The city of Providence has halted all discretionary spending and imposed a hiring freeze to comply with a court mandate to fund the city’s public schools — with the potential for cuts to municipal services and even a property tax hike, Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters gathered in his office Tuesday.

The warning about tough choices ahead comes three days after a Providence Superior Court judge (RIDE), which is withholding millions in state aid to Providence until the city appropriates local dollars to fund its public schools, which have been under state control for the past five years.

“The decision the court handed down put the city’s finances at risk,” Smiley said. “And we’re going to have to make very difficult decisions in the days ahead.”

That could include cuts to all grant programs for the community libraries, housing support, and parks programs. Smiley said his office would also consider rolling back police patrols at PVDFest and other holiday celebrations.

“That will all have to stop,” he said.

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear on Friday upheld a request from Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to state Treasurer James Diossa to withhold $8.5 million in state car tax payments from the city, claiming Providence owed nearly $30 million to the district under the that authorized RIDE’s 2019 takeover of the Providence Public School Department.

A decision on how much the city must pay was originally scheduled for Wednesday morning but was postponed to Nov. 20. The City Council’s Committee on Finance was scheduled to meet to reallocate $1.5 million in federal COVID relief funds to help cover school budget shortfalls at its Tuesday meeting, but postponed that part of its agenda to Monday, Nov. 18.

Michelle Moreno Silva, spokesperson for Diossa’s office, declined to comment on the Superior Court’s ruling.

“Our role here is very minimal,” she said in a phone interview. “We just hold the money.”

Smiley told reporters Tuesday that the city may have to conduct layoffs and furlough additional employees — which he said would save the city $200,000 per day. Also possible, he said, the city could impose a mid-year tax hike, something it can’t do without General Assembly approval.

“If legislation is introduced, it will be thoroughly reviewed through the public committee hearing process,” Senate spokesperson Greg Pare said in an email.

Last week’s Superior Court ruling intensified the battle over funding obligations to the district. The feud went public in early October after Smiley to reveal an “ultimatum” made by Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez asking for $10.9 million for the district.

Montañez warned Smiley that without the cash from the city, the district would have to cut winter and spring sports, along with revoking students’ Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus passes.

Smiley responded with a $1 million offer the following day, promising to use money from a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement recently struck with Lifespan Corporation, plus a parking agreement with the Rhode Island School of Design. The City Council promised to repurpose $1.5 million from its share of federal pandemic relief money.

But Smiley said the combined offer was not accepted as of Tuesday.

“All of this is in the context of irresponsible spending from the school department,” he said Tuesday. “We all know there was going to be a fiscal cliff when the federal COVID aid expired and they did nothing to plan for it other than to send us the bill and expect Providence taxpayers would foot that bill.”

Smiley blamed Infante-Green’s administration at RIDE for a lack of collaboration, adding the city would help to instill discipline and oversight on state spending.

“It is clear the commissioner views her ability to run our schools as one without checks and balances,” he said. “Cooperation is a one-way street with her.”

Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller called on the state to put the district back on local control — something the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education declined to do , instead extending the takeover through 2027.

“Our city is not a bank for a state-controlled experiment,” Miller said. “After four years, it has become abundantly clear the state takeover is not working to promote the collaboration and the transparent decision making that our students need.”

RIDE spokesperson Victor Morente said it was a lack of city resources and underperformance that led the state to take over the school district in the first palace.

“City leaders have repeatedly stated they are ready to prove to the State that they are prepared to regain local control, but their budget priorities say otherwise,” Morente said in a statement.

The budget feud led outside of City Hall on Tuesday.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.

Enrollment in Arizona’s school voucher program has officially surpassed the number accounted for in the state budget, reigniting the quarrel among Republican lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs over the program’s financial viability.

The budget passed earlier this year to fund demand from what lawmakers projected to be a maximum of 68,380 students. (That estimate was widely criticized by voucher opponents for exceeding the student body of Mesa Unified, the state’s largest public school district.) But that estimate has been outstripped just three months into the fiscal year, and stands at .

Reacting to the update, Hobbs issued a scathing criticism of the program, known formally as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, warning that the ballooning costs are likely to cut into other state-funded initiatives.

“The school voucher program is unaccountable and unsustainable. It does not save taxpayers money, and it does not provide a better education for Arizona students,” she said in a posted to X, formerly Twitter. “The runaway spending threatens funding for state troopers fighting drug trafficking, social workers protecting Arizona’s most vulnerable children, and doctors caring for Veterans who sacrificed their health to protect our country.”

