Dear Governor Raimondo
Dear Governor Raimondo,
I enjoyed your State of the State address and I agree with most, though not every objective on your agenda. What’s more important to me is your enthusiasm and initiative, which are also vital for the state’s well-being. You hit the nail on the head when you said, “cynicism has long been one of our worst enemies.” Until we all believe we can be successful, success will elude us.
Let’s stop aiming for duplicating Massachusetts’ initiatives and, instead, aim beyond their standings. I spent over 4 years as a superintendent in Massachusetts and, during that time, the state test for K-8 was changed three times. There is no universal curriculum. Enough with excuses. There are some things we can learn from education reform in Massachusetts but it’s not just about a test. I agree with you that we all need to “step up and make the necessary changes to improve student performance.” I’d like to discuss some ideas with you sometime in the future.
What I wanted to share with you, after hearing your speech, is the difficult place Smithfield Public Schools finds itself in as we head into FY20 – the “state of the schools,” if you will. First, I’ll celebrate our accomplishments this year.
We followed the direction you laid out for Rhode Island schools.
We “increased the number of high-quality career and technical training programs at our high school” by adding quality CTE programming and by making changes that address the gender gap in computer science courses.
At Smithfield High School, “more students are taking AP and advanced classes.”
We have invested in curriculum writing and have begun to adopt high quality curriculum materials.
We have a strong partnership with our teachers, who we support this year through increased professional development opportunities “so they can do their best work.”
We were able to add approximately 1 FTE to our mental health staff to address the increasing mental health needs of today’s students – a need you articulated in last night’s speech.
Most significantly this past year, the voters of Smithfield approved a $45 million bond to address the deficiencies in our elementary schools – providing support that would not have been possible without the promise of incentives enabled by your work to improve the quality of school facilities throughout Rhode Island.
We moved forward significantly this year with no increase in the town appropriation to our budget due, in no small part, by the disproportionate increase in state aid we received this year. Our FY19 state aid was increased over 20% – over 1 million dollars. We were one of the winners, while Coventry’s state aid plummeted. In reality, the schools did not proportionately benefit from these added funds. Instead, the funds enabled our town officials to present a budget to taxpayers that caused no increases in local taxes.
The cynic in us would, no doubt, predict that what goes up must down. The cynic in me budgeted some one-time expenses, such as replacing furniture at our middle school and purchasing new curriculum materials, but not to the extent necessary to take the blow we will experience next fiscal year.
The state aid for Smithfield for FY20 is predicted to be over $1.5 million less than this year’s allocation. Let me explain the significance of this figure.
- If we increase our budget by 2% – a conservative increase by any measure – our town would need to increase the appropriation by over 7%.
- If we keep our budget flat (0% increase) – a challenge, considering the contractual salary increases and inevitable increases in health care and energy costs – our town would need to increase the appropriation by over 5%.
- If our town does not increase the appropriation to our schools, which some town officials have suggested, we would need to cut our budget by over 4%.
As a first step to address the gap in funding, our draft, FY20 budget eliminates the purchase of high-quality instructional materials, decreases the investment in professional development by over 80%, and still requires the elimination of at least 6 positions. Smithfield is a relatively small district. Eliminating six positions is devastating.
In an effort to understand the state aid formula, I met twice with colleagues at RIDE, including the Commissioner. I invited a finance expert from Fidelity to meet to go through the formula, step-by-step, to identify what may be different for Smithfield than for other communities. By telephone, I have spoken with your Deputy Chief of Staff, Kevin Gallagher, and have a scheduled telephone meeting with Dr. Kenneth Wong, of Brown University, who was instrumental in the development of the formula being used. What I’ve learned has been communicated to my community through my blog, our district newsletter, and through a presentation at a joint, Town Council and School Committee meeting.
I’ve learned that of all the factors that go into the state funding formula, median family income has had the most effect in Smithfield. For some reason, the median family income for Smithfield has gone down then up by a significant percentage (7-9%) from one year to the next. The residents of Smithfield, most obviously, are not becoming poorer, then richer by such large measures each year so there is some problem with this data. My next step is to figure out how the U.S. Census Bureau estimates this figure between census years. For this task, however, and for continued study of the formula and its impact on other districts, I lack both expertise and sufficient time.
In order to “step up and make the necessary changes to improve student performance,” Rhode Island districts, including Smithfield, need more stable and predictable funding. My responsibility, as a steward for our schools and students is to induce the state to conduct a review of the current state aid formula and to convince the taxpayers of Smithfield to make up the gap in funding through taxation, for to do otherwise is to run the district into the ground.
I am a person of action, rather than a source of complaints. Please contact me to discuss the matter further or to engage me in a group to do further study on the formula.
“I think we’re up for it.”
Sincerely,
Judy Paolucci, Ph.D.
Superintendent
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