Superintendent Kenneth Duva and finance director Leslie Ann Powell presented the North Kingstown School Department's preliminary budget information to the Town Council at a joint meeting on Dec. 15. Duva said the district's current budget is $83,600,000 and that the October 1 enrollment count stood at 3,785 students; 27% of students receive free or reduced-price lunch, 16% receive special-education services and 2.7% are multilingual learners.

Duva and Powell described the FY27 planning process as preliminary and said the district is using NESDEC projections to estimate student counts. The presentation noted that charter and private-school enrollments are not included in some NESDEC projections and that inflows from those programs (including CTE tuition students) complicate local forecasting.

Officials told the council they have seen reductions in federal funding, specifically Title I and McKinney-Vento grants. Powell said those decreases mean the district may need to shift some previously grant-funded positions and services into the general budget to maintain services for students.

On personnel costs, the presentation identified a 2% contractual increase for educational support personnel and ongoing contract negotiations with the teachers' union (NEA-NK), which could affect salary assumptions. Pension rates for FY27 were listed as unknown; the presentation referenced the most recent employee retirement percentages from FY26 as a planning reference. For health insurance, the district said it is using an assumption of about 10% pending final trust numbers.

During Q&A, councilors pressed staff on whether CTE tuition increases are recorded as revenue (Powell confirmed they appear as tuition revenue) and asked about a roughly $2.29 million fiscal-year 2025 surplus; Powell said the figure reflects the year-end position but that unfilled positions and accounting details would be explained in later financial reports. Duva said the district will continue meeting with principals and directors over the next two weeks to refine staffing requests before the school committee's January budget submission.

Duva and Powell emphasized that the budget figures were preliminary and that final state aid and trust-health-insurance figures were not yet available. They said they will return with more detailed and finalized proposals as the town and school budget process continues.