The Democrat also blasted the program for bankrolling ski resort passes, luxury car driving lessons and pianos, among other expenses recently revealed in an . The program has few accountability measures in place, and an Arizona Department of Education spokesman justified those purchases as likely meeting an educational need.

Hobbs has been an outspoken opponent of the universal expansion that led to the explosion in enrollment and in her first executive budget proposal. Since then, she has floated an enrollment cap as a possible solution to pursue next year, but Republican lawmakers, who championed the expansion, have said they are not interested in placing any limits on the vouchers.

The program was initially crafted to help fund educational alternatives, including private school and homeschooling efforts, for students who met specific criteria, such as attending a D or F rated school, being part of a military or foster family or having special education needs. But its proponents always sought to expand it to all students, and they achieved that in 2022, when Republican lawmakers that meant any student, regardless of their lack of public school history, could qualify for vouchers.

ESA proponents push back

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a Republican and strong supporter of ESA vouchers, refuted Hobbs’ calamitous predictions, saying that the Department of Education’s total K-12 budget is on track for a surplus.

“The Governor’s calculation is in error,” he said in a joint statement issued with GOP legislative leaders. “She is counting the $7,200 paid for each ESA student without offsetting the $13,000 paid per student that would otherwise be spent for that student to attend a public school. The overall numbers bear this out as the expenditures for all public school spending, including the ESA program, are $72 million below budget.”

Horne has repeatedly touted the ESA program as a cost-saving measure, reasoning that per-pupil funding amounts paid to public schools in the state education budget are higher than the average ESA grant. But that argument ignores students who never attended a public school and so represent a new cost, and the fact that the payment formula for ESA’s was changed several years ago , which receive higher per-pupil stipends than public school districts.

Ben Toma, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and the sponsor of the universal voucher expansion, chastised Hobbs for lashing out against a large portion of the state’s student population on social media and called on her to put forward real policy proposals. The Peoria Republican dismissed concerns about the increase in voucher use, saying it is within 1% of the initial legislative estimate.

“We remind the Governor that she leads the entire state of Arizona, and if she seeks changes to the ESA program, she ought to propose serious policies, not tweet vague threats,” he said in a written . “The State Legislature has yet to see any policy proposals from her office. Arizona will continue to responsibly fund students, not systems.”

Senate President Warren Petersen added that the ESA program is a priority for legislators seeking to give Arizona families more power over their children’s education, and unequivocally rejected any attempt to do away with it.

“Arizona families want choices for their children’s education. ESAs are one of the many choices the legislature is prioritizing,” the Gilbert Republican said. “We’re always open to improving our state’s programs, but for the sake of Arizona families who want to choose the best educational settings to meet their children’s needs, ESAs are here to stay.”

Budget deficit on the horizon

The debate around ESAs has been complicated by the Grand Canyon State’s deteriorating financial outlook. A new legislative analysis estimates that the end of the fiscal year will see Arizona face a budget deficit of $400 million, setting the stage for contentious budget talks in the upcoming legislative session.

And public education advocates have already started to weigh in, pointing to the skyrocketing cost of ESA vouchers, for worsening the shortfall. Both the and the estimated over the summer that the universal expansion would cause ballooning costs by the end of the fiscal year, reaching more than $900 billion — far above what was set aside in the state budget.

On Oct. 2, Save Our Schools Arizona, a public education advocacy group focused on opposing the expansion of private school vouchers, sent a memo to Hobbs, state Treasurer Kimberly Yee and legislative leaders urging them to take action against the ESA program.

“As of this week, SOSAZ calculates that the ESA voucher program is $22,945,005 in the red,” warned Executive Director Beth Lewis and Policy Director Melinda Iyer. “By the end of this fiscal year, the program is on track to cost taxpayers $296.6 million more than the legislature budgeted — meaning the program will be 47.5% over budget.”

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, denounced Republican lawmakers for creating the budget deficit by passing laws that benefit the wealthy.

“In 2021, right-wing Arizona politicians chose to side with their campaign donors and lobbyists and pass a huge tax break for the 1%,” Garcia said, in an emailed statement. “And in 2022, they pushed through a hugely unpopular universal ESA voucher program. We’re seeing the impact of those decisions today.”

The 2.5% flat income tax rate, passed in 2021 and touted by former governor Ducey and Republican legislators as a relief for everyday Arizonans has significantly reduced revenues for the state and represents .

