Rhode Island

Historical Background

In 1995, the Rhode Island Supreme Court held, in City of Pawtucket v. Sundlun, 662 A.2d 40, that Rhode Island's statutory scheme for financing public education did "not violate either the education clause or the equal-protection provision of the State Constitution." The court interpreted the education clause as providing the legislature with great discretion in this area and advised plaintiffs to seek a remedy "in that forum rather than in the courts."

Recent Events

In February 2010, the school committees, superintendent of schools and a number of students and parents in the cities of Woonsocket and Pawtucket initiated a suit against Rhode Island’s governor and legislative leaders, Woonsocket School Committee v. Carcieri. Steve Robinson, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the present case, who also was also plaintiffs’ attorney in the earlier case, and Samuel D. Zurier constructed a meticulously documented petition which directly responds to the Supreme Court’s justiciability concerns. Specifically, the petition alleges that over the past 15 years, the state’s General Assembly and the state education department, have adopted detailed academic standards and have imposed numerous obligations on local school districts to provide meaningful educational opportunities for all students, but that they have failed to provide adequate or equitable funding to allow the districts to carry out these obligations. The petition also cites numerous state statutes and regulations, and legislatively-commissioned studies that provide concrete standards and mechanisms for remedying these inadequacies and inequities.

After the petition was filed, a new financing law was adopted by the Governor and Legislature; it takes effect in 2011-2012. The law establishes a per-pupil “core instruction amount” of $8,295, and would supplement aid for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch by a factor of 40%. The state calculated the base amount by averaging 2006-2007 education expenditures in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics.

In March, 2011, plaintiffs in in the Woonsocket School Committee litigation filed an extensive second amended petition that essentially claims that the new formula is a charade, at least as far as low income and English language learners in the plaintiff school districts are concerned.

The plaintiffs’ 85 page second amended complaint sets forth in extensive detail the extent to which the education being provided in specific schools in the plaintiff school districts fails to provide the concrete services called for in the state’s Basic Education Program Regulations. It also documents a substantial shortfall between the adequacy recommendations issued in 2007 by a technical advisory group appointed by a joint legislative committee and the actual funding being provided this year and for the next six years under the formula adopted in 2010. Among other things, plaintiffs claim that over-all state funding under the new formula is 21% below the adequacy amounts determined in 2007 ( and 29% and 31% in the two plaintiff districts), that no extra funding is provided for ELL students, that the foundation amount upon which the formula is based omits critical operational services like utilities, maintenance and transportation, and that virtually no funding is provided for transportation outside the foundation.

Perhaps the most glaring immediate problem with the new formula as described in the new pleading is that full funding of the low “adequacy” amount promised to the plaintiff districts in the 2010 formula will be phased in over seven years, meaning that by the state’s own definition, students will be denied the resources needed to meet the state’s own requirements until at least 2016-2017.

Last updated, April 2011