I think it’s incredibly expensive and the costs are very volatile and they can change pretty dramatically within months.”

Chris DiIuro, the district’s director of finance and administration

PORTSMOUTH — Chris DiIuro painted a stark picture of the school district’s statewide transportation problems at Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting.

State law requires local school districts to pay the costs of transporting students outside their districts if they have special needs that can’t be met locally, or they attend a private, parochial, charter or career and technical school within the district’s assigned transportation region. 

According to DiIuro, the district’s director of finance and administration, the average cost per student in the statewide transportation program, depending on what school they’re attending, is about $50,000. 

The costs can be considerably higher, however. DiIuro cited two such examples during the 2023 fiscal year. 

“We had two students whose cost for statewide transportation was over $80,000 each, which can be as much or maybe even more than the actual tuition to wherever they’re going,” he said. “To put that in perspective, it costs about $80,000 for us to have one, standard 71-passenger bus for the whole year. Think of that bus making morning and afternoon runs to elementary, middle and high school. It costs the same as transporting one student twice a day.”

Simply put, the program’s high costs needs examining, DiIuro said.

“I think it’s incredibly expensive and the costs are very volatile and they can change pretty dramatically within months,” he said, adding that something needs to be done to allocate some of the costs back to the individual districts. “Again, I think it’s a good program but we’ve got to get those costs under control.”

Fortunately, a new legislative study commission that was formed after a joint resolution sponsored by two state lawmakers from Portsmouth — Rep. Terri Cortvriend and Sen. Linda Ujifusa — will look for ways to improvement then state school transportation system. The 13-member Statewide Transportation Study Commission’s first meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 28, at the State House.

The law requires districts to use a statewide transportation service administered by the R.I. Department of Education (RIDE), or seek a variance from RIDE, for instance, to use district-owned buses, but receive no reimbursement.

The state law creating the program in 1977 sliced the state into five regions. Portsmouth’s zone includes Tiverton, Little Compton, Middletown, and Newport. 

“As you know, we’re required to transport our private school students,” DiIuro explained. “RIDE reimburses districts that use statewide transportation for 65 percent of the costs. It’s supposed to be 100 (percent), but it’s never been fully funded by the legislature. Again, that’s only for private school students, so they reimburse us nothing for using statewide for any special ed transportation, homeless transportation, DCYF students — zero. It’s only for private school, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

Portsmouth uses its own in-district transportation system to get local students to private schools such as Pennfield School, St. Philomena, or St. George’s School.

There’s no reimbursement,” DiIuro said. “The reason we do that is because we’re able to do that without incurring any incremental costs, so we can transport our private school students and our public school students with the same numbers of buses. We would not save money by stopping transporting private school (students). If we were to use statewide, we’d incur the 35 percent; we’d get 65 back but we’d still spend 35 percent more than we are today.”

When the study commission was announced last month, Cortvriend pointed out that Portsmouth spent over $600,000 on out-of-district transportation in 2023. 

“With more students attending out-of-district career and tech programs, it makes sense to study what has likely become an outdated transportation system,” she said.

Emily Copeland, who chairs the School Committee, agreed.

“I think there are some real benefits to Portsmouth if we pay real close attention to this and think about not just what the problem are, but also are these legislative solutions, are there other kinds of regulatory solutions that need to happen, or is it management solutions at statewide? I don’t think anybody knows the answers to those.” 

That’s what the commission is for, she said.

The commission’s recommendations are due to the General Assembly by April 16, 2025.

School opening news

Few people want to think of the start of school just yet, but Superintendent Thomas Kenworthy shared an update Tuesday night regardless.

The first day of school is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 4. Full-day orientation activities, for students in kindergarten, grade 5, grade 9, or those new to the district, is Tuesday, Sept. 3. 

The schedules for the middle and high schools, as well as elementary teacher assignments, will be released on Friday, Aug. 23. Staff orientation for all schools is on Thursday, Aug. 29.

Elementary school students can expect to see some improvements to their buildings when they arrive for the first day. Hathaway and Melville will have new classroom HVAC systems. Hathaway is also getting two new sets of student bathrooms and an elevator, while Melville will get its second set of bathrooms that the district wasn’t able to complete last summer.

Personnel updates

Here are the new hires since the committee’s last meeting on June 25:

High school: Autumn Hoffman, English teacher (rehire); Ryan Bailey, CTE digital video production teacher (rehire); Kristina Hughes, special educator; Karen Doucette, school nurse teacher; and Brandy Baker, teacher assistant.

Middle school: Emma Conticello, special educator interventionist; Kelley Reilly, school social worker; Katherine Perry, grade 8 science teacher; Tanya Banal, special educator (rehire); and Michelle Daisy and Meghan Tucker, teacher assistants.

Hathaway: Gabriella DeComo, part-time physical education/health/adaptive physical education teacher; Meggi Shaw, instructional systems coach (rehire); Caitlin Furmerie, school social worker; Gabriella Dibiaso, art teacher; Lara Stanton, main office clerk; Kate Vieira, grade 3 teacher (rehire). The district also welcomed another rehire, Michelle DeMello as an elementary English language learner teacher.

The following people submitted their resignations: Annemarie Hogan, school nurse teacher at PHS; Jaden Siembab, registered behavior technician at Hathaway; and Alison Gaumond, general school aide at Hathaway.

The district also appointed two new fall coaches: Daniel Kapstein, volunteer football coach at PHS; and James Nott, assistant coach for girls’ soccer at PHS.

“Other than that, we’re fully hired at coaching positions. All of our teaching positions are filled,” Kenworthy said.

Next meeting

The School Committee will next meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 20, at Town Hall.