The Johnston School Committee voted unanimously to approve a potentially unbalanced $60.2 million budget for the town’s public schools during its monthly meeting on Tuesday night.
The district only projects $58,557,316 in revenue, which is a slight increase from last fiscal year, but still leaves the schools with a $1.66 million shortfall.
Passing the budget as is with that glaring figure caused confusion and frustration during Tuesday’s meeting. District 2 representative Dawn Aloisio asked why the committee was passing the budget when the district needed a significant boost in town aid, and District 3’s David Santilli agreed with her unease.
Superintendent of Schools Bernard DiLullo said the district has been level-funded since 2014, when the town provided a $400,000 boost for full-day kindergarten. District 1 Chair Bob LaFazia said that sharp increases to out-of-district tuition and benefits have put the district in an impossible position.
Out-of-district costs, which cover students who leave Johnston to attend a vocational program elsewhere, went up from $2.74 million last fiscal year to $3.18 million, or a little more than $430,000. Benefits jumped from $13.2 million to $14.1 million, an increase of just less than $900,000. Salaries also increased about $712,000 – from $30.3 to $31 million – but an increase in state aid of about $701,000 balances it out.
“Out-of-district and health care are the two big issues. If we could corral those, we are sitting pretty well, but unfortunately that’s out of our control,” LaFazia told the committee Tuesday. “It may be more [town aid] than we got last year, but it’s a true figure. If we don’t do this, then they say you gave us a budget that you could work with, you should’ve said if you needed more money. This is what we need to run the next school year. If not approved, we’re going to have to find ways of getting that money.”
The School Committee would later pass, without discussion, a resolution asking that the state fully fund career and technical education and Pathways programs. The resolution notes that, in FY2021, Johnston will enroll 219 students in out-of-district programs and spend an additional $78,000 to transport them.
The resolution states that overhead remains “unchanged” despite the declining student population.
“The detrimental impact the CTE/Pathways Program has on the School District’s budget not only prohibits the School District from expanding its own CTE offerings, but also prevents the School District from enhancing the educational opportunities to its in-District students who desire a comprehensive high school education,” the resolution reads.
It said the current funding system causes “unpredictable financial consequences” and “fails to provide a sound CTE system for students.” LaFazia said copies of the resolution would be sent to every member of the Johnston state delegation – Reps. Deborah Fellela Ramon Perez, Edward Cardillo Jr. and Gregory Costantino, as well as Sens. Frank Lombardo III and Stephen Archambault – along with Gov. Dan McKee and other local school boards across the state.
“We’re showing the deficit to show if we were level-funded,” business manager Lesli-Ann Powell said. “What we’re actually proposing to the Town Council, the governing body is the bottom line that we need to run. If you are looking at the first page, we need with all of our revenues, $60 million to run. If we get level funded again, as we have for the last 10 years, we have that shortfall of $1.6 million. It doesn’t exist right now because we haven’t gotten our numbers from the town appropriation.”
“Let’s say we go in and the town says, ‘No, we can’t give you that amount of money,’” DiLullo said. “The discussion’s [then] what we could work with, then we have to go back and rework the budget.”
DiLullo added that passing the budget in its current form opens up a conversation with the town. He had offered his remarks on the out-of-district resolution during a phone call with the Sun Rise earlier on Tuesday.
“It’s not so much around eliminating those programs, but coming up with a different formula to fund those programs,” he said. “The resolution also says maybe that should be state-funded, if kids are allowed to leave the district and go to another district, you have local taxpayers’ money going to other districts and funding other schools and other districts.”
District 5 representative Susan Mansolillo would later concur at the meeting, likening the current system to “paying for them to go to private school.”
“This is whose go and ask for more money for our budget,” Mansolillo said. “If we don’t do this, then we can’t ask for more money, that’s just my two cents. We don’t have a choice. If we don’t approve it this way, we can’t ask for the money to increase our budget to afford what we need to afford.”
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