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Providence Journal

By Robert Cushman

Posted Dec 10, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Tonight, the Warwick School Committee is slated to vote on a controversial proposal to close schools. With secondary schools operating at almost half their capacity and student population predicted to decline...

Tonight, the Warwick School Committee is slated to vote on a controversial proposal to close schools.

With secondary schools operating at almost half their capacity and student population predicted to decline further, a panel of stakeholders has recommended a consolidation plan that Supt. Richard D’Agostino estimates will save the district more than $4 million annually.

Besides the short-term emotional arguments against the plan by students, parents and teachers who really do not understand the long-term implications of rejecting it, one would hope the elected representatives on the School Committee and city leaders understand hy this is necessary. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case given the grandstanding antics of some officials in recent days.

Hopefully those distractions will be ignored. A decision should be made based on factual data, and an understanding of a trend in allocating tax dollars that has developed over the last decade in Warwick.

Since 2007, the local appropriation of new tax dollars to the city budget has increased 55 percent from $63.9 to $99.6 million. For schools, it increased 4.8 percent from $113.1 to $118.6 million. That translates to an 87 percent allocation of increased revenues to the city.

Sixty-four percent of local tax dollars supported schools six years ago. Today the ratio is 54.4 percent to schools and 45.6 to the city. According to the school finance director, a 65/35 or 60/40 split is more the norm.

Of every new local tax dollar spent in the city in the last decade, 52 cents has been allocated to retired employee benefits. Less than 6 cents remains for non-personnel expenditures.

The long-established practice, by which the city paid borrowing costs to maintain school buildings that it owns has ceased. Now, in what may be an unprecedented requirement in Rhode Island, Warwick schools are responsible for annual capital-improvement expenses paid out of their operating budget.

In 2006, voters approved referenda authorizing the city to borrow funds to finance city and school projects. The next year, all projects were suspended indefinitely because large liabilities threatened the city bond rating.

While city leaders have authorized $2 million in borrowing from that same bond fund to build a new fire station in Potowomut for public-safety reasons, they don’t seem to have a problem with school buildings that continue to deteriorate and fail to meet fire-safety standards.

As frequent critics of school spending, City Council President Donna Travis and Mayor Scott Avedisian, who have both served over 20 years in office, fail to recognize and accept their culpability for the unsustainable record growth in the size of the city budget.

Meanwhile, schools have operated on practically a net-zero budget increase since 2008 by streamlining operations through staff reductions, outsourcing transportation and closing elementary schools, saving millions of dollars annually.

Clearly, this School Committee should realize that no significant rise in revenue is going to flow from the city into schools. School consolidation will be the only means of investing savings back into the system.

It is pure hypocrisy for any city leader to criticize a proposal that would save the School Department millions in one breath and rail against any requested increase in the school budget. Come budget time in May, are city leaders prepared to increase the school budget by the millions required to keep all schools open and make the necessary repairs if consolidation is rejected? I doubt it.

Yet, how long can consolidation be the answer in providing the funds to meet long-term educational needs?

Without reform, all data indicate that city spending will continue to spiral out of control. For example, last year a plan was submitted to the state that will require $314 million in additional local tax dollars to be paid over 14 years to increase the funding ratio of just one pension plan from 22 to just 25 percent. The plan’s accrued liability will be reduced by only $4.6 million while its unfunded liability will remain well over $200 million; the estimated cost to build a brand new, state-of-the-art city-wide consolidated high school, $120 million.

Warwick needs a sustainable vision that will require tens of millions of new local tax dollars to be invested in the school system. That will require a long-term plan to control spiraling city-employee retirement benefits. Unfortunately, current city leaders have shown little desire to propose these reforms.

Clearly, all facts point to the conclusion that, without consolidation now, educational services in Warwick will suffer greatly.

Hopefully, the School Committee will realize that fact and unanimously approve the proposed consolidation plan.

Robert Cushman (cushmanr@cox.net), is a former Warwick city councilman and School Committee chairman.