Petersen, however, placed the blame for the state’s upcoming financial troubles squarely on the Biden administration’s shoulders. Taking aim at the ESA program to mitigate the deficit is a nonstarter, he said.

“Unfortunately, the immediate crisis negatively impacting our budget is the skyrocketing inflation caused by reckless policies being pushed by Democrats at the federal level,” he said, in his joint statement with Toma and Horne. “As a result, many of our citizens are struggling to pay for basic necessities, they’re spending much less and now our state is limited in the tax revenues we’re able to generate. We will evaluate ways to cut spending to accommodate any budget shortfall, but our school choice program will not be on the chopping block.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .

Missouri lawmakers greeted a proposed $300 million increase to the formula that funds the state’s public schools with questions Wednesday, with some believing the figure seemed appropriate and others wondering if a change to the state’s accountability system drove estimates too high.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education unveiled its proposed budget for fiscal year 2025 during the State Board of Education meeting on Tuesday. If lawmakers approve the budget for programs, like literacy coaches, and fully fund the foundation formula, it will bring a $235 million increase in the education budget.

The department calculated a new state adequacy target, a multiplier in the formula that funds schools. The target is determined by looking at per-pupil spending of districts scoring above 90% in the Missouri School Improvement Program, an assessment composed of standardized test scores, attendance and other metrics.

The new state adequacy target should be $7,145, Deputy Education Commissioner Kari Monsees told lawmakers Wednesday, up from $6,375. The target has been frozen for five years.

This new multiplier will be phased in over two years, leading to a $120 million increase in general state aid in the first year and $300 million in year two.

“That’s a reasonable amount,” Rep. Ed Lewis, R-Moberly, told The Independent, adding that the state adequacy target has been fairly flat for over a decade.

“Now, it’s going to jump. It’s a significant amount, but it’s also a number that’s doable,” he said.

Lewis, a former teacher, is among lawmakers who have attempted to get more funding to public education.

He is unsure if the full legislative body will have the appetite to fully fund the formula with the new recalculation.

“There are people who think that education is getting too much money,” Lewis said. “If we can talk about choice, we can talk about financing, we can talk about accountability, those three problems and put them all together, we can build a coalition that changes the trajectory of education.”

Rep. Doug Richey, R-Excelsior Springs, questioned if the new state accountability system, MSIP6, artificially inflated the target calculated by the state’s education department. He asked how many districts score above 90% now, compared to the MSIP5.

Just over half of Missouri’s school districts scored above 90% in the previous scoring system. Now, only 40 out of 554 school districts and charters make the cut, and their per-pupil spending determines the state adequacy target.

Richey wondered if this impacted the new increased calculation.

“We’re not seeing an actual increase in expenditures, necessarily,” he said during the joint committee on education meeting. “Just a culling, if you will, of some of the lower-spending districts that are no longer at that level.”

Monsees said there are safeguards that keep DESE from using outliers in their calculation. The state adequacy target is calculated using the high-performing district’s old expenditure data and any state aid added since the current formula was established.

He said the group of 40, rather than 300, is a more accurate sample of the state’s high-achieving districts.

“When we had over 300 districts scoring over 90%, it wasn’t very discerning,” Monsees said.

He anticipates districts needing the boost in the adequacy target because pandemic-era assistance programs are ending before fiscal year 2025.

Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds from the federal government and a state allowance that gives school districts aid based on their pre-pandemic attendance rates end at the completion of the current fiscal year.

“Many school districts are gonna see a significant drop in that weighted average daily attendance, part of which is going to be offset or more by the increase in the state adequacy target,” Monsees told lawmakers Wednesday.

He said districts’ enrollment decreased 3% in the fall of 2020 but have regained 1%. Attendance is part of the funding calculation, so a lower student population will decrease the amount of aid the state owes districts in fiscal year 2025.

The foundation formula provides the state aid to local school districts, but DESE is also planning to ask for a number of appropriations. Its proposed budget for fiscal year 2025 is $235 million higher than the current appropriation.

The state’s wish list includes nearly $2 million for early childhood special education, over $5 million for literacy tutors, $3.7 million for math coaches and over $6.6 million for the public placements fund, which reimburses school districts educating foster children.

Monsees told The Independent that DESE plans to make recommendations for changes to the foundation formula before the next legislative session begins in January. The state is looking at a weighted funding system that gives school districts money for student populations including disabled students and those that qualify for free and reduced lunch.

said the weights were “not based on any empirical analysis.”

