I have read the Warwick Beacon article (9/26) on the meeting of the Warwick Schools Budget Commission and the City Council. As a commission member and also the former interim director of finance for the school district, I have a unique perspective on the status of the district’s fiscal plight.

I will begin by saying I am in disagreement with the presentation made by Mr. Almonte, the commission chair, as well as the tone of the Beacon article reporting on the meeting.

“The main reason for the financial crisis … was not due to the revenue shortfall but due to poor financial controls and poor financial discipline,” Mr. Almonte was quoted as saying at the top of the article.

I would vehemently disagree. The issue was not so much the fiscal controls but the ill-advised fiscal software system the district has been using for years. Those who were monitoring expenditures did not have access to the information to adequately monitor expenditures. Spending resources appropriately and not having good internal systems for monitoring those expenses are two different issues. It was the appropriate delivery of education using available resources that created the budget deficits in FY23, FY24 and FY25. The deficits were created due to inadequate resources to provide the educational services required by the 8,000+ Warwick school students.

The Budget Commission has spent months delving into the issue of the school district budget.

Initially, the charges and investigation revolved around gross mismanagement of the district’s finances. After numerous meetings and questioning of district staff and an in-depth study by two members of the commission, there was no evidence of poor fiscal discipline. The district is providing the educational services it is required to do by state and federal laws and regulations. Many of these expenses come from “unfunded” mandates such as special education. IDEA is the federal law prescribing the services required to be provided to students with special needs. Congress originally promised to fund 40% of this federal program's considerable costs. It has never funded more than 13%. School districts must pick up the costs.

Software was inadequate

Prior to serving on the commission, I served as the interim director of finance. I soon found the issue of trying to make decisions using the district’s fiscal software. As a result, I created a spreadsheet to be used to monitor all employees’ salary and benefit costs as well as to be used to project future employee expenses. In the development of the spreadsheet, it became apparent that the district’s fiscal software was inadequate to the task, since different departments were using different personnel data. That software is being replaced. I also found the information being provided to the administration and School Committee was inadequate for making sound fiscal decisions. A new report was developed that both gave the information needed to determine the status of the district’s budget at any given time and would forecast potential budget issues.

To be clear, the above had to do with reporting on expenditures, not determining their validity. To that end, while serving on the commission, I recommended a comparative study of Warwick’s expenses in comparison to the expenses per student in Cranston and East Providence. Warwick does have a higher per-student expenditure than the other two districts. As noted in the presentation, Warwick has a lower student/teacher ratio than the other districts. Unlike the other two districts, Warwick student population is declining. As it does, the student/teacher ratio will continue to decline until a plateau is reached whereby another school can be closed. Over the last 20 years, the district has closed eight elementary and two secondary schools.

Another significant cost difference for Warwick is Social Security. Decades ago, city government voted to enter all of its employees in the Social Security system. This adds a significant employee expense that neither Cranston nor East Providence incurs. It should be noted, this is an expense for all Warwick city employees, not just those working for the School District.

Inadequate funding produced deficits

At the City Council presentation, it was mentioned more than once that the commission could not address salary and benefit issues. This is interesting since, at the commission’s insistence, the district cut 47 positions and over $3 million in employee costs. There are services some students are no longer receiving. In fact, the impact on salaries and benefits was far greater than on other costs on which, after study, very few cuts were made.

The school district budget presented to the commission for FY26 reflects the expenses for operating the district for the year without ending in another deficit. The commission offered no objections to the budget as presented. The commission understands it cannot legally endorse a budget that is projected to end in a deficit. The past deficits were a result of inadequate funding for the schools and because school officials were relying on inadequate data provided by the district’s software, which did not appropriately forecast impending deficits.

 As a member of the commission, I would suggest the presentation made to the City Council was more to justify the existence of the commission than to provide instances of poor financial discipline. The solutions to the “poor fiscal controls” were presented to the commission when it sat; the commission did not create them. The commission merely endorsed the implementation of a different fiscal software package.

I would suggest the tone of the article and many of the quotes within are a result of the misguided notion that there is something wrong with the school district and it is not appropriately using its resources. I would further suggest that, through all of its deliberations, this is not what the commission found.

Joseph H. Crowley is a member of the Warwick Schools Budget Commission and the former interim director of finance for Warwick Public Schools.