BY JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The city’s woeful financial outlook only deepened Monday night as the School Committee and City Council met in joint session on an impeding school budget deficit that now may end up as large as $3.2 million by June 30.

School Superintendent Robert Gerardi Jr. brought the panels the bad news in the form of a revised projection showing the original projection of a $1.1 million shortfall in the current budget to have grown substantially under a review of the problem conducted by the department’s interim business manager, Dina Dutremble.
The review, based on more accurate financial figures available after the school year began and the results of an audit of last year’s budget showing $525,000 in remaining liabilities leaves school officials with few options for covering the total amount before the current budget year ends, according to Gerardi.
The school department has already made cuts including pay deferments by teachers and support staff totaling more than $350,000 this year and cuts in middle school sports and music and arts for another $63,000, but finding further significant reductions in an already austere budget will be near impossible, Gerardi maintained.
What remains to be cut are spring sports at the high school, high school music and art programs, and after-school activities and their related advisory positions, he noted.
Those items, considered to be outside a basic education program for students, would total just $95,000 if they were to be cut, Gerardi said.
“That means there are no easy answers to this problem,” Gerardi said.
Without options for making substantial cuts to the budget to resolve a $3.2 million deficit, Gerardi said the department’s only alternative would be to raise revenue in support of the department’s budget.
“And if the only increase in funding that can be identified is a supplemental tax increase then that is what I must recommend,” Gerardi said. And, if the city is not willing to take that step, the school committee would have to weigh whether it must file legal action under the Caruolo Act to win the funding, according Gerardi.
The school superintendent’s comments came with representatives of the state Auditor General’s Office in attendance
at the meeting, and he made a point of telling the two panel’s that he has been told by that office that plan to correct the deficit must be filed no later than March 15.
 That would give the school committee until next Monday to act on a proposed plan, he said.
 The school committee is meeting on Wednesday and will be discussing the looming school deficit at that time.
 Gerardi’s new projection of the department’s pending shortfall prompted City Council President Leo T. Fontaine to ask if the department has made any progress in winning further contract concessions from it unions or weighed other costs savings such as moved to a 4-day school week that had been raised by School Committeewoman Anita MacGuire Forcier.
 The four-day school week would require approved by the state Department of Education, and likely could not be put into place until next year if at all, according Gerardi.
 The department’s teachers and support staff have been asked to consider re-opening their already settled contracts but have not indicated a willingness to do, he said.
 The teachers and support staff agreed to defer pay raises they were entitled to receive this year over a five-year period and also accepted no new pay raises for the coming two years while agreeing to extend the existing contracts through that period.
 But Fontaine pointed to the continued decline in the economy and the financial problems the city is already grappling with as cause for a renewed effort by the school department to seek more help from its employees.
“Unfortunately, everyone else in the community sees and understands the situation we are facing,” he said.
 The city has already made difficult decisions while laying off city firefighters to address the budget problems on its side, he noted.
 Fontaine also maintained that the city has no ability to grant the type of tax increase the school department would need based on its current shortfall projection.
 The figure raised by school officials Monday would require a projected increase of $1.60 on the current tax rate of $13.23 per 1,000 assessed value and that does not take into account other expenses the city is already facing for the coming year such as the impact of last year’s deficit reduction plan, the new middle bond, and pension fund bonding that may be needed.
 The school department also has not provided the council with enough information to prove that need, Fontaine said while suggesting another meeting with the city’s administration should be held to air the funding problem.
 Councilman Roger Jalette flat out rejected the request for more school funding and promised to fight a school department move for a supplemental tax this year in anyway that he could.
 But other members of the panel such as John F. Ward noted there may be a need to work out some form of increase in funding with the school department to avoid the higher costs of the school department suing the city for the funding under a Caruolo Act law suit.
 Gerardi’s move to notify the council of the department’s deficit project was a first step toward such a move and filing legal action would be the next, Ward noted during the lengthy discussion.