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PAWTUCKET – While sharing buses with the William M. Davies Career and Technical High School seemed like a good idea on paper, Pawtucket families and officials have grown frustrated with the delays it has caused students both before and after school.
“We aren’t doing a good service to our families in Pawtucket,” Erin Dube, deputy chairwoman of the Pawtucket School Committee, said at the March 25 meeting. “They want buses on time for their families.”
To remedy the situation, school board members voted 6-0 to go out to bid for a new transportation contract without including Lincoln-based Davies. Member Joanne Bonollo was absent from the meeting.
PAWTUCKET – The City Council last week moved to decrease the size of a proposed supplemental tax increase by about one-third, with members saying they’ll work with Mayor Donald Grebien’s administration to find cost savings to make up the difference in lost revenue by the end of the fiscal year June 30.
The increase per $1,000 of assessed property value will be 25 cents instead of 35 cents, from $20.89 to $21.14. The resulting increase for the majority of residential taxpayers is less than $50 per year.
Finance Committee Chairman Mark Wildenhain said he wished former Chairman John Barry III was still here to deliver the bad news, particularly in the middle of a pandemic, but this was what had to be done to make up for the unavoidable woes of this past pandemic year. The committee asked the administration for some alternatives to the full increase, including tweaking tax percentage rates. It won’t be easy to make up the difference of about $600,000 in revenue, he said, “but
PAWTUCKET – In a move veteran city leaders were calling “unprecedented” in Pawtucket, the School Committee last week agreed to address a majority of the city’s $2.6 million budget gap.
Councilor Terry Mercer, head of the City Council’s finance subcommittee, called the agreement an “exceptional outcome,” thanking the School Committee and Chairman Jay Charbonneau for working with the city to avoid a potential large-scale supplemental tax increase for residents.
Council President David Moran said there have often been cases where the schools have sought more money from the city, which certainly makes sense, but this is the first time he can remember where the reverse has happened.
UPDATE: After again hearing from parents upset about their plan to keep schools closed through the end of the year, Pawtucket School Committee members on Tuesday ultimately voted to gradually bring students back for in-person learning.
The vote came less than a month after school board members rejected the superintendent s reopening plan and voted to stay in distance learning through the final months of the 2020-2021 school year.
The COVID-conditional plan calls for grades 1-6 to come back beginning March 1, grades 7-8 to return March 15, and high school students to return to a hybrid model on March 29.
PAWTUCKET – The Pawtucket School Committee was set to host another discussion Tuesday night, Feb. 9, about whether to reopen schools again at some point this year, but Chairman Jay Charbonneau, pictured, said in advance that he didn’t expect the committee to change its previous votes to stay closed.