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Legislators discuss school funding formula changes as Newport seeks more targeted aid
Summary
State legislators and Newport education leaders discussed changes to the state school funding formula, targeted new education dollars for a handful of cities including Newport, and options to address special-education and free-lunch calculations as budget hearings begin.
State legislators and Newport school officials met to press for changes to the state’s education funding formula and to explain how the governor’s proposed budget could affect local classrooms.
Legislators said the governor’s proposal includes nearly $44 million in new education dollars and that about $10–11 million of that is targeted to five cities and towns, including Newport. They also described a proposed change in the funding formula that would increase the student-success weighting from 40% to 43%.
Why it matters: the funding formula determines how much state aid districts receive; small changes in weighting and how student needs are counted can shift millions of dollars between districts. Local officials warned that many districts face tight budgets this year and that few “free” dollars remain in the governor’s proposal.
Representative Lauren Carson, a Newport-area lawmaker, said several bills she’s sponsoring would affect school operations, including one that would remove artificial food dyes from school meals. “I did put that bill in … to take dye out of cafeteria food—snacks, drinks, sodas,” Carson said, framing it as a health and nutrition issue tied to broader school supports.
Speakers emphasized special education as a major cost driver. Officials described the state’s high-cost special-education pool, noting that the threshold used to trigger state reimbursements was recently lowered from five times a core metric to four times, which expands eligibility but raises questions about whether the pool’s total dollars have been scaled up to meet increased demand.
Audience members asked whether a commonly cited “4% cap” limits how much school committees may request from municipal budgets; legislators advised that references to a 4% levy cap often conflate municipal property-tax mechanics and that the rules differ by locality.
Next steps: legislators said budget committee hearings will begin shortly and that they will “dissect” the governor’s proposal line by line. They offered to circulate reports and data (including a study from a Brown University intern on literacy outcomes) so local school leaders can track how proposed changes would affect Newport.
