Members of the Barrington School Committee are calling for a special meeting with the town council to discuss a shortfall in expected state aid for education.

Barrington school officials were expecting $9.78 million in state aid for the upcoming fiscal year, but learned last month that Barrington would be receiving only $8.2 million. 

Local school officials, working with East Bay legislators, were able to recoup about $300,000, but that has still left Barrington with a $1.2 million gap in expected state aid. 

Barrington School Committee members discussed the issue during a meeting on June 28, and asked the district’s director of finance and administration, Doug Fiore, a series of questions:

How did it happen? 

What could the district have done differently? 

What can Barrington schools do now?

Fiore shared a brief presentation with committee members detailing the situation. Fiore explained how the district uses assumptions when building its budget in December and January.

“Generally, the only available estimate for state education aid during the timeframe we begin to build our annual budget is RIDE’s data submitted to the governor’s office in preparation for the governor’s budget request,” stated the presentation.

That information included $9.7 million in state aid for Barrington schools — a significant increase from the prior year. The governor’s budget from January also showed $9.77 million in state aid for Barrington schools. 

Fiore said that on June 9, however, the House Finance Committee recommended $8.247 million in state aid for Barrington schools. He said the House Finance Committee used year-old data while altering state aid amounts.

“House Finance recommended using the FY22 state share ratio, rather than the updated FY23 state share ratio for its allocation of State Education Aid for FY23,” the presentation stated. “We are not aware of any previous year that state education aid was calculate based on state share data from a previous year.”

Fiore added: “… the bottom line is they decided to use the FY22 state share ratio, to our detriment.”

Fiore said the district is considering a handful of options to address the shortfall. He said officials could use the school department’s fund balance — as of July 1, the balance is $1,195,721 — to mitigate some of the shortage. Fiore added that the fund balance policy would need to be revised in order to address the revenue shortfall. 

“We were really blind-sided by this,” Fiore said. 

School committee members asked Fiore if he recommended using the fund balance to cover the entire shortfall. Fiore said he would prefer to use multiple sources, not just the fund balance. 

Fiore also told committee members that the district could reach out to RIDE officials and pursue supplemental state funding “to hold Barrington harmless for the methodology used for the FY23 calculation.”

School committee Megan Douglas asked Fiore if the state had been generous in the past with that type of funding. Fiore said there was some precedent where RIDE had assisted school districts. 

Barrington School Committee Chairwoman Gina Bae asked if building a school budget based on assumptions was the best practice. Fiore said he had asked other school finance directors around the state if they had handled this year’s budget any differently than years past — he said they did not. Districts based their budgets on the governor’s proposed budget, he said. 

Fiore said the district is forced to use assumptions, as the state does not have final budget numbers until late June.

“They’re all estimates until the third week of June,” he said. 

Fiore also said that the district could have used a lesser estimate, if state officials had warned cities and towns that the state aid amounts were going to be lower this year. 

Later during the discussion, Fiore told committee members that the district would work hard to find savings throughout the year in an effort to balance the state aid shortfall.

Bae then recommended the school committee plan a joint meeting with the town council to discuss options. The two boards are currently trying to finalize a date for that meeting. 

“Hopefully we’ll have something in July,” Bae said. 

Don’t cut

Barrington Superintendent of Schools Mike Messore told committee members that the district’s priority would be to fully fund the portions of the budget that directly impact students’ education.

Douglas said the district needs to fund the two new positions — referring to a Human Resources director and a communications director. She said those positions will eventually impact students in the district.