School boosters back tax increase

Hundreds attend Cumberland Town Council meeting to lobby for more school department funding

About 500 teachers, administrators, parents and students turned out to Joseph L. McCourt Middle School on Wednesday night, many clad in red to show their support for Cumberland Public Schools. Those who spoke argued for why certain positions are vital and took issue with some of the points Parmelee, who has been on the job for less than two months, made in a presentation on tax levy setting.

While Town Council meetings typically take place in Cumberland Town Hall, the gathering was scheduled for the community room at Cumberland Public Library in anticipation of a larger crowd. But it still wasn’t big enough.

Mitchell announced the meeting would be moved to McCourt Middle School, and the congestion on the loop around the library and the Monastery Grounds was enough for Cumberland Police to station an officer on Diamond Hill Road to direct traffic.

During his presentation on formulation of the tax levy,

CUMBERLAND – Following a last-minute, traffic-inducing venue change and nearly an hour of pleas for education funding, Cumberland School Committee Steve Hess member approached the microphone to ask a question.

“Who believes Cumberland adequately funds their schools?” he asked the Town Council. Not one of the seven members raised his or her hand. (After Hess continued talking, Council President Peter Bradley pointed out that there is no back and forth allowed in public comment.)

Hess was the 18th of 22 people to address the Town Council at its first meeting since the School Committee voted to send town Finance Director Jason Parmelee an unbalanced school budget of $67.38 million. The $66.04 million balanced budget Superintendent Robert Mitchell had proposed – a $2.147 million increase over the current budget – included cuts for 34.5 positions districtwide.

Finance Director Jason Parmelee uttered a question that caused an outcry and mockery throughout the meeting.

“We all have to do this together. We can’t just point a finger,” he said. “Let me ask this question, and everybody can ask this question to themselves: When have we ever thought the state [has] done a good job by just throwing money down a hole, so why are we going to do that?”

School Committee member Mark Fiorillo stood up and angrily questioned, “Did you just call a school a hole?” Rep. Jim McLaughlin (DDist. 57, Cumberland, Central Falls) said that as a state representative, he thought the comment was out of line.

Parmelee clarified to The Call later that his point was not that the school system is a hole, but that the problem is a hole. He said he supports looking for costs savings in things like energy contracts and health insurance stop loss, not cutting staff.

In his presentation, Parmelee explained that there needs to be a multi-pronged attack to plug the hole in the school budget, that setting the tax levy, fixing the funding formula and saving money on charter school tuitions are all factors.

The tax levy is just to finish out the current fiscal year and is capped at a 4 percent increase. The Town Council will set it at a special meeting on April 11, also at McCourt.

The Town Council last year approved a 1.75 percent increase, which increased the tax base by nearly $1.1 million. The increase has been below 2 percent for each of the past three years. For this year, Parmelee supports a 3 percent levy increase, which former finance director Brian Silvia proposed.

He noted that because of how revaluations work, a 4 percent levy increase would most hurt those whose homes are valued at $150,000 to $300,000.

Along with the 4 percent limit on the levy increase, the schools are not allowed to request more than a 4 percent increase in town appropriation over the previous year. Parmelee said he supports the full 4 percent increase for the schools, which, per Superintendent Bob Mitchell’s original proposed budget, is an additional $1.6 million.

Parmelee got pushback for showing funding data for districts like Johnston and West Warwick, and Councilor Tom Kane got cheers when he commented, “I was kind of curious as to why we didn’t pick more affluent communi- ties to base the comparison off of.”

Parmelee responded that he made the comparisons based on population and budget size only but that he can add other municipalities and get back to the Town Council.

In a memo to the Town Council on Thursday, Parmelee said that he “should have only focused on the levy discussion” and “learned a valuable lesson on time and place for presentation.”

The first person to offer public comment, Cumberland High School senior Alexandria Evers, took a shot at Parmelee’s presentation.

“When I was in my seventh grade science class, we were taught that it’s really easy to have facts but present them in a truly skewed way, and I think that’s something that we were just shown,” she said, to applause. “The reason I know that is I am a product of the Cumberland Public Schools system.”

Mayor Bill Murray stood with Parmelee, telling The Call, “The embarrassment was the rudeness from the audience, because they had their own agenda, and my finance director was trying to outline things that we’ve been doing and how we’re going to move forward.”

After Evers spoke, others addressing the Town Council said they would happily pay higher taxes to have better schools, and noted that school funding also affects those without children in Cumberland Public Schools because of the impact of good schools on property values.

“We need to pull our sources together and figure this plan out. We are hurting children. We are hurting the town,” said Community School teacher Andrea Friedland. “Mayor, you have signs welcoming everyone into town. People are going to be leaving the town.”

School Committee member Paul DiModica did say he “thought the mayor started something when he gave us well over a million dollars last year,” considering the school budget has seen much smaller increases in many years.

Murray told The Call this comment was “greatly appreciated” and that his track record supporting the schools is clear. The mayor said he met with Mitchell on Thursday, and they’re going to “go elbow to elbow to find out what solutions we’re going to work on to accomplish the best things we can.”

Many parents of children with individualized education programs (IEPs) spoke of the importance of support staff, considering Mitchell’s budget included cuts of teaching assistants, math and reading interventionists, and both of the district’s social workers.

After not eating dinner and experiencing a brief dizzy spell at the meeting, Garvin Memorial School teacher Elaine Otto said, “This is why we stand – or almost faint – before you this evening. It is time to step up and say no more cuts.”

The deadline for the mayor to submit his proposed budget to the Town Council is May 8.