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Rockport superintendent urges regional special‑ed transportation to rein in costs
Summary
Superintendent Mark Branca urged regionalizing special‑education transportation and highlighted its outsized share of district costs, noting a $6.6M operating figure and roughly $500,000 tied to transportation in the discussion.
Superintendent Mark Branca used the committee meeting to flag special‑education transportation as a major pressure point in the district budget and described regional efforts among North Shore districts to create a centralized transportation hub for special‑education services. Branca said multiple districts piloted a regional model and that a larger hub could improve bidding, staffing quality and cost efficiency.
"If we could regionalize it, and 2, if the state could put a mechanism in place where they fund it and don't make us pay first," Branca said, urging both local collaboration and state policy changes to ease cash‑flow and reimbursement burdens. He reported the district’s overall operating figure and transportation portion: "out of that total number, which it's 6,600,000, I think just over $500,000 is transportation." The committee discussed the potential for shared services to reduce expenses and the constraints caused when districts must front‑pay transportation before state reimbursement.
