hard deadlines

Have posted the data from RIDE's proposed funding formula to a Google Docs spreadsheet, and what jumps out at me is the number of East Bay communities taking double-digit hits.

Update: I did a quick sum, and East Bay towns would lose $18.M in state funding. With the exception of Barrington, which gets an extra $3.7M.

Karen suggested another Future Search — but instead of getting a group together to envision the innovative possibilities for our schools, we'll need to plan for the grim scenario of cutting $260K worth of programs every year, until, 10 years out, we are operating a system with $2.6M less than today.

And I'm with Maddie, who commented on a previous post: Barrington gets a 189% increase. WTF?

Update: Newport Now has a description of the hit Island-wide.

Update 2: Added a column from the State's 2010 Fiscal Stress Test that shows the financial health of each municipality — scores over 4 are more stressed. If Tiverton has the highest level in the East Bay at 3.35, it makes no sense to cut their state contribution by 26%. Or Portsmouth, for that matter, at 2.86 cut by 47%. Barrington, at a comparatively balmy stress level of 1.89 sees a 190% increase.

And while the RIDE report does show the formula by which state share is calculated:


It does not provide any backup data (or even pointers to find) the EWAV data (Equalized Weighted Assessed Property Value) on which it is based. RIDE does provide the K-6 Free and Reduced Price Lunch numbers, used as a proxy for economic hardship, and I have added those to a column in the spreadsheet as well.

Update 3: Thanks to an anonymous reader, here's the link to the EWAV data on RI Municipal Finance, and I've added it to the GoogleDocs spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I still can't see how you plug this into the equation — the presentation describes the EWAV value as "a number between 0 and 1 based on each district's assessed real estate values and a media income value." Any ideas?

Resources:
Fiscal Stress and Financial Condition of RI Cities and Towns (pdf) from the Dept. of Municipal Finance
EWAV data from RI Municipal Finance