Cranston school budget at a ‘crisis level’

“Crisis level.”

Those were the words spoken on Monday night at the May Cranston Education Advisory Board meeting, held at Cranston High School West.

“I’d say that the school budget is in crisis,” said Gale during his portion of the meeting. “This is actually the first time I’ve used that word, but yes, I’d say we’re actually at crisis level.”

This comes after last week’s very well attended city budget meeting on Thursday night, which had to be moved from council chambers because of overcrowding. With hundreds of citizens of all ages in attendance and hours of testimony, Gale cited last week’s meeting as having one of the best turnouts and he was pleased to see it well attended, and for good reason.

“We learned early last week that we were losing $763,000 in state aid because our numbers were higher than those at the state, and at the end of last week we learned that the state numbers were correct,” said Gale. “The mayor had given us a $700,000 increase in his budget, but we had asked for a 1.8 percent increase which now with the loss of the state aid as well as what the mayor’s budget didn’t give us, actually gives us a million dollar shortfall. By losing the state money, we are probably lower-funded than this year, but if not, it’s really only a $50,000 or $60,000 difference.”

Gale cited some budget items for which the school department has no control over, such as contractual obligations and increases in health care.

“For those types of things, it is what it is,” he said. “At best we’re looking at level funding for next year, and the education aid formula aid increase ends this year also, so next year at the state level we will also be level-funded, so we are looking at being level-funded for two years and our costs are only going to go up.”

He summarized some of his testimony from last week’s meeting for those CEAB guests who were not present.

“During my testimony, I gave an analysis of the budget from the 2017 fiscal year to the 2018 fiscal year, for each department” Gale said. “There was a 3.69 percent increase, $10.1 million dollars in total. The school department is getting $700,000, a .76 percent increase, less than one percent. There’s an average increase per department of 11.25 percent, so there’s quite a big disparity there.”

He cited one example that he gave the City Council last week, showing where cuts could surely be made in order to provide money to the schools.

“There’s a line item in the city budget, care for trees for $50,000, that’s a 33 percent increase,” he said. “It shows you what the city values, what our mayor values.”

Gale felt that the City Council definitely got the message last week that the citizens of Cranston care about properly funding the schools, and said that at the end of the meeting all on the council had pledged their support to the schools and to helping to find ways to increase funding.

“At the time, the blame was placed on RIDE taking away that funding, but the council did not address their million dollar shortfall, the money we asked for that they didn’t fund,” he said. “Most of the attention was placed on the state. Now we need them to stand by their promises from last week and hold them accountable to their word.”

On Wednesday night at 7 p.m. again in City Council Chambers the next budget meeting will be held, an amendment meeting, and Gale hopes to see another great turnout from the citizens of Cranston. He became impassioned as he wrapped up his school committee report.

“I hope we need this meeting to be moved, just like last week’s meeting,” Gale said. “What we need to do is continue to put the pressure on the City Council members to keep to their word. We need to show up because the only way this is going to change is if people show up and demand this funding. We are in crisis and there is no easy option. Someone is going to get hurt if we don’t get this funding, and I don’t know who it is, but I am going to make sure it’s not the kids.”

Other topics discussed at the monthly meeting included the changeover from PARCC testing to RICAS testing for next year, as well as the end of NECAP Science testing after this year. Additionally, vice chairperson, Michael Manzi spoke about the Camp XL opportunities for summer camp and opportunities for volunteering with the program as well. He directed interested persons to the website www.cranstonafterschool.com for more information about the daily summer camp schedule and fees for attending. The next and final meeting of CEAB for the school year will take place on June 5, 2017 at 7 p.m. in the Cranston High School East Media Center.