The District 2 Plain-English Ledger: September 2026

This is the first edition of a monthly report on Warwick’s schools. It covers what the School Committee decided, where the money stands, how the two new high schools are coming along, and what I would have asked if I’d been at the table. I’m on the November 3 ballot for District 2, unopposed, and I won’t take a seat until January. So for now this is a report from the audience, and the “How I voted” section it will eventually have is replaced by “What I would have asked.”

The committee met on September 10, and its minutes won’t be filed with the state until they’re approved at the October 13 meeting. This edition is built from the meeting recording, the posted agendas, and the filed record from earlier meetings. When the official minutes come out, I’ll correct anything that doesn’t match and say so here. Chair Shaun Galligan was absent, Vice Chair Leah Hazelwood ran the meeting, and every vote was 4-0.

The 60-second version

• Buses. A RIDE-commissioned review, attached to this year’s bus contract, found that Warwick runs 101 buses in the morning and that, on average, they are 68 percent empty. It suggests better-spaced bell times might let the district get by with fewer than 80 buses. Meanwhile this year’s transportation budget is already short, and the finance office hopes to present a revised figure in October.
• Last year’s books. The school year that ended June 30 (FY26) is showing a preliminary deficit of about $2.2 to $2.3 million, and the finance director said one year-end entry may add roughly $200,000 more.
• High schools. The project manager put Toll Gate at roughly half done, and the builder put Pilgrim at about 35 percent. Pilgrim’s contractual finish date has moved to March 2028 because of soil contamination. Counting money the builder is set to hand back, about $8.7 million of the district’s reserve for surprises is uncommitted, and the unfunded ball fields get a firmer price in January.

The money

Jargon, translated

What you’ll hear at the meeting	What it means
”The five-year deficit reduction plan”	The schools overspent by $7.9 million over two budget years (FY25 and FY26). The state-created Budget Commission set a schedule to pay that back over five years, from July 2026 through June 2031.
”The stipulations”	Ten conditions attached to that repayment plan. Four of them name the School Committee as the place where regular reports have to go.
”Budget-to-actual with a rolling forecast”	A monthly comparison of what we planned to spend with what we’ve actually spent, plus a projection of how the year will end.
”Reconciled position control”	A list of every job the district pays for, checked against payroll, so that the headcount on paper matches the paychecks going out.
”Breakage”	Savings the budget assumes from people leaving and being replaced by lower-paid staff, or not replaced. This year’s budget counts on $995,000 of it.
”Unbudgeted position”	A job added after the budget passed, usually because a student’s education plan legally requires it.
”MUNIS”	The district’s new accounting software. It replaced older software that the Budget Commission described as failing.

Paying back the $7.9 million

The total is $7,947,489, which is the FY25 deficit ($5,766,101) plus the deficit built into the FY26 budget ($2,181,388). The way it works is a little odd, because the city sets the money aside and then takes it back as the repayment, so it doesn’t count toward what the city is required to spend on schools. The schedule below comes from the plan’s own spreadsheet, which was posted with the School Committee’s March 24 meeting packet.

Year	Fiscal year	Payment	Status
1	FY27 (July 2026 to June 2027)	$1,141,779	Not reported publicly. The payment isn’t in the school budget passed in May, and I haven’t found it reported at any meeting since March 24.
2	FY28	$1,578,057	Not yet due
3	FY29	$1,578,057	Not yet due
4	FY30	$1,578,057	Not yet due
5	FY31	$2,071,539	Not yet due

One discrepancy worth knowing about: the March 24 minutes give the first-year payment as $1,111,417, while the spreadsheet attached to the same meeting says $1,141,779. The five years in the spreadsheet add up exactly to $7,947,489, so I’ve used its numbers, and I’ll ask which one the city is actually working from.

At that March 24 meeting the School Committee refused to vote on the plan and called it illegal and unenforceable. Whatever you think of how the plan came about, the question I’ll keep asking is whether the district is meeting the commitments in it.

The stipulation check

Every School Committee agenda links to a public folder holding that meeting’s packet, the written material members get. I checked the September 10 packet, and every packet back to January 2024, for each of these reports.

Stipulation	What it requires	What the public record shows
No. 1	Monthly budget-to-actual report with a year-end forecast	Half there. A General Fund status report comparing budget to spending is in every monthly packet. None of them includes a forecast of how the year will end. FY27 salaries are also still paid out of the old payroll system, so the September report shows no salary spending at all.
No. 4	Monthly progress on the audit	Not in any packet. In July the district said its FY25 audit paperwork was complete and was waiting on the auditor. The packet for the October 13 meeting, already posted, asks the committee to approve CliftonLarsonAllen as auditor for FY26 through FY28.
No. 8	Reconciled position report, presented at a public meeting	Not in any packet. The closest thing is a one-page list of budget amendments since July ($476,679, which covers two reinstated kindergarten teachers and aides and one tuition placement).
No. 10	Advance notice to the committee, the Mayor, and the City Council of every contract over $30,000, with multi-year cost estimates	Not in any packet. Large contracts still arrive as individual spending requests. The final-year renewal of the First Student bus contract ($9.1 million) came that way, with a memo saying it won’t cover the full year.