Lawmakers filed bills and amendments during the legislative session this year to amend these weights but were unable to get the proposals to the governor.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

The top priority of many Missouri parents and educators is school safety, .

But statewide safety improvements for schools didn’t garner much traction during the legislative session that ended in May, with most proposals dying without ever making it to the full House or Senate for debate.

Action has largely come through the budget, with lawmakers approving recommendations from the governor’s office giving school districts access to grant money for physical security upgrades and emergency supplies. The state funded a new app for school lockdowns for all districts to access.

The result is a few changes for the 2023-2024 school year, likely at levels unnoticeable to students.

In May, Gov. Mike Parson announced that funding was available for school districts to sign up for a mobile application to assist in emergencies. The app, , will allow school staff to silently trigger alarms and communicate with emergency responders.

Missouri school districts are being trained on the software, and those who signed up prior to the end of June should have the technology ready before the school year begins.

“We want all students across Missouri to have the opportunity to learn in safe and secure schools,” Parson said at the time. “That’s why our administration included funding for this school safety app.”

Parson set aside $20 million in school safety grants in his 2023 early supplemental budget request, which legislators approved. Almost 170 districts claimed a portion of the funds, with grants ranging from $7,100 to $450,000.

Northwest R-1 School District in Jefferson County, the recipient of the $450,000 grant, is using the money to install a surveillance system throughout its elementary schools, Mark Janiesch, the district’s chief operating officer, told The Independent.

Janiesch said DESE decided the amount of the  award to the district through a questionnaire that assessed buildings’ age and current surveillance coverage.

“This grant is going to greatly help make our schools safer and more secure,” he said. “If the state could offer grants similar to this one within future budgets, they could help ensure that more schools across the state have an opportunity to incorporate ongoing and up-to-date safety measures over the years.”

Parson plans to increase the grant fund to $50 million next year, if approved by lawmakers.

In April, a research firm hired by the state school board . “​​Ensuring schools and classrooms remain the safest places for students and teachers” resonated most with survey participants, which included school staff and parents. Those surveyed listed funding as the top barrier to success.

Carol Hallquist, the board’s vice president, presented the data at the meeting,  saying she asked the researchers to look at groups other than parents and educators that took the survey, like community leaders and staff from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“No matter how they cut the data, pretty much these were the priorities for the other groups as well,” she said during the board’s June meeting.

The data will inform the board’s recommendations to lawmakers for 2024’s legislative session.

During this year’s session, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle filed 18 bills related to school safety. Some focused on school resource officers, others on mental health.

Although the topic is bipartisan, the parties took different approaches to the legislation, with Democrats filing bills to and Republicans looking to .

In late February, students from Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, who lost a classmate and a teacher in a school shooting in October, visited the State Capitol.

They held a rally, where they showed art they created to express their grief, and spoke to lawmakers.

“We, all of us, deserve more than empty promises,” then-high-school senior Bryanna Love said during the rally, .

Just one was signed into law, a bill by Scott City Republican Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder that expands background checks to include adults taking classes in facilities with K-12 students on site. The law exempts adults that are part of a school’s average daily attendance, like high school seniors who are 18.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

Students arranged red and blue letters to spell various words such as “lip,” “twin,” and “keys.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and first lady Fran DeWine observed about two dozen children, ages 3-6, spelling words at Columbus Montessori Education Center Thursday morning.

The schools aligns with the science of reading, which is of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Soon all Ohio schools will align with the science of reading as a chunk of Ohio’s two-year operating budget implementation — $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.

“There are many instructional methods out there, but the proven best way to teach reading is through the science of reading instruction,” DeWine said. “Reading is certainly the key that unlocks the door to so many, many things.”

DeWine said Ohio has committed $26 million in federal COVID related funding to pay for various materials and literacy coaches for non-public schools to align with the science of reading.

“Every student in the state should have the ability to follow the science of reading,” he said. “We want to make sure that no matter where a student goes to school, they have the best opportunity to learn to read.”

Next steps of implementation

It’s not clear what each Ohio school district currently uses for their reading curriculum, so the Ohio Department of Education will soon be sending out a survey to school districts to gather information that information, said Chris Woolard, interim superintendent of public instruction.

“Any Ohio school that is not already using a curriculum that is aligned with this proven method will begin aligning to it this school year,” DeWine said.

ODE will also come up with a list of curriculum and instructional materials that line up with the science of reading. Under the budget, Ohio schools have to start using those learning materials by the 2024-25 school year.

