Budget for Busing Will Stay the Same

Following the decision to award the Johnston Public Schools contract for busing to First Student on May 4, Supt. Bernard DiLullo confirmed that the overall cost of transportation won't change in fiscal 2013.

[The Johnston Sun Rise had reported the school committee's vote to approve the $1.9 million-per-year contract at its meeting Apr. 26.]

That figure covers only in-district busing for the 2,100 students who attend the public schools, as well as on Atwood Avenue and St. Philip's School in Greenville, DiLullo explained.

"That number is not completely accurate, because it lacks the out of district costs — the real cost will be nearly the same as previous years," DiLullo said during an interview after the school board's May 8 meeting at . "Unfortunately, there is no real savings."

Transportation and Faciities Manager David Cournoyer explained during a separate interview that the school district also pays into a statewide busing contract to transport Johnston students to vocational and private schools outside of town.

Added together, the two parts of the district's busing budget will be about the same as the fiscal 2012 line items totalling about $3.6 million.

"We didn't have a cut, but we [also] didn't have an increase," Cournoyer noted, adding that Durham Student Services, which held the bus contract for five years, offered a bid that was about $60,000 higher than First Student's.

Cournoyer also released a comparison between the First Student bid and the costs of joining an existing regional busing program — also run by First Student — which would have cost the district even more money because of extra costs for running buses longer than five hours per day.

School board members in February approved a proposed fiscal 2013 budget that is about $345,000 higher than Mayor Joseph Polisena's stated goal of level-funding the district for a fifth straight year.

With busing costs now settled, committee members have the teachers' union and food service contracts left to negotiate.

The next school committee meeting will be on Tuesday, June 6 at 7 pm in the Ferri Middle School library.