School transportation study group gets off to slow start

Buses owned by First Student, a nationwide transportation company and one of increasingly few competitors in Rhode Island’s statewide school bus system, are seen on East Main Road in Portsmouth. The northernmost town on Aquidneck Island rallied its legislative leaders to make statewide changes in school transportation after feeling it’s been paying too much for state-regulated transportation services. (Ken Castro/Rhode Island Current)

How should Rhode Island’s K-12 students get to school?

The question is pressing enough that in the most recent legislative session, the House and Senate approved a joint resolution to form a special commission to study school transportation in the Ocean State.

But at the new commission’s first meeting on Wednesday, the senator who helped craft that joint resolution was having transportation troubles of her own.

“[Sen.] Linda Ujifusa is unfortunately unable to join us today because she is stuck on the tarmac coming back from a legislative conference,” said Rep. Terri Cortvriend, the Portsmouth Democrat who brought the resolution to the House side.

“And the plane was delayed, and then it lost power, and hopefully she will make it back to Portsmouth safely tonight at some point, but she won’t be able to join us today.”

That meant Ujifusa, also a Portsmouth Democrat, would have to wait until the next meeting to be confirmed as the commission’s co-chair. Cortvriend was confirmed unanimously as co-chair, and the commission members introduced themselves and agreed to the next meeting date.

State law requires school districts to participate in a statewide transportation system administered by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), unless they apply for an exemption. A school district can get reimbursed, sometimes at less than the promised 100% rebate rate, for private school students it buses within its own district.

But the district might not be reimbursed at all for kids who attend school outside of their home district, like those with special needs or who go to technical schools like The Met, the Portsmouth Times recently reported . School districts can also apply to use their own buses for private school students — at the cost of sacrificing any state reimbursement.

Cortvriend said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting that the 13-member study group will pour its efforts into three buckets. The first involves the representative’s own district of Portsmouth, which she says paid approximately $600,000 on out-of-district transportation in 2023.

Commission member Emily Copeland, who chairs the Portsmouth School Committee, said transportation “was a topic of great interest” at recent meetings — like on Aug. 6 , when Chris Diluro, the district’s director of finance and administration, said the district incurred $80,000 in costs for transporting just two students, roughly the same cost as an entire bus.

The second bucket is the Bristol-Warren Regional School District, which is in the same region as the West Bay and Rhode Island’s urban core. The size of the bus zone means the district can pay more to bus students sometimes significant distances if they attend certain schools.

“Bristol and Warren are clearly designated as East Bay in every other association and in every other state agency,” said Ana Riley, the district’s superintendent who attended as representative of the Rhode Island School Superintendents Association. “The only places that we’re not in the East Bay are in these transportation regions.”

The state’s four transportation zones are, per remarks Ujifusa gave Cortvriend to read, “a 50-year-old system.” But the way RIDE groups the state’s districts has been updated since it premiered in 1977.

Victor Morente, a spokesperson for RIDE, said in an email that the state’s transportation zones were retooled earlier this year when the state put out a request for proposal for a quality bus service company that would also offer “best value.” The contract ultimately went to the Connecticut-based DATTCO , which enlarged its existing service districts to now provide bussing for most of the state. The transportation zone DATTCO covers now spans the East Bay to Woonsocket.

A third concern involves the imperfect system for Providence high schoolers , some of whom can take public transit to school — something one can witness on weekday mornings in the capital city, when students and commuters alike share packed buses along the city’s routes.

But that can be a problem “if the RIPTA [Rhode Island Public Transit Authority] bus doesn’t come, which sometimes it doesn’t,” Cortvriend said.

House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale, a Foster Republican, and Rep. Joseph Solomon Jr., a Warwick Democrat, were not present at the meeting, nor were a number of the officially named commission members from state agencies, most of whom sent designees.

Cortvriend said it’s possible the commission’s final report, which the resolution schedules for an April 2025 delivery, could lead to legislative or administrative changes in the way the state structures student transportation.

The commission plans to meet next on October 9.

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