Warwick Schools Deficit Cut to $5.7M Thursday

WARWICK, RI — The Warwick School Committee continued chipping away at its Warwick Schools deficit Thursday, cutting $401,248 for a new FY25 deficit total of $5,704,119.

“We have approximately another 2.2 million in the pipeline, and possibly more, that will be evaluated at the Feb. 25 School Committee Meeting,” School Committee Chairman Shaun Galligan said Friday. “If all reductions are accepted on Feb. 11, the deficit would be $3,484,366 before any other line item reductions/cuts are presented.”

Warwick Schools originally disclosed a $9 million FY25 deficit, which the Warwick School Committee began remedying with $2.8 million in cuts to their budget Jan. 14, the first of three planned rounds of expense reductions considered by the board. Those reductions continue as the Council and Committee wait the outcome of the budget commission legislation in the General Assembly, expected in late February.

During a special Warwick City Council meeting that ultimately approved asking the General Assembly to approve a Warwick Schools budget commission, Galligan argued that the Committee had already made substantial progress on cutting the deficit and is likely to resolve the entire problem before a commission can be established. He said that includes the district’s own 5-year fiscal plan, a document the budget commission would be tasked with producing.

Warwick Schools Deficit Cuts Protested, Adjusted

The school committee voted unanimously Thursday to cut four vacant custodial and maintenance positions, falling short of the  $3 million in reductions proposed, including the elimination of seven maintenance positions and five clerical positions. Those positions being cut would have saved the district $366, 219.

Following vocal opposition from teachers, the decision to eliminate 11 teaching assistants was dropped. Only one teaching assistant position was eliminated due to the student not returning to school. If the 11 teaching assistants had been cut, the savings would have been $183, 333.

In addition, the committee approved $300,000 to be moved from the General Fund to grants.

Warwick teachers said cutting the teaching assistant positions would have a detrimental impact on the schools and the students.

“These are not just positions, but people,” said Darlene Netcoh, President of the Warwick Teachers Union. “These cuts will negatively affect education in Warwick and people’s livelihoods.” 

Committee member David Testa proposed cutting only the vacant positions.

“Make no mistake. This isn’t about a single person or a single department,” Testa said.

“This whole school/city model is completely flawed and that school departments have to resort to crushing expenses in order to balance budgets, but I think we’ve flogged expenses to the point of exhaustion. So we need to have an ongoing and constant examination of our internal processes and staffing practices. I said five years ago, pretty soon we’re going to be at $200 million for public education in the city of Warwick if we don’t change the way we’re operating. We have to do some soul searching here. We can’t build a budget for next year with the same number of people we have this year. If we do that, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.”

Testa said staff reductions should not be limited to any specific area.

“If we have to inflict pain, we have to make sure its shared across all levels of employees, so no one group can be immune to that,” he said.

Committee member Leah Hazelwood defended Superintendent Lynn Dambruch and her team’s approach to the budget crisis.

“This administration is doing the best that they can with what they have right now,” Hazelwood noted. 

Galligan expressed appreciation for the district’s teachers: “I certainly very much appreciate the value that each one of you bring on a daily basis. The job’s not done. We got to continue to work on the deficit that’s before us. We can not legally end the (fiscal) year with a deficit.”

Warwick Schools 5-Year Fiscal Plan

In related news, the district’s Finance Director Brandon Bohl shared his budget projections for the next five years. Bohl suggested more positions would have to be cut, and stated his goal was to reduce non-staffing expenditures. He said that line item had seen a 35 percent increase in the last year.

Bohl also noted that state aid for education was going to be “flat.”

The full Jan. 30 Warwick School Committee meeting, streamed live, can be viewed at the district’s YouTube channel.