Once our budgets are adopted they are public documents. I believe there are copies in each town hall, the library and at the administration building. Yes, the RIDE website has us over $17,000 per pupil but that is only because the school district covers and pays for the cost of our debt service. Any building renovations, additions, bond referendums, etc are added into our per pupil cost because we pay that. In all other single town districts, the debt service is paid for in the towns budget and not added into the school budget. Apples and oranges if your looking strictly at the numbers.
Also, the enrollment numbers per town are calculated by RIDE and not the district and as far as where the space is coming from, Hugh cole School had a major addition about 6 years ago increasing its size to 5 tracks k-5 instead of 3. The first 4 tracks were filled when Mary V closed and Hugh Cole became a K-5 school. Due to increasing numbers at Hugh Cole, 4 of those extra 6 classrooms are now full of students. We built in a whole extra track to allow for future growth unfortunately now most of those classrooms are full.
I'm sorry town employee's lost their raises but our teachers and our Council 94 members took 3, zeros in their last contract while the towns gave over 3 1/2 % to their employees. As far as the district spending like drunk in sailors, look at our budget and prove it. If we were miss spending money, the Auditor for the State would have caught it using the uniform chart of accounts and stopped it.
Lastly, if the towns want to appropriate the way the money is distributed differently, they need to open the enabling legislation, agree on a different method of allocating money for the schools and put it before the voters for approval. This issue is between the two towns and not the school district. We are following the enabling legislation as it was written when we regionalized, if the towns want to change that, it's their job open the legislation and make the changes.
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