Things have got to change.

In the past few weeks, at School Committee budget work sessions and at City Council meetings, in coffee shops and on the street, there’s been a lot of name-calling and finger pointing.

The schools point to the council, which holds the city’s purse strings. No one makes decisions without their approval, they say.

The council says spending is out of control, and they’re willing to work with the schools as long as things are transparent and they’re not footing the bill for anything they’re not responsible for.

The bottom line, though, is that no one is having an easy time of it. The day after proposing his budget, Superintendent Peter Nero said he would like one-tenth of what the Warwick schools spend. That’s not far off. Considering the fact that Warwick – a comparable community that actually has 267 fewer students – spends $43 million more is a bit tough to swallow. Warwick isn’t faced with cutting sports, they haven’t eliminated elementary music programs and their School Committee meetings are hardly the public flogging Cranston’s members have endured over the past few weeks.

That’s not to say that Cranston residents, parents and students don’t have the right to be upset. They’re being punished for things they can’t control, and once again the buck is being passed with the impact happening to the little guy.

Still, that one-tenth that Nero is talking about would cut a healthy chunk away from the debt the district is accruing. A $4 million deficit sounds a lot more manageable than a $9 million one.

What both sides of the city – municipal government and schools – need to come together on is making sure the inequity found across city boundaries doesn’t continue. It is likely that Warwick’s spending is not where it should be, but the difference could be eliminated with the implementation of a fair funding formula. If money is allocated to districts based on both enrollment and student need, we wouldn’t be running into these problems, and Cranston would likely be in far better shape than it is. The demographics of the city are changing, and the state needs to recognize that in how it funds our schools. Otherwise, affluent districts will continue to have money to burn and families will flee already-struggling districts.

Ultimately, that means that some students in Rhode Island aren’t receiving the education we owe them. If that’s not a priority, we don’t know what is. The time for talk is over. Get something in place this year, and changes can be made as needed. And most of all, let’s all get behind this so we can start repairing the relationships we broke long ago.

This is one city – let’s start acting like it.