At issue is an obscure – but relatively clear – provision of state law that requires municipalities whose school districts are under state control to increase their funding by the same percentage as the overall increase in school funding. education by the State each year. Simply put, if the state increases its funding by 6 percent, city hall is required to do the same.

There is debate about how much Providence owes. Smiley said it could be between $10 million and $85 million. The district estimates it could be as much as $55 million. And Lanphear doesn’t seem to have any interest in making a real decision, so he urges both sides to negotiate. He postponed a hearing scheduled for Wednesday until November 20.

Providence’s best arguments in court were that the law is unfair and that the school department is mismanaged – the former may be true, and the latter is almost certainly true – but Lanphear interpreted the law as it been written. The mayor was hardly surprised by the decision, although he acknowledges that the city can still appeal to the state Supreme Court.

But now Smiley and Miller are taking a cue from Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green and Superintendent Javier Montañez.

You may recall that in recent weeks, Infante-Green and Montañez threatened to scrap school sports and bus passes for high school students who live within two miles of their school, part of an effort to close a projected $10.9 million shortfall.

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

And then they turned around and found a new group of pawns.

Smiley and Miller’s threats include firing city employees, cutting funding to the Department of Public Safety and Recreation, canceling summer jobs programs for children, and going to the General Assembly to call for a mid-year property tax increase that will drive landlords crazy and likely lead to rent increases across the city.

“We will have no choice but to have harmful cuts and potentially new taxes, which will impact the same children and families that the school department says it is trying to help,” Smiley said during the ‘event. Tuesday press conference.

Because it’s something budget hawks always seem to ask about Providence, Smiley said bankruptcy is not something being considered. Just painful cuts and tax increases, he said.

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

They may be right that the buyout has run its course, but they shouldn’t take the schools back without coming up with a plan to improve outcomes in a district. where only 15 percent of children read at grade level and 15 percent are proficient in math.

They were nowhere to be found at the start of the school year when the district reduced 30 minutes of the school day. They don’t have a bright idea to meet the high needs of special needs students or to raise the bar for multilingual learners. They just don’t want to pay, so they change the subject.

This is called missing a check.

Look, I fully believe that Smiley and Miller are more capable of balancing a 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 allowing a commissioner and superintendent to do whatever they want without a vote, without oversight, and without accountability.

But they seem to conveniently forget that mayor after mayor and council after council have failed the district repeatedly for more than a decade, forcing superintendents to make harmful cuts year after year rather than even inject just a little more money. Between 2013 and 2019 (before the buyout), the state increased funding for Providence schools by $54 million. The city increased school funding by just $3.6 million.

Smiley should remember this issue all too well, as he was the city’s chief operating officer under former Mayor Jorge Elorza, and his job was to negotiate budgets that stayed the course on school funding. Keith Oliveira, who was school board president during Smiley’s last stint at City Hall, resigned due to lack of funding for the district.

It’s worth noting that Smiley also served as Gov. Gina Raimondo’s chief of staff at the start of the 2019 takeover and later as director of state administration. He could have done something to resolve the financing issues surrounding the buyout and chose to remain silent.

“If we could have achieved a real partnership, I think it would have real potential,” Smiley said when I asked him if he regrets participating in the buyout in the first place.

“It turned out that the partnership is actually not part of this recovery effort,” he added.

There is, of course, a reasonable approach to moving forward, where everyone puts their ego aside and starts putting the children first. Let’s call it a global settlement.

If the district faces an immediate $10.9 million problem, the city should live up to the responsibilities imposed on it by the court and resolve it immediately. It can be painful, but it’s not the dire financial picture that Smiley and Miller paint.

Long term, an agreement must be reached with the Rhode Island Department of Education to increase municipal funding for schools over several years. But this cannot be hypothetical. This should be a consent signed by a judge.

The goal should perhaps be to increase the district’s funding from $135 million in the current fiscal year to $170 million by 2030, in what will likely be Smiley’s final year in office . That’s $7 million more per year for five years.

And of course, Gov. Dan McKee would have to return the schools to the city as part of any settlement.

But not before Smiley and Miller agree to pay.

Dan McGowan can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him @danmcgowan.