Revised state aid figures alter budget picture for schools

By JEN COWART
Posted 3/6/19

A change in state aid projections has affected the proposed Cranston Public Schools budget for the coming fiscal year.

“With the governor’s budget came a couple of pretty significant decreases …

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Revised state aid figures alter budget picture for schools

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A change in state aid projections has affected the proposed Cranston Public Schools budget for the coming fiscal year.

“With the governor’s budget came a couple of pretty significant decreases to our state aid money,” Superintendent Jeannine Nota-Masse said Tuesday.

The School Committee on Feb. 27 approved an amended version of the coming year’s budget based on recommendations from Joe Balducci, the district’s chief financial officer.

Balducci said the changes were of a time-sensitive nature and required approval ahead of the submission of the district’s budget plan to the mayor’s office on March 1.

The amended version of the approximately $163.87 million budget plan seeks a larger contribution from the city than the initial proposal unveiled in January. Nota-Masse said the $3,119,653 local increase now being requested – up from the $2,455,926 increase originally sought – compensates for an approximately $663,700 total decrease in projected state aid.

The superintendent noted that the governor’s budget plan was released days after the district’s initial budget. She said the local planning process began after Thanksgiving.

Balducci on Tuesday spoke about the specific decreases in state aid in the governor’s plan.

“Our revenue to the school district is received from the state in three categories,” Balducci said Tuesday. “We receive formula aid, group home aid, and high cost special education tuitions. Several years ago, the General Assembly came up with a Fair Funding Formula and that is where the formula aid comes from. It is based on student enrollment. The group home aid is when the state gives us assistance if a child placed in a group home that is located in Cranston and will be attending a Cranston Public School. And the high-cost special education tuitions is assistance in covering the costs of students who we can’t educate in the Cranston Public Schools for one reason or another, for either behavioral or medical reasons, for example – we receive assistance with those costs. The costs may include things like tuition or additional services such as an aide or transportation. The state only puts in so much money and it is handed out to the districts based on their need each year, so it changes year after year.”

Initially, the district estimated it would receive $64,604,138 in state aid for the 2019-20 school year, an increase of $3,566,469 over the current year’s total of $61,037,669.

However, according to Balducci, decreases of $1,773 in the group home aid category, $42,933 in the high-cost special education tuitions category and the loss of more than $600,000 funding in new categories reduced the state aid projection to a total of $64,940,429. That is $2,902,760 more than the aid for the current year.

“Part of the equation in the Fair Funding category pertains to the overall wealth of the communities,” Balducci said. “The state Office of Municipal Affairs provides [the Rhode Island Department of Education] with the assessed values of the properties and RIDE puts that data into their equation when determining their funding. When the Office of Municipal Affairs tabulated their data for the 2019 budget last year for this year’s aid, they realized that they had miscalculated. It was an error on their part, but they determined that most districts had already set their budges so they decided not to readjust for this fiscal year, and to catch up next year instead.”

That catch-up equates to a loss of approximately $450,000 for Cranston, Balducci said.

Additionally, when the governor’s budget was released in January, it was determined that districts would incur another cost, this time related to students who have been placed at the Training School by the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

“Those students who were placed at the Training School by DCYF but whose residence is within the Cranston Public Schools district, some of those costs related to those students were now being shifted to the local district,” Balducci said.

For Cranston, that cost totals an estimated $164,403.

“We aren’t sure exactly what’s behind that number,” Balducci said. “But based how many students we have at the Training School currently, we are estimating that it’s about $40,000 per student.”

Balducci said the figures may change further before final budget approval by the City Council and mayor.

“Every school district does receive the same amount of money per student, but they also take into account what is called the student success factor, which translates to how many free or reduced lunch students are in each district,” he said.

According to Balducci, the data used to formulate the budget plan was the most recent data provided by RIDE in its “snapshot” of those free and reduced lunch numbers, from March 14, 2018.

“In March 2019, RIDE will take another ‘snapshot,’” Balducci said. “At some point early in April, I will receive that data from RIDE and that formula aid will either go up or, unfortunately, it could go down. That’s the only other adjustment that I still need to concern myself with.”

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