City Will Absorb School Deficit with $708,000 Budget Transfer

NEWPORT, RI—The Newport City Council once again this week voted to bail out the school district and wipe out a prior-year deficit.

In a unanimous vote, council members agreed to transfer $708,000 to the school district to wipe out the remaining school budget deficit from the prior year—a deficit that once loomed as large as $1.5 million but has been chipped away at with a hiring freeze and belt tightening.

Included in the $708,000 is the $200,000 the district had budgeted for the next fiscal year to pay the city for a previous loan repayment.

The request for the appropriation first came to the council last month but a vote was delayed to Wednesday. Council members expressed reservations about doling out the lump sum in part because of a sense that the school district’s financial house has been disorganized for some time.

“We want to make sure that going forward we don’t end up in the same situation next year,” said Councilor Naomi Neville in November.

Neville said that liaison committee meetings have been marked by a lack of information and more questions than answers, saying “we need to work harder with the schools and the city for information.

“It still seems we have a long way to go in getting some understanding budget-wise. . .getting transparent budget numbers regarding expenses and projected surpluses versus deficits,” Neville said.

Last month, Superintendent Colleen Burns Jermain said the schools were working with a balanced budget going forward, though the district was as of mid-November looking at a $512,000 gap caused by the hiring of an additional third grade teacher a the Claiborne Pell Elementary School for a new classroom to start the year.

Jermain said that the $512,000 was not considered a budget deficit and would be balanced by using $200,000 that would have gone to pay the city for the loan repayment, leaving $312,000 that would be recovered over the course of the year.

“Just like last year; we had a projection and cut it in half by freezing the budget, delaying hires and staying on top of numbers,” she said.

Councilor Lynn Ceglie said that for her, it wasn’t so much about whether it was $300,000 or $500,000.

“It’s about whether the city knows about this,” Ceglie said. “I had a printout of the budget report for September and there was no indication that I’d see a deficit on there. . .the transparency isn’t there as much as it could be.”

On Wednesday, council members reiterated their want of more information from the school district on a regular basis. They also said they wanted to support the city’s schoolchildren and acknowledged the nature of school funding can be volatile. A sudden unexpected special education enrollment that becomes an out-of-district placement can bring huge costs.

“If we are looking to bring new jobs and economic opportunity to the community, we need to have a good educational system to attract those businesses,” said Councilor Justin McLaughlin, adding that it’s Christmas time and time to put “all of our last year’s problems behind us.”

“We need to work with the schools and send a message we’re willing to work with them,” he said.

With the additional $708,000, the total appropriation to the schools for fiscal 2015 was $24,412,243.

The city ends fiscal 2015 with a $13.5 million general fund balance and a $2.2 annual operating surplus.