Where this year’s budget is already strained

Buses are the biggest worry. FY27 is the last year of the First Student contract, which includes a 5 percent increase per bus. The district asked to set aside the rest of the budget for it, $9,116,913, and the memo with the request says plainly that this “is not expected to fully cover FY27 costs.” The transportation line was also cut from last year, and savings the budget counted on haven’t materialized (the May budget assumed $400,000 in transportation savings). The finance office hopes to bring a revised transportation number to the October meeting.

The memo also explains where the money goes. The largest cost is special-education transportation, particularly small buses and door-to-door service required by students’ IEPs. The review attached to the memo, done by a transportation consultant for RIDE, found that 41 percent of Warwick’s bus trips are special-needs trips, more than double the 20 percent average. It also found that the district buses students to 40 buildings with 26 different bell times, and that more than 70 afternoon buses get 30 minutes or less to finish runs that normally need an hour, which is part of why only 69 percent of afternoon runs are on time. The review says that getting under 80 buses would require the School Committee to approve policy changes.

Fuel is the next one. The budget has $360,000 for diesel and gasoline, and when David Testa asked whether that was too low, the finance director said she thinks it is.

Then there are positions nobody planned for. The committee approved two teacher assistants for students whose education plans (IEPs) require one-on-one help, at about $117,000 that wasn’t budgeted. Testa pointed out that costs like these come up almost every month and that the district has no choice about them. The chair added that when the committee went before the City Council it warned that one more classroom would put the schools over budget, and that it may need to go back and ask for money later this year.

Unpaid school lunch balances are at $154,000. Donations made a few years ago to cover lunch debt are being held by an outside community agency, and they’re barely being used because families find its application harder than the district’s. Testa asked for an accounting of what was donated and what has been paid out, and the finance director plans to meet with the agency to get background and updated balances.

The new accounting system

MUNIS began running the district’s main books on July 6, and payroll is scheduled to move over on January 1, 2027. Until then, salary costs sit in the old system and appear only as a total at the bottom of the monthly report. The finance director also announced that a large benefits adjustment that used to be booked once a year will be booked monthly starting this year, so it won’t land as a surprise at year-end. No one has publicly measured any savings from the new system yet, and I won’t claim any until someone does.

The high school build

Progress

	Toll Gate	Pilgrim
How far along	”Roughly 50 percent,” per the owner’s project manager (the builder’s August payment request put it at 41 percent)	About 35 percent, per the builder
Contract completion date	October 2027	March 2028 (moved in June because of soil contamination)
What you’d see now	Roof on, windows and brick going in, most interior walls framed	One section fully roofed and the rest in progress, south-side window frames in, bricklaying started in early September
Next milestone	Closed up against the weather by the end of 2026	Same

Pilgrim is running about four months behind Toll Gate. Toll Gate could be ready for students in January 2028. Pilgrim would finish in the middle of the spring semester, which means switching buildings over the summer and opening in September 2028. The district hasn’t decided when either school will move in.

Money

The project team compared its change orders (cost changes after a price is locked in) with a Massachusetts School Building Authority study of $1.6 billion in school construction contracts.

• In that study, cost additions averaged 2.9 percent of the locked-in price. Both Warwick schools are tracking below that. At Pilgrim, 85 percent of the additions so far come from one problem, the contaminated soil.
• After credits and returned money are counted, net cost growth here is about 1.1 percent. For completed or nearly completed projects in the study, it averaged about 3.2 percent.
• About $1.5 million has come back to Warwick from allowances that weren’t needed, much of it from demolition and cleanup of the old Pilgrim building. At the halfway point, the builder is also set to return about $1 million of its own contingency.
• Counting that return, the district’s own reserve for surprises has about $8.7 million uncommitted. The presenter said this number will go down, but that the riskiest phase of construction is now behind the project.

The Building Committee’s September 2 agenda listed another $139,207 in change orders from the builder and a monthly construction payment of about $13.3 million. Those minutes haven’t been filed yet.

What the $350 million buys, and what it doesn’t

The project team says it is on track to pay for both buildings within the $350 million, including turf fields, lights, and bleachers and press boxes at one of the schools. What isn’t funded is the list of “alternates,” items that were designed and priced but will only be bought if money turns up. The presenter recalled an estimate from early this year of roughly $13 to $18 million for the full list. The baseball and softball fields are the most likely priorities, and a narrower list would cost less. A refined number is expected in mid-January, after furniture and equipment bids come in. Voters turned down the $50 million supplemental bond in February, and no other funding source exists yet.

The sponsorship idea also came up. The committee pulled the only bid it received for a sponsorship and advertising program, 4-0. Members were uneasy that just one company bid, that its experience was mostly with Midwest districts, and that counsel wanted more time with the contract. Testa also thought the proposed 60/40 revenue split was low for Warwick. Members want to find out whether the district could run sponsorships itself under the policy it already has.

