EAST PROVIDENCE — Call it a case of “good news, bad news.” Call it a “Catch 22.” Or maybe, as we get closer to St. Paddy’s Day, chalk it up to “Murphy’s Law.”

However you look at it, the situation the East Providence School Department finds itself in is a bit of a “sticky wicket” as it awaits elected and appointed officials on Smith Hill to finalize the state’s budget for the upcoming Fiscal Year 2023-24.

At the February 14 meeting of the School Committee members were told because the financial prospects of residents have improved in recent years, the department is likely to receive around $600,000 less assistance in the form of state aid beginning in the second half of this calendar year.

District Finance Director Craig Enos provided the body with the update, which came a few weeks after Gov. Dan McKee sent his draft FY2023-24 budget to the General Assembly for its consideration and included the reduced amount of aid from the state.

As Enos noted, the Assembly, in both the senate and house, will formulate its plan and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, have it passed and ready for implementation by the end of the current session on June 30. That’s in time for the start of the state’s fiscal year the next day, July 1.

East Providence, of course, does not follow the same fiscal calendar as the state. In city, the next fiscal year runs from November 1 to October 31. Annually, that’s usually good for the central office because it knows prior to the local budget season how much aid it will get from the state and how much money will be needed from the pool of municipal taxes to help fund schools.

In putting together its draft, the McKee administration, as all others have done in recent times, reviewed the enrollment numbers the district provided to the Rhode Island Department of Education as of March of 2022. At the time, East Providence was down about 100 or so pupils to a total of 4,949, said Enos. However, he added the district recouped those numbers by October of last year and, again as is customary, state officials will review those updated figures when factoring in enrollment to aid.

“That’s good,” Enos said of the revised enrollment data. “It should help a little bit to reduce the cut.”

Then there’s the “good news, bad news” scenario.

Enos reported fewer families in East Providence either qualified for or applied to the federal free-and-reduced lunch program and fewer families also met the state’s categorical eligibility criteria, which is how the Department of Human Services identifies low-income families.

Yet more factors which on their face are positive, but are net negatives for the district in terms of the amount of aid it gets from the state were that property values around the city and the median income of residents both rose, which, like other elements of the formula, mean East Providence will is on track to receive less assistance from the hill.

As Enos put it, “It’s good for families, but it’s not good for the funding process.”

The finance director did, though, offer up a slightly positive spin on the situation. He pointed to the aforementioned revisit of enrollment figures and the likely reassessment of the district’s overall qualifications by the General Assembly, saying the near $600k figure penciled in by the governor’s office was probably the proverbial “worst case” scenario.

It’s likely the decrease will be somewhat less said Enos, who still added the caveat, “But we don’t know that yet.”

RMS project funding
As part of the numerous planned capital improvement projects at buildings throughout the district, the administration sent several applications to RIDE for consideration under the School Building Authority’s Facility Equity Initiative.

Some $30 million was on offer in the second round of funding from the program, which began in late 2021. The monies come from a pot of $50 million in “Pay-As-You-Go” funding, which means districts will have to finance the full amount of the projects on their own then get reimbursed by the state later.

Enos said East Providence sent 14 individual projects to the state for review. Of those, plans to upgrade learning areas at Riverside Middle School was approved to the tune of about $4 million, including the conversion of the library into a modern “media center” akin to what was built at the new high school and to also upgrade all of the RMS science classrooms.

In a related note, as part of future capital project development, Enos said the state is incentivizing districts to match or surpass the percentage of MWBE, or Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprises, participation in the planning and construction.

For the new EPHS, in the reimbursement formula included an incentive to have MWBE participation be at least 10 percent. The district far exceeded that aim, having 14.4% of the work done on the $189.5 million by MWBE contractors.

Going forward, if districts can maintain MWBE participation of 15% or higher, they will be reimbursed an additional 10% above the total they receive per the funding formula.

Because of the factors mentioned for overall aid, East Providence’s construction reimbursement percentage also dropped to 48.5% from the 54.5% it received for the new EPHS project.

Slight surplus
Also from Finance, Enos and Superintendent Dr. Sandra Forand briefly touched upon the previous year’s fiscal budget, telling the committee the district will likely have a slight surplus of between $300,000-$350,000 once the books in short order are officially closed on FY22-23.

Forand, who noted the money not spent last year will go into the FY23-24 Capital Improvements line item, said the $300k-$350k was useful for an overall outlay of nearly $90 million in operational expenses, but it was still a “small amount.”

Enos added, regardless of the size, the surplus showed, “We used our resources very well.”