Legislative leaders are freezing $236 million in school construction projects until they can rework how they are financed and approved.

The move is a surprise to the state Department of Education and some local senators and officials.

Woonsocket’s $80-million middle school project is the first to encounter resistance from Senate leaders, including Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano.

“To go through all these hoops and testify before the House and then to have a different set of rules and agenda laid at your feet ... at the very least it was surprising and at the very most it was shocking,” Woonsocket Schools Supt. Maureen B. Macera said earlier this week.

Woonsocket is seeking General Assembly permission to ask local voters to borrow money to replace the aging middle school with two new middle schools. Under the current reimbursement formula, the state would pay 82 percent of the $80-million construction cost.

Citing a possible $150-million state deficit this year and an even larger projected deficit for next year, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen D. Alves, D-West Warwick, said lawmakers are looking at “ways to reinvent government and the way we do business.”

“Everything is being held until we rectify and come to terms with how much money we’re looking at and what are the most vital projects. It is the Senate’s position that they are going to be put on hold,” Alves said in a phone interview.

Senator Montalbano, who represents Lincoln, North Providence and Pawtucket, said in a separate interview, “We need to look at each and every one of these projects before we rubber stamp them.”

On the House side, Paul W. Crowley, D-Newport, who serves on both the finance and education committees, called the moratorium “the prudent thing to do” during a time of increasingly tight budgets.

“Let’s take a year, let’s sort this thing out and get it back on track,” Crowley said in an interview. During that time, legislators would create a more stringent approval process and rework the reimbursement formula, a controversial system which gives suburban districts as little as 30-percent reimbursement and urban districts as much as 82 percent.

Until recently, Sen. Marc A. Cote, D-Woonsocket, said resolutions concerning school bonds for construction were routinely approved. After he introduced the Senate version of the Woonsocket middle school resolution last month and heard rumblings from other lawmakers about the project’s potential cost, Cote scheduled a meeting with Alves and Woonsocket officials.

At that meeting on Monday, it became clear to city officials that their project was going to have a tough time getting through the Senate with an $80-million price tag. Angry Woonsocket lawmakers, officials and residents have questioned whether any ulterior motives are behind the resistance.

“Why us, why now?” asked Woonsocket Mayor Susan D. Menard.

Menard confirmed this week that UBS Financial Services, where Alves is a financial adviser, had sought to manage Woonsocket’s $90-million pension fund in 2003. The city decided to go with Wilshire Associates, which some have suggested could be behind the middle school project’s recent problems.

“That’s a question only Senator Alves can answer,” Menard said.

Posed to Alves, he responded, “No.”

“If they’re trying to make it like I’m retaliating, people can think what they want to think,” he said, noting that Barrington’s $870,000 plan to refurbish the district’s tennis and basketball courts is also in jeopardy, along with another project involving building wind turbines at Portsmouth elementary and high schools.

Woonsocket isn’t being singled out; it’s happening everywhere, Alves said.

Alves has told Woonsocket officials that he will “consider” moving the middle school project through the Senate if the cost can be brought down to $67 million, and local officials are now scrambling to find ways to cut costs and move forward. The fate of the other projects remains unclear.

A flurry of legislative action in the coming weeks will allow lawmakers to take a closer look at the 10 projects totaling $236 million — $160 million of which was to be reimbursed by the state — that received state Department of Education approval just last month.

Alves insisted that the Board of Regents shouldn’t have cleared the projects in the first place while its education department is developing new regulations.

“I know it’s catching people off-guard,” he said of local school officials, “it also caught us off-guard that the department approved these things.”

Education officials aren’t questioning the need for certain projects, he asserted. “We have to get in control,” he said. As part of their get-tough approach, Alves said the House and Senate committees will schedule a joint hearing soon with the state Department of Education on school construction issues.

The education department is in the final stages of developing new school construction regulations that would add another step in the approval process that focuses on such matters as siting, proposed building size, and maintenance. If approved by the Board of Regents, those regulations are set to go into effect July 1, according to spokesman Elliot Krieger.

This year, the Department of Education has $47 million in its budget to cover prior commitments for reimbursing school construction projects going back nearly 20 years. The state’s obligation for next year is $53 million.

The other projects approved by the regents, at the recommendation of the education department, include Burrillville’s $2.8-million ice rink, Chariho’s $26-million project to expand and renovate the middle school and high school; a $10-million plan to acquire land and build and expand the Compass School, a charter school, in South Kingstown; Foster-Glocester’s $12.8-million project to build energy-efficient enhancements and biomass boilers in the middle school and renovate the high school; another South Kingstown charter, Kingston Hill Academy’s $1-million gymnasium; The Learning Community’s $6.6-million project to acquire and renovate property in Central Falls; North Smithfield’s $22-million plan to build a new elementary school; and Providence’s $75-million districtwide renovation project.

Burrillville would be reimbursed for 54 percent of the cost; Chariho and Foster-Glocester, both 56 percent, and Providence, 80 percent. All the others would be reimbursed at 30 percent.

The projects are in various stages of development. Construction on at least one, Central High School in Providence, is under way. Others, such as North Smithfield’s elementary school project, still need Town Council approval.

William Day, chairman of the Chariho School Committee, said a resolution for the Chariho project has not made it to the General Assembly yet, but he doesn’t foresee any problems. “I’ve talked to a couple of senators personally, they don’t feel it is going to be an issue,” he said yesterday afternoon.

Reworking the reimbursement rate to satisfy all communities will be a huge undertaking, Crowley said, but these are policy issues that need to be addressed.

“Somewhere you’ve got to close the gate and say, ‘That’s it,’ ” he said.

khayes@projo.com