Letter: Despite annual surpluses, Tiverton schools again demand more

EastBayRI.com ·

To the editor:

As I write this on Wednesday, the Tiverton School Committee has just announced a special meeting on Saturday morning to discuss whether to

put forward an alternate budget for the ballot at the May 20 financial town referendum.

The prospect of that campaign reminds me of 2015. That year, a budget petition that I put forward reduced the schools’ increase by about

$126,000. The school committee voted to cancel all-day kindergarten.

They reversed that decision after weeks of advocacy on my part and that of affected parents, but their budget didn’t come up short at the end of the year. Rather, they had $1,130,867 left over, a surplus, bringing reserves to $3,454,163.

By state law (called “maintenance of effort”), whatever the town votes to give to the school department one year, it must give at least as much the next. Forever. This year, the school department requested a local increase of $293,500. The Budget Committee voted not to add that amount.

At Tuesday night’s Budget Committee meeting, I presented a report tracing the history of the school department’s surplus. When the federal government gave “stimulus” to the states, Rhode Island reduced its regular aid to Tiverton and replaced it with “restricted aid” from the feds. Regular aid is shown on the town’s budget and local taxpayers must cover any reductions during the year.

As this shift happened, Tiverton taxpayers made up the loss of regular aid as if the restricted aid increase had never happened. Roughly speaking, for every dollar state aid went down, the school department got a dollar of additional restricted aid plus a dollar of local tax money.

Much of that money, the schools simply took from the town. To get the rest, school supporters made threats to cancel sports and close schools.

Then the aid switched back. From 2010 to 2012, restricted aid decreased $921,360 and regular aid increased $895,587. However, the school committee claimed that it had to “restate” its budget so that this wouldn’t look like a big increase and told local taxpayers they needed another $675,891 on top of it. At the end of that year, the schools had a $984,508 surplus.

The average surplus in the years since (including money it’s spent outside of the budget) has been almost exactly that amount: $985,215 every year.

If the school department puts in an alternate budget to take the additional $293,500 from Tiverton taxpayers, that money will be added forever through maintenance of effort, and the huge surpluses will continue. In a year that the town is facing a big new debt payment to cover school repairs while beating down every other town department’s budget, that would be a very aggressive thing to do.

Justin Katz

Tiverton

Mr. Katz is a member of the Tiverton Budget Committee.