The Other Shoe

Funding Update courtesy of John McDaid

From www.Harddeadlines.com
Funding formula may be *slightly* less bad for Portsmouth
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 9:51am — jmcdaid
The state education funding formula which passed the general assembly last night includes a minor tweak to one of the multipliers, increasing the overall state share by .025 in 2011. When I rolled the numbers into the GoogleDocs spreadsheet (by changing the formula in column V) it reduces our loss in state aid from $2.6M to $2.1M, so our yearly hit would be $207K rather than $260K. It is not, contrary to the ProJo's breathless reporting, an "increase up to 50%," but it may be smaller decrease than anticipated.

Given the complexity of the formula, please take my numbers with appropriate grains of salt. I have a query in to the district to check.

Original Post

This evening the Rhode Island House and Senate voted in favor of the new Education Funding Formula. This will mean the loss of $2.6 million in State Education Aid for Portsmouth over the next ten years. We have spoken in previous posts of this cut, now it is a reality. The Portsmouth Schools have always been in the top quartile for performance and the bottom quartile for cost. We quite frankly deliver the best education value in Rhode Island; for that we can be proud. Unfortunately that same frugality hurts us in the funding formula. So, in the wisdom of RIDE, Portsmouth is penalized for our success.

These votes are a call to action for all of Portsmouth. How are we as a community going to maintain the quality of our schools while cutting $260,000 annually from our school budget? These votes are a clarion call to come together to address our present budget situation. We need to fund our system this year, and we need to quickly gather to address 2012 and beyond.