Earlier this month, the Rhode Island General Assembly took a historic step to transform education in Rhode Island.
For the past 15 years, Rhode Island has had no systematic, fair, and predictable way to distribute education aid from the state to local communities. In fact, Rhode Island has been the only state in the country without a funding formula for the distribution of education aid.
Thanks to the foresight and the leadership of House Speaker Gordon D. Fox and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, we now have a funding formula that meets the needs of Rhode Island students.
Because it takes into account student needs and district capacity, our new funding formula will be fair to all school systems and it will provide adequate funding to educate all students in our state.
This funding formula is based on the principle that the money will follow the student. It is a dynamic system that will redistribute the annual allocations from the General Assembly as enrollment patterns, community wealth, and other factors change.
The formula recognizes where concentrations of poverty exist in our state, and it provides additional funds to support the needs of at-risk students and to close achievement gaps.
The formula also includes special categories of additional aid to help alleviate the high cost of educating some students with disabilities and some of the unique costs of career-and-technical education.
The new funding formula, which will go into effect beginning with the 2011-12 school year, includes an innovative transition plan so that local districts have time to adjust to the revised distribution of funds. It will phase in the changes in funding allocations over 10 years.
Many people worked together to develop our new funding formula. Last year, the Board of Regents put forth a set of guiding principles for an education-aid funding formula, which guided all of our work in drafting the current formula. Rep. Edith H. Ajello and Senate Education Committee Chair Hanna M. Gallo have introduced funding-formula legislation in the General Assembly in past sessions, and their pioneering efforts formed the basis for the legislation that passed this month.
Working with Dr. Kenneth Wong and his team of graduate students at Brown University, the staff of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education crafted the model for the new funding formula, and House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino and Senator Gallo turned the proposal into legislation, which they both sponsored.
Leaders in both the House and Senate worked hard to improve the funding formula by addressing the feedback that was shared during the committee hearings and the needs of the communities concerned about a gradual reduction in education aid.
Under the new funding formula, the state will assume the full cost of transportation of students in nonpublic schools and half the cost of transportation in the four regional school districts. The funding formula also includes additional aid for two years for the regional school districts (Bristol Warren, Chariho, Exeter-West Greenwich, and Foster-Glocester) as well as to any new regional districts.
Also, the General Assembly raised the minimum state reimbursement for school construction to 40 percent of cost, which will make 25 (of the 36) districts eligible for higher reimbursements.
Most important, the General Assembly revised the formula to raise the state share of education costs: from the initially proposed 50 percent of the cost of instruction to 52.5 percent of the cost of instruction. This increase in the state share of education costs will help all communities and will be another step in alleviating the property-tax burden that all Rhode Islanders shoulder.
I am most grateful to Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva Weed; to the Majority Leaders, Rep. Nicholas A. Mattiello and Sen. Daniel P. Connors; to the Finance Committee Chairs, Rep. Costantino and Sen. Daniel DaPonte; and to Representative Ajello and Senator Gallo for their leadership. I am especially grateful to those members of both the House and Senate who voted to support this formula, even though in some cases their home districts would not benefit directly.
They took this action because the funding formula will improve education for all students and in all communities. Supporting student achievement is our highest priority. This transparent, consistent education funding formula will allow us to ensure that student achievement remains the top priority for our state and for every school district.
We are confident that this funding formula will take us from being the only state without a funding formula to being the state with the best funding formula in the country. By investing our education resources wisely, we will someday be able to say: Welcome to Rhode Island, home to Americas best public schools!
Deborah A. Gist is the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Contact:
Deborah A. Gist
255 Westminster St., Providence
222-4690
Deborah.gist@ride.ri.gov