Driven primarily by a nearly $1 million increase to bus students out of districts to other schools outside of Bristol and Warren, the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2024 (FY25) for the Bristol Warren Regional School District was largely praised for its prudence during the Joint Finance Committee’s (JFC) first pass at it on Friday evening at Mt. Hope High School.

The $60,152,327 budget represents a 2% increase over the prior year ($1,148,123 over FY24 spending). To get to that level of funding, the district is asking Warren to increase its allocation to the schools by $387,866 (a 2.7% increase over last year), and Bristol to increase its allocation by $704,633 (a 2.4% increase over last year).

By far the biggest chunk of that increase from the prior year comes from a $951,574 increase in “other purchased services”, which Superintendent Ana Riley explained mostly encompasses the cost to bus students to other schools out of district.

Riley added that the district was soon to enter the final year of a five-year contract that will be renegotiated, and hoped to find some ways to implement cost-saving measures.

She said that, as of now, the district is forced to over-rely on the statewide busing service offered by the Rhode Island Department of Education.

“Statewide is very expensive and is not built to be efficient, it’s built to be effective. It’s built to get students to where they need to be, not necessarily efficiently for districts,” she said. “When we get into our negotiations for a new busing contract, we’ve been talking with the other East Bay superintendents about using our own contract to cost share and pool for transporting students out of district, because that would be a savings for us as opposed to using Statewide.”

Riley added that the district was looking into utilizing more transportation vans becoming available through First Student rather than whole buses, which sometimes only transport a handful of students.

JFC Chairman and Bristol Town Council member Tim Sweeney asked if a legislative effort introduced last year by Reps. June Speakman, Susan Donovan, and Jason Knight — which seeks to reorganize Bristol Warren into a busing region that made more geographical sense and would, ostensibly, save the district money — had gained any traction at the State House.

As the law is currently written, Bristol Warren is in Region 3, alongside the towns of Lincoln, Smithfield, Johnston, North Providence, Barrington, and the cities of Cranston, Central Falls, East Providence, Pawtucket, and Providence. The bill (House Bill 7292), which is being held for study in the House Education Committee as of early February, would seek to put Bristol Warren into Region 5 with Little Compton, Middletown, Portsmouth, and Tiverton, and the city of Newport.

“Our legislators have supported that in bringing that forward for the last two years,” Riley said. “This year they put forward legislation to put forward a committee to look at it statewide and maybe reorganize all of the regions, so hopefully that will be another savings for us.”

While they will not vote on enacting the budget as presented until their next meeting on March 21 at 6:30 at the Mt. Hope High School cafeteria, the members of the JFC had praise for the relatively small increase presented.

“I was delighted to see the 2%,” said member John Hanley, who is also the Town Council President in Warren. “I don’t believe it’s in my purview and I don’t have the knowledge or experience on education so I’m not going to tell you you should spend more money here or there. My strength is seeing that 2% and that did make me smile.”