Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

SMITHFIELD, R.I. -- The Town Council cut the School Department appropriation by $500,000 during Tuesday's budget hearing after three hours of discussion, leaving school officials with a big hole to fill in the coming fiscal year.

The cut brings the School Department appropriation to $26,892,002 for the coming fiscal year. But School Committee Chairman Richard B. Iannitelli said the cut is going to be more like $767,000 when the department factors in cuts to state and federal aid.

"That's the part that is so disheartening," he said after the meeting. "They obviously can't do math and used incorrect figures to get their points across. The real difference is closer to $281,000 and they overkilled. It's going to have far-reaching effects."

The School Department maintained that the town didn't account for the salaries of three teachers who had already been slated for lay off, and other factors, in calculating the potential savings of a pay freeze. Also, since the council refused to allow Iannitelli to address the group before the vote, he can not bring the issue up at the Town Financial Meeting on June 11 with the hopes of potentially getting the money restored to the budget.

Council members clashed with the School Committee weeks ago after the municipal, police and fire unions expressed a willingness to take a pay freeze if the School Department employees would do so as well. The schools urged town officials to allow them the autonomy to cut their budget where they felt necessary and not mandate a pay freeze that could require the schools to give up something more valuable in negotiations.

On the premise that the municipal unions will agree to the pay freeze, the cut to the School Department appropriation slashes the tax rate increase from 4.5 percent to 3 percent for Smithfield residents.

Town Council member Stephen R. Archambault said he was astonished that school administrators didn't voluntarily give up their raises, as municipal department heads had already done. Given the economy, he said he couldn't support any raises.

"We cut funding to ensure that they don't have the ability to fund the raises," he said. "If you see those raises funded right now, it shows me the numbers brought to the table by the School Committee may not be realistic in terms of the decisions we have to make."

It's not that simple, though. In order to freeze pay, the School Department would have to get an agreement from the teachers union. Beyond that, Iannitelli said, it will have to make up the cuts through layoffs of other employees and not fill positions, such as that of a nurse who is set to retire at Old County Road Elementary School. The school has already passed the deadline for notifying members of the teachers union that they could be laid off.

The School Committee won't decide exactly how to deal with the cuts until 30 days after it receives a final figure for state aid from the General Assembly.

"The School Committee should be able to see where it needs to spend money and what areas we have made big efforts to reduce expenses and it's quite disheartening that despite those efforts, they don't listen," Iannitelli said. "We'll have to go back to the drawing board, our budget picture is going to be very unclear... we'll have to look at contingency plans and see what we're going to have to do. It's not going to be pretty for the next few months, I can tell you that."

 Tags  Smithfield RI Smithfield school budget Smithfield Town Council

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