The budget funds 100 literacy coaches who will help public schools with the lowest level of proficiency in literacy based on their performance in the state’s English language arts assessment. While the coaches are going to be under the direction of ODE, they won’t be employed by the department.

“I don’t know that 100 is enough, candidly,” DeWine said. “From what we’ve seen as we’ve traveled around the state, coaches are just vitally important in the area of literacy.”

Teacher prep programs

The science of reading budget goes beyond K-12 schools. It also requires the Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor to create an audit process that documents how every educator training program aligns with teaching the science of reading instruction. The audit must be completed with summaries publicly released by March 31.

The Chancellor will also be able to rescind the approval of educator training programs that don’t align with teaching the science of reading instruction a year after the initial audit, and programs would be evaluated every four years.

“The challenge is many teachers were not taught this way through no fault of their own they were not taught that way. This is a big chance for many teachers, classrooms and schools. It’s not going to be done overnight,” DeWine said.

Statewide tour

DeWine visited about a and often touted these statistics during the budget process — and 33% of third graders were not proficient in reading before COVID-19.

During those tours, a conversation with a particular high school student stood out to him the most.

“The student basically said, ‘They gave up on me. I didn’t think I could ever read, but the interventional specialist started working with me and started using the science of reading and I can now read’,” DeWine said.

An shows highlights from DeWine’s tour.

“It’s proven that (the science of reading) works and that it produces better readers. It’s literally like a road map to reading,” Arnita Washington, a kindergarten teacher at Warrensville Heights Elementary in Cuyahoga County said in the video.

Students said during the video they feel confident to break down new words.

“Your brain is putting this into your working memory, so you can apply this later when you come to words that you don’t know,” Ohio Department of Education Literacy Chief Melissa Weber-Mayrer said during the video.

Follow OCJ Reporter

The average increase was 10.8% from 2020-21 to 2021-22 and 16.5% from 2020-21 to 2022-23, according to a late August of 118 large school system budgets published by Burbio, which has tracked K-12 policy through the pandemic.

Nearly 1 in 5 district budgets within that group had grown by more than 25% since 2021.

In many cases, those investments translate to direct benefits for students, said Chad Aldeman, policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. School systems have invested in tutoring programs and summer learning experiences to catch students up after many experienced significant delays in their learning due to COVID disruptions such as virtual learning and quarantines. Other districts have used the cash to make long-needed infrastructure improvements such as upgrading ventilation with or .

But with American Rescue Plan money set to expire in 2024, and with U.S. student enrollment projected to drop by due to slowed birth rates nationwide, the Georgetown K-12 finance expert warns that schools for a period of “bloodletting” by 2024-25 when budgets must adjust back down.

“You don’t have to look too far out to see pain coming,” Aldeman said. “That could look like flat or stagnant salaries, that can look like layoffs, that could look like closing schools. The federal money has deferred some of those tough choices or even made it so people can ignore them for a little bit. But they will come and it’s just a matter of when and how hard they hit.”

In Los Angeles, where enrollment has been , the school system released projections for total spending to drop nearly 20% from 2022-23 to 2024-25 — from roughly $11 billion to about $9 billion. Much of the difference represents the ending of stimulus funds.

L.A. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has described that impending fiscal cliff, conjoined with enrollment drops, as a quickly approaching “Armageddon.”&�Բ�����;

Most school leaders have worked to avoid a 2024-25 economic catastrophe in their stimulus spending, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.

“Many superintendents have been careful, anticipating the fiscal cliff, not to use the dollars in ways that would create a problem for them down the line. For example, teacher salaries or the hiring of significant staff that then will have to be let go.”

For 20 years, Domenech worked as school superintendent in Long Island, New York over a period when the region lost 40% of its students.

“For all those years, I never built a school,” he said. “All I did was close schools.”

That’s a difficult task, the school leader acknowledged, because while families understand in the abstract the district must consolidate to prevent taxes from soaring, they usually want to see other schools close rather than their own. But cutting through the noise, school leaders can also understand the process of what Domenech calls “right-sizing” schools as an opportunity to “balance” student populations, he said, desegregating schools racially and socioeconomically.

Aldeman advises superintendents looking at enrollment declines not to kick the consolidation can down the road. Though school closings will inevitably cause disruptions, he said, policymakers can ease the pain with investments like more guidance counselors or improved transportation.

“Now would be a good time to start thinking about [consolidating],” Alderman said. “If we delay it, then the money will run out.”