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The Providence City Council is allocating more funding to ease the school budget battle

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PROVIDENCE – City Council members proposed Tuesday to sweeten the prize in a budget dispute with the school district, with the specific intent of protecting student sports programs and bus passes from possible exclusion.

But the additional $1.5 million offer, on top of Mayor Brett Smiley's conditional $1 million offer presented earlier this month, did not appear to satisfy Superintendent Javier Montanez.

In a letter to June Rose, the council's chief of staff, Montanez said the additional $2.5 million “falls far short” of covering the $10.9 budget gap the Providence Public School District is currently facing “and does not meet the needs of PPSD children, families, etc. It also does not come close to meeting the city’s financial legal obligation.”

The city and its schools, which are overseen by the Rhode Island Department of Education, have been embroiled in a budget dispute for months. School officials argue that the city has historically underfunded its schools and continues to do so, and Smiley's administration argues that the city's support this fiscal year was the highest in about 17 years.

The impasse has also turned into a battle for publicity.

Smiley held a news conference earlier this month after he said Montanez gave him a 24-hour ultimatum to raise $10.9 million mid-year to close the school's budget gap or face a litany of drastic cuts Making the reality of eliminating athletic programs and bus tickets that many urban students rely on.

Smiley responded that he would send $1 million to schools in two new, unbudgeted funds, but only if the district agreed to an audit of its books and the state contributed another $3 million.

Montanez said the district would only agree to an audit if the city agreed to a similar audit. And that's how it went.

At a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday, City Council President Rachel Miller said the city council was “extremely concerned” about the potential impact eliminating sports programs and bus passes would have, while acknowledging the difficult task of finding more money for the city in the middle of the year to apply. Year.

However, Miller said the city could offer schools an additional $1.5 million in pandemic relief funds earmarked for projects that did not come to fruition, in addition to the mayor's offer.

Miller said the tone of the budget disputes has become adversarial and political and “our students need the opposite.”

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