Editor’s note: Last week’s budget story included multiple errors, including a misrepresentation that the staffing portion of the FY23 budget represented the entirety of the budget, and an incorrect report that a music teacher was slated to be cut at Mt. Hope High School.

The Bristol Warren Regional School Committee unanimously approved a $56.9 million school budget on Monday night, which will now go before the Joint Finance Committee on Thursday evening for deliberation.

Included in that package is a balancing act of trimming positions based on enrollment numbers, and adding positions that Superintendent Ana Riley said will have the greatest positive impact on students.

“We may cut FTEs [full-time equivalents], but that doesn’t necessarily mean the cutting of people, depending on the other positions that open up in the district,” Riley told the committee. “I don’t want anyone in the community to think all we’re doing is cutting. We are putting in expenses where we believe they will have an impact on student achievement.”

In total, the new budget includes a reduction of 10 total full-time equivalent positions (six from Mt. Hope High and four from elementary schools), however, Riley said that might not necessarily translate into that amount of layoffs due to impending retirements and new positions created that may be filled by existing staff.

Adding student support services
Our story last week included a report on plans for the district to trim down on the amount of teaching assistant positions, primarily at Hugh Cole Elementary School.

Riley clarified during the meeting that this is part of an ongoing strategy to move to a different model of instruction that pairs general educators with special education teachers in each classroom. The budget includes money to add a special education coordinator, a K-8 math coordinator, as well as four additional full-time special education teachers who will be assigned based off IEP needs at various schools.

“We will hire more special educators in order to provide the level of service that our students need and deserve,” Riley said on Monday. “Currently, our students who have IEPs, proficiency levels are in the single digits. We have to address that issue, and this is one of the ways in which we’ll be doing it. You’ll actually see me advocating for the hiring of more special education teachers over the next several budget seasons. We can’t afford to just hire them all at once.”

The district also included money to hire four “achievement coaches,” which will act as instructional support staff for educators in the district to better identify and address challenges that kids are facing.

“They’re going to focus on areas where we can improve student achievement,” Riley said. “So they’ll be looking at classroom data, where students need additional support, and be working in those classrooms in six- to eight-week cycles in order to improve both literacy and math.”

Additionally, the budget includes money to hire an additional Pre-K teacher to open an additional full-time Pre-K program at Colt Andrews Elementary School, in addition to the program already running at Hugh Cole Elementary.

When asked by school committee member Nicky Piper if the staffing reductions would ave any programmatic impact, Riley said that they would not.

“The staff cuts will not have any programmatic impact. What we’ve done is look at enrollment and looked at where that decline in enrollment is, without reducing programs,” she said. “We are not cutting programming through this budget, we are simply reducing based on enrollment.”

Budget increases only slightly over last year
The FY23 budget includes an increase of $495,824 in salaries and employee benefits over last year, representing a 1.1 percent uptick and the majority of the $535,200 in total increased expenditures — representing a 1 percent total increase over last year. At the same time, the district was able to avoid using any of its available fund balance, and continue to pay down debt service.

In terms of revenue, the district will see a decrease in about $36,000 from state aid and a $25,000 increase in federal revenue. The allocation to be asked from Bristol and Warren taxpayers will increase 2.5 percent overall (worth about $1 million). Exactly how much will be asked from each community will be determined during a meeting with the Joint Finance Committee this week.

Committee has high praise for budget process
Multiple members of the school committee took a moment to compliment Riley and Chief Financial Officer Tony Ferrucci on their preparation of the budget.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who is sitting up here, particularly Mr. Ferrucci and Superintendent Riley and the members of the budget subcommittee,” said Committee Chairperson Marjorie McBride. “I’ve never seen people work so hard for so long with such a mess on their hands. Yes, I’m smiling tonight.”

“Mr. Ferrucci has been cleaning up the accounts, meaning that there were charges that weren’t in the right place the past years,” said Sheila Ellsworth, who chairs the budget subcommittee. “He’s been aligning and cleaning it up. It’s a huge process and a huge undertaking to clean up and streamline our financials. I think they’ve done an excellent job going account by account trying to figure out what we need.”

“I’m grateful we could still take care of the greater needs of our students, the humans, and also the educators. I hate that we have to cut anybody at any time, but I feel confident in this budget in a way that I haven’t in the past,” said Carly Reich. “I’m very pleased with how this is coming together and it feels like a sea change in how we approach budgeting as a community and how we sort of look at our responsibilities, so thank you very much for that.”