Editor's note: This story, which ran on the front page of the Bristol Phoenix and the Warren Times-Gazette, includes an error that misinterpreted the staffing portion of the proposed FY23 as the entire school budget. The staffing portion of the budget $28.9 million, not the entire budget.

Warren and Bristol taxpayers will likely be asked to pony up a 2.5 percent increase in their contribution to the Bristol Warren Regional School District for the next fiscal year, as summarized in the FY23 recommended budget report that was released earlier this month.

The budget includes $28,998,887 in salary expenses, which represents a $396,951 increase over the revised budget that was adopted by the school committee this past January, and is driven in part by increases in expenses incurred by the new contract for the Bristol Warren Education Association teachers’ union that was ratified unanimously during this month’s school committee meeting.

That contract, according to district Chief Financial Officer Tony Ferrucci, includes a 1 percent retroactive pay raise for the current year and a 2.25 percent increase for the one remaining year of the contract moving forward, for a net increase of 3.25 percent in staffing costs among district educators.

Ultimately, Ferrucci said, the budget does not necessitate the cutting of any student programming to close the deficit. Instead, he and Superintendent Ana Reilly were able to find the necessary savings in the optimization of staffing throughout the district.

Hugh Cole and Mt. Hope see biggest changes
The highlights of positions proposed to be eliminated may appear alarming at first. The proposed budget includes the cutting of nine teaching positions at Mt. Hope High School and 16 teaching positions cut at Hugh Cole Elementary School.

However, Ferrucci explained that the majority of those positions at Hugh Cole are teaching assistant positions — the school had budgeted 30 positions, and that would be knocked down to 16. At the same time, the elementary school received funding to hire two additional full-time special education teachers.

At Mt. Hope, Ferrucci explained that class sizes factored into the decision to propose cutting nine teaching positions, including two in English, three in math, two in science, and one music teacher.

“The conversation when I got here was that the School Committee was concerned with how low some of those class enrollments were,” Ferrucci said, explaining that class sizes average around 20 in the school, with some classes having as few as nine or 10 students.

Ferrucci also explained that there was a good possibility to see a slew of retirement notices between now and mid-April, with as many as 20 teachers being 60 years old or older. Ideally, a majority of the cut positions would overlap with retirements, and the positions would simply not need to be re-filled, rather than many teachers being let go.

Shift in student assistance method
A big change proposed in the FY23 budget relates to how student support staff are scheduled, assigned and accounted for throughout the district.

The practice had been to split student support staff — such as school psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists and IT staff — throughout the individual school buildings, which complicated budgeting practices and made it difficult to account for how their time was spent, and where it was spent.

Moving forward, if the budget is approved, support staff would be centralized within the Reynolds Building administration office and will now report to the Director of Student Support Services, where they will be assigned out to schools as they are needed.

Deliberation ahead
The proposed budget will go before the Bristol Warren Regional School Committee on Monday, Feb. 28. If approved, it will go before the Joint Finance Committee in March.

Ferrucci said that he has been pleased with the level of communication between the Superintendent Reilly, members of the JFC, and the School Committee.

“Everybody, both towns and their leadership, finance directors, Warren’s JFC chairman [Steve Calenda], they’ve all been supportive and outreaching and there’s good dialogue. I think they’re all on the same page,” he said. “It makes me think that of all the years, this will be one of the smoother processes.”