October 7, 2026
A hallway in Hope High School in Providence. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Freshly crunched numbers for a proposed overhaul of how Rhode Island calculates the bulk of the state’s share of local school funding would increase annual state education formula aid by an additional $525 million over this year — a number which does not include new expenses the proposal was designed to shift to the state.
The new report submitted Oct. 1 by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) to the General Assembly “identifies several significant fiscal and policy considerations” for state lawmakers as they prepare to evaluate recommendations from the Rhode Island Foundation-led Blue Ribbon Commission.
The commission released a proposal in January crafted with the help of a research team from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute, calling for substantially increasing state investment in public education while redistributing state and local responsibility. RIDE summarized the commission’s proposal in its new analysis, undertaken with the Office of Management and Budget and Division of Municipal Finance.
A piece of legislation passed in June added a requirement to the fiscal year 2027 budget tasking education and budget officials with conducting an initial analysis of the Blue Ribbon proposal, using new and validated school financial data from fiscal year 2025.
The law set the report’s Oct. 1 due date, ahead of an Oct. 31 deadline for the first meeting of a special legislative commission that will study the feasibility of the proposal to make over Rhode Island’s roughly 16-year-old education funding system. The commission has to file its own interim report by March 2, 2027, followed by a slate of final recommendations on Sept. 1, 2027.
The 30-page RIDE report raises questions about how the Blue Ribbon Commission came up with some of its big ideas, which all revolved around the state’s education funding formula — the amount of state money Rhode Island school districts receive annually to cover baseline student costs and provide an adequate education. The commission’s original estimates noted this formula aid accounted for about $1.22 billion of the state’s $1.57 billion education budget, or about 78%, in fiscal year 2026.
The current formula uses adjustments like demographic data to direct money to the districts where it is most needed. But the status quo was not quite equitable enough to the Blue Ribbon Commission. Central to its slate of recommendations is changing how the state calculates its education formula aid to make the distribution of state aid for so-called “core” instructional costs more equitable.
The Blue Ribbon Commission argued the actual cost of educating children — which includes expenses like transportation or even retired teachers’ pensions — are inadequately borne by the state, forcing local school districts to pay more.
Increasing the state’s share of these costs — which would entail a redefinition of what counts as a “core” cost — is a major theme in the Blue Ribbon report.
Rhode Island Foundation spokesperson Chris Barnett said Tuesday via email that the foundation received the report “late yesterday,” and that it and the commission need time to double-check the state’s work.
Barnett said the foundation was sharing the report with members of the Blue Ribbon Commission for “thorough review, fact-checking, and a formal response.”
“While that review is just getting started, it’s only fair to say that there are assertions and assumptions in the report that we do not agree with,” Barnett said.
Were the Blue Ribbon report’s funding recommendations pursued to the priciest scenario it modeled — which entailed about a 58% state share in this increased pool of costs — initial estimates placed the total increase to the state education budget at around $590 million, phased in over multiple years.
But RIDE’s analysis estimated the proposed formula aid would increase by about $525 million compared with the fiscal year 2027 budget: traditional public school districts would receive roughly $393 million more collectively, charter schools about $118 million more and other schools would get about $14 million.
When updating the commission’s calculations for state-only expenses, the new RIDE analysis produced an estimate of approximately $314 million — something for which state officials are seeking clarification.
“This estimate does not seem to reflect the recommendations of the [Blue Ribbon Commission] report,” the RIDE report states, adding that the $525 million estimate “is not inclusive” of this additional tranche of funding.
One of the most distinctive parts of the Blue Ribbon proposal was the district-by-district picture it illustrated in its hypothetical state formula aid scenarios.
Under the commission’s modeling, only four public school districts would see lower total modeled state aid.
The report estimated 13 districts would see less formula aid than they are set to receive under this fiscal year’s budget. Of those, nine districts — Charlestown, Jamestown, Little Compton, Narragansett, Newport, New Shoreham, Portsmouth, South Kingstown and Westerly — would see their direct formula aid effectively drop to zero.
That’s because the Blue Ribbon Commission recommended prescribing a minimum local share for municipalities’ contributions to their schools. If that local obligation covers the foundational amount assigned to it by the state formula, the Blue Ribbon panel recommended that those districts’ direct state formula aid could fall to zero. (The proposal would still have the state cover some costs now paid locally.)
The Blue Ribbon group recommended withholding further state aid from municipalities that don’t pay the minimum amount.
RIDE wondered about the consequences of enforcing this: “This approach could potentially compound the underfunding of a school district: a municipality that fails to provide its required local contribution would leave the district with insufficient local funding, while withholding state education aid in response could further reduce the total resources available to that district,” the report reads.
The report also questioned what metrics the Blue Ribbon group used for property values when calculating municipalities’ required contributions. Also of concern was whether some costs could be counted twice and whether new reporting and oversight requirements would duplicate systems already in place.
The Blue Ribbon Commission spent more than a year developing its proposed funding system, and was co-chaired by the foundation President and CEO, David Cicilline, along with Georgetown University professor Nora Gordon.
Brenda Santos of Brown University’s Annenberg Institute — which facilitated the commission’s research and prepared its report — reiterated the worth of the Blue Ribbon findings in an email Tuesday.
“We’re proud of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s work to put forward a system for full and fair school funding, grounded in national evidence and responsive to local needs,” Santos said. “We are eager to read the report.”
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Courtesy of Rhode Island Current
