BY JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The City Council said no to more funding for schools after a marathon meeting on Monday and that has placed the School Committee in the spotlight for the next move regarding the school department’s budget crisis.

The committee meets tonight at 7  in Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center media room and may move to pursue a legal suit against the city to cover its pending $3.7 million deficit at that time.
The committee will be holding an executive session with its legal counsel before the public session begins to review its options in the fiscal dispute, School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois said Tuesday.
The committee had placed the filing of a Caruolo Act lawsuit on the agenda of the meeting but committee members didn’t think it would beconsidered, since the Council was preparing to take up legislation funding the impending school department shortfall at its meeting in Harris Hall.
Dubois and other school officials had listened to the opposition raised by local residents to the proposed supplemental tax increase on the council’s agenda but still believed a majority of the council would support local schools in their budget crisis as the measure came up for a vote just before midnight.
“By all indications ahead of time it was going to be a 6 to 1 vote with Councilman Roger Jalette opposed,” Dubois said. Jalette has long opposed any increase in local taxes and had indicated early on that he would oppose any move to enact a supplemental tax bill.
City Councilman John F. Ward, a finance director for the town of Lincoln, however, gave his peers a detailed review of the school department’s funding problems before the vote and offered his own strong recommendation that the city approve the supplemental tax bill as a way to correct the mistakes of the past and set the stage for change in the future.
But City Council President Leo T. Fontaine could not close the settlement deal with his own recommendation that the panel needed to take a long term view of the city’s financial problems and in the end Councilman William D. Schneck cast the only
other vote of support for the revenue award.
 City Councilwomen Stella Brien and Suzanne J. Vadenais and Council Christopher Beauchamp all cast their votes with Jalette in defeating the funding award 4 to 3.
 “It was a shock and huge disappointment to me,” Dubois said. The School Committee had been working closely with Mayor Susan D. Menard’s administration as well as members of the Council on solving the funding problem outside the courts and Dubois said he believed the council understood the situation the school department faces having already made deep spending cuts and acting to win pay and benefits concessions from its union employees.
“We are down to a basic education plan and the kids of Woonsocket deserve to be educated,” he said.
 As Joel D. Mathews, Menard’s director of Planning and Development, attempted to warn the council Monday night, the school department will run out of cash in mid-May, Dubois said.
 The move could force the school department to close schools before the end of the school year and also result in a potential take over of local finances by the state Auditor General’s Office if a Caruolo action were not pursued, he noted.
 “Anything is possible at this point,” Dubois said while voicing disappointment with the council decision.
 “Even if the state does come in and take over, that doesn’t mean that we would be wiped clear of all of our financial obligations,” he said. When the Town of West Warwick moved to declare bankruptcy during its own financial crisis in the 1990s, Dubois said the Auditor General’s Office authorized three separate supplemental tax bills to correct the problems.
 Members of the council opposing the local supplemental tax could be surprised to see a state auditor find that the local school department is in need of even greater funding than the school department originally sought and enact a tax for that amount instead, he said.
“It is a big risk that they are taking,” Dubois said.
 On Wednesday, it will be up to the School Committee to decide if it will approve a recommendation seeking a legal remedy to its fiscal crisis, according to Dubois.
 School Superintendent Robert Gerardi Jr. has already notified Auditor General Ernest A. Almonte of the Council’s decision and that discussion of corrective action for the $3.7 million deficit will be conducted by the panel at its meeting.
 Gerardi said Tuesday he will be recommending that the panel move forward with filing a Caruolo suit against the city this week.
 While commending Ward, Fontaine, and Schneck for taking “unpopular” positions in support of education, Gerardi said the council’s ultimate decision will force such a move.
“We were left with no other option. For whatever reason, they made the decision they did,” he said.