Two new rulings by the Rhode Island Superior Court mean that the city will be required to provide additional funding to the Providence Public School District. The rulings follow a case brought by the city against the state Department of Education.
A hearing to determine how much funding the City of Providence must provide to the PPSD was initially scheduled for Wednesday but was postponed until Nov. 20. At a Tuesday meeting, Mayor Brett Smiley said he believed the potential range for funding was $10 to $85 million.
RIDE Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green ordered the state to withhold aid to the city due to the City’s alleged failure to meet its school funding requirements as detailed under the Crowley Act. This Act is a portion of Rhode Island’s General Laws that governs districts operating under state control. The PPSD has been under state takeover since 2019.
“Throughout the State intervention, State aid to Providence Public Schools has increased by $30.5 million compared to the City’s increase of just $5.5 million,” RIDE and the PPSD wrote in a joint press release. The Court found that “municipal funding for school districts under state intervention must be increased by the same percentage as the increase in statewide school aid,” the press release continued.
The PPSD is currently facing a nearly $11 million budget deficit. Some of the budget cuts proposed by PPSD include eliminating spring and winter sports, laying off non-union staff, getting rid of RIPTA bus passes for students living between one and two miles of their schools, eliminating English Language Learner certification reimbursements for teachers and cutting some teacher assistant positions.
Currently, instead of riding school buses, PPSD high school students living over a mile from school are eligible for free RIPTA passes. If the budget cuts go through, only students living more than two miles from school would be able to get passes, meaning some high schoolers would have to walk about 40 minutes to school each day.
In a letter to the PPSD community, Superintendent Javier Montañez wrote, “the District will have more information after the (Nov. 20) hearing to make appropriate budgeting decisions.”
The exact implications of the ruling on the city’s budget are still uncertain, but Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller warned that the consequences could include increasing taxes or cutting vital city expenses. “That’s what we will do because that’s what we have to do,” Smiley said.
“We’re talking about a potentially astronomical, devastating amount of money in an already lean city budget,” said Miller.
Smiley stated that in the 2024 fiscal year, statewide funding for education went up 6.9% while state funding for the PPSD only increased by 1.8%. “Why should the taxpayers of Providence have to increase its funding (of the PPSD) to compensate for increases in school funding in Barrington and East Greenwich and wherever else,” he said.
Smiley said the PPSD could have proposed cutting “high-cost administrators (or) multi-million dollar consulting contracts.” He said if the PPSD was under local control, “the cuts that we would prioritize would not be the ones that are freaking out middle school kids in our city.”
“It is just wrong what they are doing to our kids,” Smiley said. “I have little kids coming up to me saying, ‘Mayor, don’t cut my sports.’”
Morente wrote that “a lack of proper resources enabled dysfunction and underperformance and was a major factor of why the State intervened in the first place. City leaders have repeatedly stated they are ready to prove to the State that they are prepared to regain local control, but their budget priorities say otherwise.”
As a result of the ruling, the city has postponed final reallocations for American Rescue Plan Act funds, according to a media advisory. The city entered a hiring freeze and halted discretionary spending.
Smiley and Miller have accused the PPSD of lacking fiscal transparency, and they previously demanded that the PPSD agree to an independent audit of its budget. Montañez agreed to the audit on the condition that the city would also undergo an audit of its finances.
“Our city is not a bank for a state-controlled experiment,” Miller wrote in a statement on the City Council’s Instagram. “Why should Providence taxpayers be forced to bankroll an opaque and irresponsible budgeting process that treats students and families as collateral damage?” she asked in a Friday press release.
The city offered to increase PPSD’s funding by $2.5 million if the PPSD underwent an audit and the state increased its funding of the district. The district did not accept that offer by the city’s deadline.
On Tuesday, about 50 students participated in a walkout and march from the district headquarters to City Hall to demand more school funding. The protest was organized by Take Back PVD, a group founded by students at the PPSD’s Classical High School after teacher layoffs last year.
Juliana Espinal, an organizer with Take Back PVD and a 16-year-old Classical High School student, said “we think the City should be giving us more money, but then we also think the state should be … accepting the money that’s offered.”
Graham Welsh, a 16-year-old student at Classical High School, said he was worried about “a layoff crisis” if the budget deficit continues. “The staff of a school are central to the student experience,” he said.
Juan Soriano, a member of Young Voices RI, said he was particularly worried about students losing their bus passes. “It’s just going to increase chronic absenteeism,” he said.
Ciara Meyer is a senior staff writer from Saratoga Springs, New York. She plans on concentrating in Statistics and English Nonfiction. In her free time, she loves scrapbooking and building lego flowers.
Mikayla Kennedy is a Metro editor covering housing and transportation. They are a junior from New York City studying Political Science and Public Policy Economics.
