Lawmakers sat behind rows of tables, like students at their desks, in the Rhode Island Senate Lounge one January night to hear a guest speaker detail a new plan to make public education throughout the state more fair and equitable.
“The future economic prosperity of our state is directly dependent on our ability to get this right,” Rhode Island Foundation President and CEO David Cicilline told senators as they dined on a hot buffet dinner and cake pops for dessert.
For Cicilline, getting this right means overhauling the formula used to determine how the state and municipalities share the cost of public education, with the state taking on more costs. The state generally covers more than half of local education costs — but its contribution is more like 38% when factoring in things it doesn’t fully pay for, like transportation and certain special education and multilingual learning costs that vary wildly from year to year or place to place…