Cranston Public Schools are asking the city for $189,391,236 toward their proposed total operating budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, an increase of about 3.24% or roughly $5 million over this year’s school spending.

Superintendent Jeannine Nota-Masse presented the budget proposal to School Committee members last Thursday night.

Nota-Masse spoke about what it will take to achieve the three priorities in the district’s strategic plan: improving English and math proficiency and boosting attendance will require more money.

She also noted a key change in the composition of the student population.

“Over the past 10 years, free and reduced-price lunch students have increased in Cranston 17%, which means that many more students are living in poverty,” Nota-Masse said. “With that comes a great deal of need for not only academic support, but also social emotional support.”

Nota-Masse said the state Department of Education noted Cranston as one of the districts with the largest increase in multi-language learning students in Rhode Island last year. She said with that rise comes a great deal of extra services and support in the schools to appropriately serve those students and their families.

Another contributor to budget increases that Nota-Masse mentioned during Thursday’s presentation is the tendency of variables to surface during the budget process. These are changes that can’t be predicted ahead of time and can be a challenge to allocate sufficient funds for.

Last year, she said, the School Committee approved a balanced budget on June 27. The next day, she said, the district got a bill from the state for $1.3 million to address pension-reform concerns.

“We had no say; we were just given the bill,” Nota-Masse said.

Unfunded legislative mandates were also cited by Nota-Masse as a variable that affects the budget. These are requirements imposed by the Department of Education or the General Assembly.

“Most of the time they do not come with financial support,” Nota-Masse said Thursday night. “Or if they do, it's supported for a year and then we have to take on the burden of changes in graduation requirements. There's a lot of those.”

A few years ago, Cranston had financial literacy as a minor course. Now it is a state mandate said Nota-Masse. This means that every student who goes through high school must take the course to graduate.

“Well, if you don't have the teachers to teach it and make sure that every single student is able to access that course, you have to hire a teacher,” Nota-Masse said.

In terms of state aid, Nota-Masse said that the district received $2.1 million from Gov. Dan McKee’s budget, which includes a credit for statewide transportation. Out of that total, $1.9 million is state aid.

The schools will be asking for a 4% increase in city dollars for education. That would mean a local appropriation to schools of about $103 million. Last year, the city appropriated roughly $99.2 million for the schools.

Nota-Masse acknowledged that this is about the most the schools can ask the city for since the city faces a statewide 4% cap on how much it can raise in taxes every year.

“In a budget that we have, with our students, that is not enough,” Nota-Masse said. “It just isn't, from the state. So that's why we're asking the city for a $3.9-million increase, which is a 4% increase. That is the max we can ask for.”

Other proposed increases in the budget include high-cost special education at about $1.3 million, career and technical program tuition of about $100,000 – a 5% increase – and a non-public transportation credit of about $1 million.

Some of the big expenditures in the budget include salaries increasing about 4% at $4.6 million. Employee benefits, which the district has no control over, will increase by about 6% at $2.5 million.

“We’re a people business,” Nota-Masse said. “We work with people. We educate young people. Our consumers are those children and their families. But to do that, we need people. We don't work with machines. It's not automated. As much as AI might try to take over our world, we still need people educating these kids.”

A significant rise in expenses is in dues and fees. It went up $7,095, seeing about a 7.3% increase.

“That increased pretty significantly (the dues and fees) because we have middle school sports,” Nota-Masse said. “Years ago, middle school sports were managed by the middle school principals organization. This year, the Rhode Island Interscholastic League assumed control of the middle school sports. And by doing that, they increased our fees.”

Some other areas of expenses include a decrease in capital outlay – which includes buying new buses or large changes to their buildings – of about 28%, supplies and materials with about a 3.1% increase and a decrease of about $1.5 million in retirements and other staff reductions.

Nota-Masse said that unfortunately the district offers incentives to people to encourage them to retire because every employee who does retire is not only off the payroll, but also off the system’s health insurance. Eighty-five percent of the district’s budget is salary and related benefits.

“But that's the business model we're in,” Nota-Masse said. “It's not warm, it's not fuzzy. It doesn't take into account that we work with children every single day and our community values what we do every day. It's the reality of our business. And unfortunately, some of the folks who make decisions above and beyond all of us don't realize the financial impact of some of their decisions.”

The School Committee’s next meeting will be a budget adoption session at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 3 in the Cranston East auditorium.