At issue is an obscure but relatively clear provision in state law that requires municipalities whose school districts are under state control to increase funding each year at the same rate as the state’s overall increase in education funding. Simply put, if the state increases funding by 6 percent, City Hall needs to do the same.

There is some debate about how much debt Providence owes. Smiley said it could be between $10 million and $85 million. The district thinks this figure could be as high as $55 million. And Lanphear doesn’t seem interested in making a real decision, so he urges both parties to negotiate. He postponed the hearing, which was scheduled for Wednesday, to November 20.

Providence’s best argument in court was that the law was unfair and the school department was mismanaged—the former may be true and the latter almost certainly true—but Lanphear interpreted the law as written. The mayor was not particularly surprised by the decision, although he acknowledged the city could still appeal to the state Supreme Court.

But now Smiley and Miller are taking a page out of Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green and Superintendent Javier Montañez’s playbook.

You may remember Infante-Green and Montañez from last weeks. threatened to cut off school sports and bus passes for high school students who live less than two miles from their schools, as part of an effort to close a projected $10.9 million shortfall.

Smiley and Miller were angry that the district was using children as hostages in this funding fight.

Then they went back and found a new group of pawns.

Smiley and Miller’s threats include furloughing city employees, cutting public safety and recreation department funding, canceling summer job programs for children, and going to the General Assembly to ask for a mid-year property tax increase that would drive homeowners crazy and likely lead It is located. rent increases across the city.

“We will have no choice but to impose harmful, harmful cuts and potentially new taxes that will impact the same children and families that the school department says they are trying to help,” Smiley said. Tuesday’s press conference.

Smiley said bankruptcy isn’t something to consider, as it’s something budget hawks always ask about Providence. Just painful cuts and tax increases, he said.

Smiley and Miller also said they want the state to immediately turn the keys over to the school district because, as Miller put it, “our city is not a bank for a state-controlled experiment.” If it were brought back under city control, there’s a chance the city wouldn’t owe so much money to the district, Smiley said.

They may be right that takeover is over, but they shouldn’t take back schools without presenting a plan to improve outcomes in an area Only 15 percent of children are reading at grade level and 15 percent are proficient in math.

They were nowhere to be found when the district was disrupted at the beginning of the school year 30 minutes of the school day. They have no bright ideas about addressing students with high-cost special needs or raising the bar for multilingual students. They just don’t want to pay, so they change the subject.

This is called running out of check.

Look, I fully believe that Smiley and Miller are more capable of balancing the budget than Infante-Green and Montañez. It turns out that having checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government is a better system than letting a commissioner and comptroller do whatever they want without voting, oversight and accountability.

But they seem to conveniently forget that mayor after mayor and council have repeatedly failed the district for more than a decade, forcing inspectors to make damaging cuts year after year rather than spending a little more money. Between 2013 and 2019 (before the takeover), the state increased school funding in Providence by $54 million. The city increased school funding by only $3.6 million.

Smiley must have remembered this problem well because he was the city’s chief operating officer under former Mayor Jorge Elorza, and his job was to negotiate budgets that limited school funding. Keith Oliveira, who was school board president during Smiley’s last tenure at City Hall, resigned over a lack of funding for the district.

We should also note that Smiley was also Gov. Gina Raimondo’s chief of staff at the beginning of the state takeover in 2019 and later the state’s director of administration. He could have done something to resolve the financing issues surrounding the takeover and chose to remain silent.

“I think this has real potential if we were able to achieve a real partnership,” Smiley said. he regrets being part of the takeover in the first place.

“It turns out the partnership wasn’t actually part of this turnaround effort,” he added.

Of course, there is a reasonable approach to progress; Everyone puts their egos aside and puts children first. Call it a global solution.

If the region has an urgent problem worth $10.9 million, the municipality must fulfill its responsibilities given by the court decision and solve the problem immediately. This may be painful, but it is not the disastrous financial picture that Smiley and Miller paint.

In the long term, an agreement needs to be reached with the Rhode Island Department of Education to increase city funding for schools over several years. But it can’t be hypothetical. There must be a consent agreement signed by a judge.

Perhaps the goal should be to increase funding for the district from $135 million in the current fiscal year to $170 million by 2030; This year will likely be Smiley’s last year in office. That’s $7 million more per year for five years.

And of course, Gov. Dan McKee should return the schools to the city as part of any deal.

But not before Smiley and Miller agreed to pay.

Dan McGowan can be reached at [email protected]. follow him @danmcgowan.