Anyone who has any news on this, please share.