Providence Mayor Brett Smiley is seen speaking at a press conference in his office on Oct. 10, 2024. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said Thursday the Providence Public School Department (PPSD) asked for $10.9 million in additional funding for the current fiscal year or Providence schools could face “dire cuts,” including athletics and layoffs. The mayor said he was given one day to respond.
The request came in a Wednesday morning phone call with Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez, Smiley said in a press conference Thursday morning in his office. Smiley described the funding request to reporters as an “ultimatum,” and its method of delivery “alarming” and “irresponsible.”
Jay G. Wégimont, a PPSD spokesperson, said in an email Thursday that Montañez’s phone call was not an ultimatum, but a heads up.
“With an unprecedented growth in student needs and an insufficiency of funding resulting from the City’s failure to comply with its statutory obligations, the Superintendent alerted the Mayor that a budget presentation would be made at Wednesday’s School Board Finance Committee meeting that would cover the District’s pressing financial challenges and additional measures PPSD would be forced take as a result of the insufficiency in funding from the City,” Wégimont wrote.
The city’s “statutory obligations” Wégimont referenced are part of the Crowley Act, the 1997 law that authorized the state takeover of Providence public schools in 2019. That means the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) currently controls the district, and its decisions outrank local ones — specifically, those of the Providence School Board, a powerlessness which Smiley said “is part of the problem.”
“The Providence School Department budget doesn’t get voted on by anybody,” the mayor said. “That oversight function is supposed to occur at RIDE, not at the school board and not in the mayor’s office, and that’s the problem while we’re under state oversight.”
According to the Oct. 9 presentation during the finance committee meeting, winter and spring sports could be up on the chopping block, for a possible savings of $1.7 million. Employee cuts based on school and position could save $2.6 million. The potential $12 million saving package also includes three cost cutting measures already underway: a spending freeze for anything beyond basic operations, a hiring freeze in the central administrative office, and an overtime freeze. The current fiscal year started July 1, 2024.
A chart by the Providence Public School Department was included as part of a presentation to the finance committee of the Providence School Board, and shows possible cuts to make in the current fiscal year. (Providence Public School Department)
‘This isn’t the federal government’
Meanwhile, Smiley’s solution, which is dependent on City Council approval, is to funnel money from the city’s recently negotiated payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT). Nonprofits and not-for-profits like schools and hospitals make these payments to compensate cities for the taxes they would otherwise owe on their exempt properties.
The city announced a $1.5 million PILOT deal with Lifespan on Oct. 1, which will be made in two $750,000 payments — one of which Smiley is willing to divert to Providence schools. Another $250,000 would come from a renewed parking agreement with the Rhode Island School of Design, for a total of $1 million, “because the kids in our city are a priority for me,” Smiley said.
“I care deeply about the families, and understand that the school department has a difficult budget, just like all public bodies do at this time as federal funds expire,” said Smiley, who became mayor in 2023.
But the mayor’s support of the district itself was a conditional love: First, the state would have to match the new funds at three times the city’s investment, bringing the grand total under Smiley’s proposal to $4 million. Second, an independent auditor would need to review the district’s finances, in addition to a regularly submitted annual audit.
Smiley sounded almost flabbergasted when discussing the district’s finances, especially a PPSD presentation he and his office had received back in August.
“They told us that the fiscal 2025 deficit was $10.6 million, but they had also just finished fiscal 2024 with a $20 million deficit,” Smiley said. “I don’t even know how that’s possible. We don’t end years in deficits. We can’t. There’s no one else to pass the buck to. This isn’t the federal government.”
“I want to say loud and clear, yes, we are willing to give them more money, but we absolutely need to know what that actual number is,” Smiley added.
Having “no confidence in their budgeting skills,” Smiley explained, was the rationale for the additional audit.
In a statement Thursday night, Erlin Rogel, Providence School Board president, echoed Smiley’s distaste for the district’s communication style, and called the budget request “eleventh-hour fear mongering.” Rogel said he also supports an audit.
“Supporting PPSD’s request for more city aid at this juncture would be an endorsement of a broken system that lacks accountability, transparency, and oversight,” Rogel wrote. “It would mean endorsing handshake assurances from PPSD that additional funds will be spent responsibly. I am not confident in simply taking their word for it, especially when they resort to ‘or else’ tactics and barter with our students’ wellbeing.”
Litigation continues
The PPSD share of the Providence budget has gone up by $5.5 million since the state intervention began in 2019 — an investment that Smiley called “historic” during the press conference, and one only made this fiscal year, in the 2025 budget.
But that amount is not nearly enough to meet what RIDE and PPSD say is required. According to the Oct. 9 PPSD presentation, the city is only funding Providence schools with around $135 million, when it should be allocating closer to $160 million under the Crowley Act. The city and state have been in litigation over the alleged failure to comply with Crowley, with both parties differing in their interpretation of the law. Asked by reporters if that court case was close to being settled, Smiley said it wasn’t, but that a hearing was scheduled “soon.”
State to keep control of Providence schools for three more years
RIDE Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green used the takeover’s extension in August as an opportunity to remind major PPSD stakeholders, including Smiley, about the arrangement’s stipulations and next steps in a Sept. 25 letter. Citing more student need, inflation, and evaporating federal COVID-19 money, Infante-Green wrote that the city would need to submit by Nov. 1 a funding plan for PPSD through fiscal 2028.
“While state funding to PPSD has significantly increased throughout the intervention, the City of Providence has failed to meet its funding obligations to adequately support PPSD, despite and beyond the requirements under state law and commitments to do so,” the commissioner wrote.
Smiley acknowledged the school department and city are not alone in their money struggles, and cited special education costs as “one of the major drivers” of increasingly high costs for schools everywhere.
“But it is an obligation to serve these children,” the mayor said. “This is a statewide problem, which is why it requires a statewide solution, and the school department and I should not be oppositional.”
Wrote Wégimont: “Although the Mayor purports to be concerned about communication and collaboration, the fact that his office held a press conference addressing the Superintendent’s advocacy, without providing the Superintendent with any notice, says otherwise.”
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This story was updated Thursday night to include a statement from Providence School Board President Erlin Rogel.