Hours before the School Committee was to consider the administration’s $200.3-million FY 26 budget last Thursday, Robert Cushman – who studies the numbers and is often critical of how schools are financially managed – detected an anomaly in the 177-page document.

Why had the department’s allocation to the state pension system been budgeted at more than $15 million when in the current year it was $12 million?

Cushman, a former councilman and member of the School Committee, started making calls and asking questions. Interim Superintendent William McCaffrey, whom Cushman has criticized, was willing to listen. McCaffrey said that is part of his job and that while more often than not he disagrees with Cushman, he went back to his staff and had them look at the calculations.

“You never know what you’re going to find. I always listen to them,” McCaffrey said of School Department critics.

 Cushman was right, although that admission wasn’t totally clear when on a motion by School Committee Chairman Shaun Galligan, $2.1 million was cut from the overall budget and $1 million was added to the pension allocation to Warwick Independent School Employees.

Cushman isn’t basking in his revelation, a bit of good news for Mayor Frank Picozzi and the City Council, who are not looking for additional reductions but rather a program to erase school deficits now projected to be about $6 million by the end of this fiscal year.

Cushman believes schools should go beyond the 20-teacher, 25-nonteacher and single administrator layoffs approved by the committee. The layoffs were not identified at the Thursday budget hearing, which drew a sparse audience. He’s not alone. Ed Ladouceur, chair of the council finance committee, who sat through the four-hour meeting, said the committee should have significantly cut staff considering the reduction in student enrollment.

That was a consideration of committee member Dave Testa, who pointed out last week that the teacher contract provided for more than 20 layoffs when there are significant student reductions. Soon after the start of the meeting, Galligan asked school counsel Andrew Henneous if that was a viable argument. Henneous said if the committee chose that course of action it could lead to a protracted legal battle. The committee shied away from laying off more teachers.

During the public comment that leads off the meeting, several parents urged the committee not to cut teacher aides, who are members of the WISE union. The aides play roles in working with autistic children and others with IEPs, individual education plans.

Jennifer Cardillo, chair of the Warwick Special Education Advisory Committee, said the committee understands the financial pressures on the schools and that by working together, all parties can make the numbers work “without compromising the quality of education to our most vulnerable students.”

Mentor RI, which matches more than 300 students for an hour a week during the school day with adult mentors, appealed to the committee to continue city support of the program.

Committee member Michelle Kirby-Chapman sought to undo staffing cuts in the budget that would impact special education. When it came down to a vote, she and vice chair Leah Hazlewood voted against the $198,162,060 budget that left the proposed schedule of layoffs untouched. The budget passed on a 3-to-2 vote.

“This is approximately $2.1 million less than what the administration was requesting,” Galligan said in a text Friday morning.

More cuts need to be made, says council finance committee chair Ed Ladouceur. He reasons that while the teacher contract limits layoffs to 20, the committee should have called for more and sat down with the union to hammer out an agreement that also addressed legacy costs.

Yet to be determined is how schools are to amortize the repayment of the department’s deficits, which the city must cover.

That is a priority of the School Budget Commission chaired by former state Auditor General Ernest Almonte, one of Mayor Picozzi’s three appointees to the commission approved by the council Monday night.