Rhode Island
GoLocalProv | News | Senate Leadership Refuses to Disclose Fiscal Impact of RI’s New Education Funding Formula
Saturday, June 03, 2023
Senate Majority Leader Ryan Pearson IMAGE: GoLocal screen grab of Zoom meeting
On March 6, Rhode Island Senate Majority Leader Ryan Pearson announced that he was pushing for a new “education funding formula to ensure its sustainability and meet the needs of today’s students.”
“Action to update the education funding formula cannot wait. Developed more than a decade ago and essentially unchanged since, the existing formula is no longer sustainable. Every year we do not act to provide our students with the resources they need is a year in which they lose out academically, and that concern is more urgent than ever in the wake of the pandemic,” Pearson said.
“We must ensure the formula is meeting the needs of today’s students, including multilingual learners, and we must also provide for equity among our communities when it comes to financial support for public education,” he added.
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That day, GoLocal asked the Senate leadership office how the revised formula would impact each school district.
Senate spokesperson Greg Pare told GoLocal the next day, “I will send you the fiscal note when we have it. Don’t have it yet.”
Fast forward Three Month
As the budget moved forward on Friday, Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, Speaker Joe Shekarchi and Governor Dan McKee voiced their support for the budget plan before the House Finance Committee. On Friday night, the House committee met and ultimately approved a $14 billion budget, but how school districts across the state will be impacted is an unknown. SEE VIDEO BELOW
Again, GoLocal asked the Senate leadership for the impact of formula change, and Pare said, “There is no fiscal note. I can respond to your other question once the budget is public.”
GoLocal responded by pointing out that the budget was public. The stream of emails continued Friday night as the Senate leadership continued to refuse to produce a fiscal note or any breakdown of the impact of the new education formula.
“The budget briefing held earlier today, which was public, was a high-level briefing on a few elements of the budget, not the funding formula. Questions around any topic except for the few outlined during that briefing were deferred to the upcoming budget briefing by the House (which I believe will be embargoed until the House Finance Committee passes the budget). The funding formula was not part of this afternoon’s discussion,” said Pare.
Fiscal Note
Pare then wrote on Friday night, “I said I don’t have a fiscal note, and that I would send one when I have it. I still don’t have it (because there isn’t one), and so I never sent it. Nowhere did I ‘acknowledge’ one is required, because that is simply not true.”
According to state law, R.I. Gen. Laws § 22-12-1, “All bills and resolutions having an effect on the revenues, expenditures, or fiscal liability of the state, which can be calculated with reasonable accuracy, excepting appropriation measures carrying specific dollar amounts, shall be accompanied by a brief explanatory statement or note which sets forth their estimated dollar effect. The statements or notes shall be known as ‘fiscal notes,’ and they shall accompany each such bill or resolution prior to consideration of the house in which the bill or resolution originated. Fiscal notes shall also accompany each bill or resolution that affects any city or town financially.”
Pare claimed that “[Pearson] abandoned it in favor of the negotiated language in the budget proposal considered by the House Finance Committee tonight.”
Then Pare said, “House Finance is voting on the budget, which includes a funding formula proposal by the Governor and any modifications the House Finance Committee made. Majority Leader Pearson was involved in discussions around that, but that particular proposal is not before the Senate for consideration yet.”
Pare refused to provide a breakdown of how the new formula would impact communities across the state.
When asked how Ruggerio could endorse the budget, but not know how the new education formula would impact the communities he represented, Pare stopped responding to questions about the revised education formula.
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