State Education Commissioner Deborah Gist fielded tough questions from legislators angered by the fact that the department’s proposed school funding formula would send less money to their district during a briefing Thursday afternoon.

State Representative Timothy Williamson (D-West Warwick) rattled off a list of questions rapid fire, all centered on the issue of how districts receiving less aid would be able to afford education costs.

“The question becomes if you’re going to cap what the state provides, are you ever going to cap what the community provides,” said Williamson.

Williamson also asked whether the department of education had taken into account a community’s other contractual obligations, including police, fire and municipal workers, when devising the formula.

Gist said that the department of education created their proposal based strictly on finding the way to distribute funding in the most “fair and equitable” way possible. The formula proposal does not take into account a community’s other contractual obligations, she said. (The formula does, however, take into account students by factoring in how many students are considered under the poverty level.)

“The formula starts to break down when its not applied consistently,” said Gist.

Republican State Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere (R-Charlestown, Westerly) argued that the formula seemed like an example of punishing good performance.

“It seems like most of the districts that stand to lose money are high performing, well-managed districts,” said Algiere.

“And we could see performance decrease.”

Gist granted there would be “winners and losers” thanks to the formula, but argued that legislators shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the aim of the formula is fairness.

“There is no doubt that this is a major adjustment and for some communities it’s an adjustment down [in revenue],” said Gist.

Although Rhode Island spends the 10th highest amount of money per capita in the nation on education, it is also the only state without a predictable formula to fund education.

Since the mid-1990s, whenever the state decided to increase its allotment for education funding, the legislature has implemented across-the-board increases to what communities were receiving the year prior by a given percentage.

That’s led to what most would argue is an illogical situation. For instance, a community that saw its enrollment go down over the year prior, could very well see its state aid increase, despite the fact that the district was serving less students.

To rectify the problem, the department of education has created a formula that “follows the student” instead of simply going to the district the way it does now.

Using a regional average of National Center for Education data, the formula assumes it costs $8,295 to educate each student under the department of education’s Basic Education Plan. The formula is then adjusted by 40 percent more than the actual cost of the basic education plan for every student in the district receiving a free or reduced lunch – the state’s indicator of poverty.

That formula, applied to districts across the state, tells the state how much money the district should be spending on education. The department of education’s proposal would then use another complicated, quadratic formula to calculate the “state share,” or what the state should contribute to the district for its education costs.

The proposal calculates a district’s revenue generating capacity based on its assessed real estate values adjusted for median family income compared against statewide values. The proposal takes that number and squares it. The proposal then takes the number of students on free or reduced lunch and squares that number. Those two numbers are added together and divided by two.

That number, which is the result of the quadratic equation, represents the “state share ratio.”

The formula doesn’t take into account special education costs. But the proposal would have the state assume extraordinary special education costs once they exceed a threshold to be determined later.

Representative Michael J. Marcello (D-Cranston, Scituate) said he thought it was a wise move to keep special education costs outside of the formula, because to do otherwise would incentive districts to put more students into special education programs.

The formula is also revenue neutral, but would be phased in over a 10-year period. If state revenues increased, leading state legislators to decide to increase aid to education, that formula would increase funding to districts throughout the state. If state revenues decreased, as predicted in the governor’s budget proposal, and legislators decided to decrease education aid, the formula would decrease funding.

Under the current formula, Warwick would stand to gain $444,362 in education aid this year. It would receive no additional funding over the next nine years, (unless, of course, legislators increased overall education aid).

Providence would receive almost $29 million more in education funding over the 10-year period. Cranston would stand to gain about $9.6 million over the life of the proposal.

The Bristol-Warren school district however, would lose almost $9 million over 10 years. House and Senate leadership thanked Gist and the Department of Education for coming forward with a proposal, but warned that it was only a first step in the process and would likely be amended.

“You have created a lively experiment here,” said Senate Majority Leader Daniel Connors (D-Cumberland).

Connors saluted Gist for “shifting the debate away from an urban vs. suburbs issue.”

“This is a starting point,” said House Speaker Gordon Fox.