Cumberland School Committee approves state-funded transportation review after presentation on rising costs

Mario Carreno, chief operations officer for the Rhode Island Department of Education’s statewide transportation program, told the Cumberland School Committee on July 17 that statewide pupil transportation has become dramatically more expensive even as enrollment falls. "We're down 15% or 23,000 students over the last 20 years," Carreno said, and "they're up 61% in the last 8 years," referring to transportation costs.

Carreno outlined a three-phase approach the state is offering to districts: (1) a seat-filling effort to place district students on existing statewide buses where seats are empty; (2) an independent on-site route review by a vendor (Carreno said the purchase-price for that service is approximately $13,000); and (3) exploration of interdistrict routing and other regional options that could yield larger, longer-term savings. He said one change — allowing larger vans similar to Massachusetts — could save about $1,000,000 annually, and that filling empty statewide-bus seats could shave millions more from collective costs.

The presentation emphasized constraints that limit local discretion: federal rules govern transportation for some students (out-of-district special-education, foster-care and homeless students), and state law currently funds private-school transportation in ways that differ from neighboring states. "In Rhode Island, we do the inverse. We have $0 for homeless students and 100% for private school students," Carreno said, noting the statutory framework drives some spending decisions.

Committee members pressed on operational details: how high-cost special-needs routes would be handled, whether parents could opt out and opt back in, and how the route-review vendor would work with local coordinators. Carreno said the vendor would do on-site visits and ride routes to validate fleet size and routing yields and present findings; preliminary statewide data work (phase 1) was already under way and Cumberland had submitted the requested district data.

After questions and discussion, the committee voted to approve resolution SC-PR-07-2025-86, authorizing participation in the transportation review. The motion was made by Mister Bacon and seconded by Miss Smith; the vote was 6–0.

Carreno said the state-funded work aims to produce a December–January report on short-term steps and longer options; changes that require operational or statutory shifts would come later and require further local discussion. The committee’s approval means Cumberland will participate in the site-based route review process and receive findings the district can use in vendor negotiations, redistricting discussion or broader interdistrict planning.