‘I don’t think it’s a stunt:’ Providence may cut all winter and spring school sports to close a budget hole – The Boston Globe

That is unless a bunch of irresponsible, reckless, careless, I’d-love-to-fire-all-of-them-and-then-rehire-them-just-to-fire-them-again adults don’t mess it all up by cutting winter and spring sports for all Providence schools to close a budget hole.

That’s this school year, by the way. Not some time in the future.

Yes, that’s the threat that’s on the table from the Rhode Island Department of Education and Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez, who are asking Mayor Brett Smiley and the City Council to kick in nearly $11 million to help the district avoid catastrophic cash flow issues.

We’re talking can’t-make-payroll problems, not can’t-buy-new-uniform problems, district officials say.

The district projects that cutting winter and spring sports would save $1.7 million. Other cuts on the table include taking away bus passes for high school students who live less than two miles from their school, furloughing administrators, and mid-year layoffs for non-union employees.

But it’s sports that families and students are especially alarmed about right now, especially since thousands of athletes are scheduled to register and try out for winter sports in the next couple of weeks. They could all be left out in the cold.

“I don’t think it’s a stunt,” Classical High School athletic director Robert Palazzo told me on Monday. “I think it’s real.”

Palazzo said he’s hopeful that cooler heads will prevail, but he acknowledges that he’s still haunted by a decision 20 years ago to cut cross country, tennis, and a couple other niche sports to plug budget holes. The sports were eventually restored, but he said it was agonizing to have to pick which sports to cut.

“I swore to myself I would never do that again,” Palazzo said. “So I think it’s all or nothing.”

In a lot of circles around the city right now, the belief is that the district is bluffing. I’ll admit that even I find it difficult to believe that the state would allow the capital city to cut varsity athletics at a time when people like Governor Dan McKee are emphasizing attendance over all else. Besides, would a guy who refers to himself as the “coach” of Rhode Island really allow sports to disappear?

John Kavanagh, who coaches the Classical basketball team, said he’s still preparing as though his team will get to play a full season. His best player, Eliezer Delbrey, is a junior who is likely to surpass 1,000 career points at some point this season, and Kavanagh believes he has a shot to play Division I basketball in college. But this season is crucial for Delbrey because it will likely lead to an opportunity to play for an elite prep school during his senior year.

“If you take away his junior year, what does he do?” Kavanagh asked. “How do we take it away from these kids who are on track?”

Kavanagh said he could see bus trips getting eliminated, or junior varsity and freshman teams seeing cuts, but he doesn’t believe there will be no high school sports in Providence this winter.

“I think it was more of a scare tactic,” Kavanagh said.

It’s embarrassing that coaches, families, and most importantly, student athletes have all been put in the position of having to hope this is all just a game of chicken between the district and the Smiley administration.

This stems from a long-running legal dispute over how much money the city should be contributing to the district, which has been controlled by the state since 2019. As part of the takeover five years ago, the city was required to increase its annual contribution to the school system at the same rate that the state increases aid to all public schools in Rhode Island, but it has repeatedly reneged on that obligation.

In the current school year, Providence is scheduled to kick in $135 million for its schools, but the state and district believes Smiley owes them $164.8 million. The two sides are back in court Tuesday morning because Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green has asked state Treasurer James Diossa to withhold $8.5 million in car tax reimbursement payments from the state to the city. Smiley’s office wants a judge to prevent the car tax money from being withheld.

Smiley has said he agrees that Providence needs to provide more money to its school system — the state increased its funding for city schools by $54 million between 2013 and 2019, and the city added just $3.6 million during that same period — but he has been unwilling to say how much he believes the city should be contributing.

The mayor said he’d kick in an extra $1 million to address the current budget shortfall if the state agreed to contribute $3 million and the district allows an outside audit of its finances.

“We have no confidence in their budgeting skills,” Smiley told reporters earlier this month. “The financial gap has moved over time. We don’t exactly know what the gap is.”

Smiley has a reasonable gripe with the district — since the takeover, his office, the City Council, and the school board have no oversight or approval authority over the school budget — but he’s misreading the situation.

No family in Providence cares about who is to blame for this financial mess. And no one wants to wait for a judge to settle it, either. They just want a promise that something as important as sports won’t disappear overnight.

Maybe it’s time for Governor McKee to stop being a spectator and do what a good coach would do: Come up with a game plan.

Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.