Dust at Toll Gate

About two weeks before the meeting, someone reported silica dust from the masonry work reaching the current Toll Gate building. The construction team investigated, found the mason using appropriate dust controls, and found no silica migration. It did find ordinary fine dust in the classrooms closest to the site. Those rooms were cleaned, filters went onto the outside of the classroom ventilation units, sprinklers were added along the haul road, and on-site air monitoring is being installed to confirm the site meets EPA standards.

In the classroom

Special education. Besides the two aides, the committee renewed the district’s orientation and mobility specialist, who teaches students with visual impairments to get around safely. The district’s assistant director of special education has resigned.

Out-of-district tuition. Warwick expects to send about $17.5 million this year to other districts, charter schools, and special-education placements. That total covers several different streams: roughly 195 students at other public districts, about 200 at charters, and about 140 in special-education placements that average around $104,000 each. The Career and Technical Center’s 17 programs have waitlists, and keeping more of those students in Warwick would chip away at the smaller vocational piece (about $2.7 million in FY24). The district is fighting the state over some of these tuition charges. The committee authorized an appeal in June while also opening settlement talks, and any settlement has to come back to the committee for a vote. The finance office is keeping the disputed amounts on the books until that’s resolved.

Kindergarten. Darlene Netcoh of the Warwick Teachers Union reminded the committee that kindergarten classes shouldn’t go over 22 students, and that more classes may need to open as enrollment settles. The committee already added kindergarten sections at Norwood and Hoxsie in August.

Opening day. The Superintendent reported that every position was filled and that transportation ran well after a few first-day adjustments. The chair credited the crews who got the renovated Hoxsie building ready over a single weekend.

Redistricting. The advisory committee on redistricting first met on August 25. It wasn’t discussed on September 10, and it still hasn’t filed anything publicly. The resolutions that set up this work, which I found in the May and July meeting packets, ask the administration to evaluate enrollment, class sizes, and building use at every school and to present “potential school consolidation plans, if any.” That is broader than the Superintendent’s stated goal of balancing schools “without school closures,” and I’d like to know which description the advisory committee is working from. The bus review matters here too, because bell times and school boundaries are hard to change separately.

What I would have asked

Every vote on September 10 was unanimous. These are the questions I would have wanted on the record.

1. Will the bus review’s route data be made public, and can bell-time options be settled by winter? The summary is in the September packet, but not the route-level data behind it. By Testa’s arithmetic, running about 20 fewer buses would be worth around $1.6 million, which is more than the entire year-one deficit payment. Changing schedules in the middle of a year is what hurts families, so I’d want a decision made early enough that parents get months of notice before September 2027.

2. Has the city set aside this year’s repayment, and is it $1,141,779 or $1,111,417? And when will the position report be presented? Both are requirements of the repayment plan, and I haven’t found either one in any packet or minutes since spring. They’re yes-or-no questions, and parents should be able to read the answers somewhere.

3. How does the $8.7 million in uncommitted reserve relate to the “$7.8 million unencumbered” reported in August, and what is the total cost of the Pilgrim contamination? The construction numbers have been good news lately, and I’d like to be able to explain them to parents without guessing. The contamination cost has been promised but never stated.

Every vote on September 10 (4-0; Galligan absent)

• Minutes of the August 11 and August 26 meetings, and the September warrants
• Retirements and resignations (new hires, including principals at Oakland Beach and Wyman, were announced)
• First reading of two policies: BDDB (how agendas are formatted) and JFCL (student behavior on school grounds)
• Bringing back a computer technician position and eliminating an operations specialist position, with no change in headcount
• Two teacher assistants for WELC and Norwood, required by students’ IEPs
• Renewal of the orientation and mobility specialist
• Moving the December meeting from December 9 to December 15
• September change orders, spending requisitions (including the First Student renewal), and bid awards
• Pulling bid 26-0023, the sponsorship and advertising contract

Also on the record

During open public comment, one speaker urged the committee to change how it handles transgender students in girls’ athletics, citing a Supreme Court decision from June, and raised concerns about a student well-being survey sent out at Winman Middle School. Another parent thanked the committee and asked it to keep protecting all students, including transgender students, and to rely on vetted legal advice. Public comment isn’t a vote. Netcoh also pointed out that FY26’s projected deficit is almost exactly the $2.1 million gap the Budget Commission said the budget needed a year ago, which the City Council never voted to fund.

Mailbag

This section is for your questions. Email me at dan@herseyforwarwick.com with anything about the schools, the budget, or the buildings. I’ll answer two each month, and I’ll leave your name off unless you ask me to include it.

Coming up

I’m setting up a monthly coffee hour inside District 2 and will post the first date and place here and on Facebook as soon as it’s set. In the meantime, these meetings are open to the public.

Meeting	When
Policy Subcommittee	Tuesday, September 29, 4:30 p.m.
School Building Committee	Wednesday, October 7, 7:30 a.m.
School Committee	Tuesday, October 13, 5:30 p.m.
School Committee (moved from December 9)	Tuesday, December 15

Check my reading

You can watch the September 10 meeting yourself, and read its full packet, including the bus contract memo and the RIDE review. Agendas and minutes for every meeting are on the Secretary of State’s open meetings portal. If you think I got something wrong, email me and I’ll fix it and note the correction here.