Fall River school busing to cost $17 million this year as a new committee weighs $300,000 in savings on charter school buses
Special education rides are projected at $9.08 million and rides for homeless students at $3.57 million. A regular education bus now costs $741 a day, up from $663 last year.
FALL RIVER Fall River Public Schools expects to spend about $17.06 million busing students this school year, district officials told a new City Council committee Thursday evening, Oct. 29. Committee members pressed for one savings idea to be worked on now: moving Argosy Collegiate Charter School's students off yellow buses and onto public transit buses, which a district slide estimated would save about $300,000.
Special education rides are the largest piece of the bill, at $9,076,351 in the district's Oct. 26 projection, followed by rides for homeless students at $3,566,652. Those lines cost about $8.56 million and $2.07 million last year, said the district's chief financial officer, Aldo Petronio.
Petronio said all but about $1 million of the projection is committed, with the rest held for new special education placements and other changes, and he expects the district to finish June 30 at about $17 million. The slide notes 109 special education students registered since Sept. 1, while overall enrollment is down about 300, officials said.
The projection slide's six line items add to $15,262,260, $1.8 million less than the $17,062,260 total the same slide shows. Petronio said the line figures date from when the budget was being built, before talks on the transportation budget in May, June and July.
Who rides and what it costs
The district's slides count 2,401 students transported in district, among them 1,342 who board at bus stops, 618 special education students picked up at their doors, 170 prekindergarten students and 71 at the district's Stone therapeutic school. It also transports 114 students covered by the federal McKinney-Vento law for homeless students, 88 living in Fall River and 26 outside it, and 68 special education students who attend placements outside the district.
The main contractors are Amaral Bus Company, Tremblay Bus Company and Whaling City Transit, and this year's fleet counts 46 buses with 47 seats, 17 with 77 seats, 62 seven-passenger vans, 15 wheelchair vans and seven minivans.
A district chart shows costs rising every year from about $11 million in fiscal 2022. Petronio said yearly increases since the pandemic have run from about 7% to 15%, with the latest figured at 5%, and that fuel prices are up about 30% ahead of the next bus bids. A regular education bus now costs $741 a day, up about 12% from $663 last year, a district transportation official said.
The charter school buses
State law, in a section the district showed, requires a district to transport charter school students who live in it, when the charter school asks, "on similar terms and conditions" as its own students and to "accommodate the particular school day and school year of the charter school." The charter school and the district "shall meet to plan bus routes and charter school starting and ending times in order to assist the district with cost effective means of transportation," the law says. When a district limits transportation for its own students, the law adds, it does not have to go beyond those limits for charter school students.
Durfee High School students ride Southeastern Regional Transit Authority buses, while Argosy, which serves grades 6 to 12, has yellow buses for its middle and high school students. Petronio said the Argosy contract figure is closer to $660,000 than the $500,000 on the slide, with part of the cost paid from other funds.
Deborah Carvalho, the district's director of transportation services, said she has asked Argosy to change the start time of its middle or high school so buses could run in tiers, either with a Fall River school or between Argosy's two schools, and that the school answered that sporting events and other programs kept it from changing its times. The administration was asked to send the committee the emails and other records of those talks. Councilor Shawn E. Cadime said $300,000 is real money he would rather see go back to the schools for student activities.
Ken Pacheco, the district's chief operating officer, said SRTA's Durfee runs are "trippers," special public runs to the high school that anyone can ride. District leaders said they would reach out to Argosy's superintendent, with any change aimed at next school year, and members said Argosy could be invited to give its view at a future meeting.
Other questions
Redistricting cut three buses and two vans at Viveiros Elementary, now a walking school, but buses were added elsewhere as students shifted, and moving the dual language program from Viveiros to Greene added a bus, district officials said.
Four full-time district couriers drive students and carry mail between schools and City Hall, and half of their pay is charged to transportation, Petronio said. School Committee member Collin Dias said the Tiverton, R.I., School Committee moved in recent weeks to end, by the end of the year, a long-standing agreement under which some Fall River children attend Tiverton schools, which he said would add to busing costs, and asked for an update at the next meeting.
Two Judge Street residents, and a third in a letter, asked the committee for help with a lane they described as deeply rutted, across the Rhode Island line, that school vehicles use to reach their homes. The committee voted 5-0 to recommend that the city's corporation counsel contact the residents by the end of the day Friday.
What happens next
The committee has three councilors, Cadime, Christopher M. Peckham Sr. and Andrew J. Raposo, and two School Committee members, Dias and Kevin Aguiar, whom members elected chair. It can only make recommendations, Dias noted, and runs until Aug. 11, 2027, Aguiar said. It meets next on Thursday, Dec. 10, at 5 p.m. in the City Council chamber at One Government Center, and members want the city's director of financial services, who had a scheduling conflict Thursday, at the table with the school finance team.
The committee takes public comment at its meetings. The City Council office is at 508-324-2233, and the school district's transportation office is at 508-675-8330, ext. 55246.
Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.
Notes
The costs, student and vehicle counts, the cost chart, the $300,000 estimate and the state law text come from the slides Fall River Public Schools showed, read from the Fall River Government Television video of the meeting. The spoken figures, the reasons given about Argosy and the votes come from the same video, checked against its audio. Names and titles come from the district's and the city's own pages. We checked each date and weekday against a calendar. Argosy Collegiate Charter School did not speak at the meeting; its reasons appear here as the district's transportation director described them.
Corrections
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Sources (7)
- Fall River Government Television: City Council Ad Hoc School Transportation Committee, Oct. 29, 2026 (video, with the district's slides on screen)Slides at 0:21:50 to 0:24:30, 0:28:00, 0:40:00, 0:50:10, 0:54:30, 1:18:10. Read Oct. 30, 2026.
- City of Fall River: Ad Hoc School Transportation Committee agenda, Oct. 29, 2026Clerk's stamp Oct. 15, 2026. Read Oct. 30, 2026.
- Fall River Public Schools: Transportation departmentRead Oct. 30, 2026.
- Fall River Public Schools: Chief Financial OfficerRead Oct. 30, 2026.
- Fall River Public Schools: Chief Operating OfficerRead Oct. 30, 2026.
- Fall River School Committee: membersRead Oct. 30, 2026.
- City of Fall River: City Council membersRead Oct. 30, 2026.