ROCHESTER — Rochester School Committee members approved a budget of $6,361,911 for Rochester Memorial School for the fiscal year 2021 on March 12. 

The new budget represents just a 0.98% increase from last year’s budget of 6,424,585.

A large portion of the budget savings and low overall increase came from a new transportation contract, reclassifying where the funds for students that attend Bristol Agricultural High School will be in the town’s budget, and from funding surpluses related to special education. 

Moving the agricultural high school funds was big, as the school has “been talking about this for years. Bristol Aggie students are grades 9 to 12, not grades K to 6 but have been in a grade K to 6 budget for years,” Superintendent Doug White said. 

The school circuitbreaker funds, which are meant to help with special education costs, will also help with other areas of the budget this year. The district is supposed to cover $45,000 toward each student’s education. The state then covers 75% of the difference between that cost and what it actually cost to educate the students. The district’s Assistant Superintendent for Teaching, Learning and Student Services, Michael Nelson, explained that the school can use some of those funds, which are rewarded retroactively, elsewhere in the budget because there were fewer unexpected expenses in the special education budget this year. 

The school also saved around $14,000 by renegotiating a transportation contract with a new busing company this year. 

Rochester Memorial will keep the same number of full-time staff this year, but salaries (one of the largest areas of the budget) will increase by $121,719. This increase represents a 2.87% increase over last year. 

In addition to the funds that the town provides and circuitbreaker funds, the town also got around $304,074 in grants and other funding from the state. 

A public hearing on the budget closed without public comment. School Committee chair Sharon Hartley said that moving the Bristol Agricultural funds was “something that we’ve worked on with the town for a long time.”