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Foster Glocester School Committee Files, Foster, Glocester, RI (2026)

09/08/2026

A MILLION DOLLAR MIRAGE: THE CLAIMED SAVINGS ON REGIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE SPEND THAT NEVER SHOWED UP. What it was, how we found out it wasn't real, and why it matters.

In March of 2026, they brought a slide to a budget meeting and called it $1.36 million in administrator savings. The Superintendent presented it; said the Business Manager prepared it.

There were job titles on the left. Magic numbers on the right. The Superintendent sold it. The Business Office built it. The room was supposed to clap.

We did not clap. We pulled the audited actuals the district sent to RIDE.

Same district. Same job-class codes. Same Regular Salary dollars. Three buckets they already use: top bosses, mid-level bosses, administrative office support. No scavenger hunt for pretty titles. Watch the pile. We did.

Their slide still claims about $1.10 million saved through 2025. 2026 is not even in the RIDE state file yet, so they counted a year nobody can check.

The administrative salaries pile does not shrink. It hiccups during a transition year, then grows.

Year one of our current Superintendent's administration dipped about $26,000. That is the transition or walkout year. People quit. Some chairs sat empty. It is also, almost to the dollar, the cut in her own paycheck versus Dr. Barnes. That sentence from her presentation is true. She got paid less.

That is the only sentence from the presentation we can agree with.

Year two the office is back to Barnes money. A little over. Year three it is higher. Hold Barnes’s last year still, account for the renamed job titles, the new job titles, and the few positions that were actually "cut" like the Assistant Superintendent, and the district STILL spent more on administration salaries, not a million dollars less.

How do you print a million-dollar cut on a growing bill?

You grow people who already left. You start some of them high. You count a renamed chair as a vanished chair. You leave the new titles off the drawing. You shove a job from mid-level into the top-boss bucket, point at a different line, and yell cut.

The Business Manager’s graphic did not add all the rows. We did.

Mid-level job administrative job titles can look skinny while the top bucket Executive job class line almost doubles. That is not lean. That is a label change.

And no, this is not “everyone got raises in later years.” Admin’s slice of the whole payroll dipped slightly in the transition year, then climbed right back to the Barnes share. Same piece of the pie. New frosting. Fake sprinkles.

So here is the story a regular person can take to the bank.

They claimed savings.
They cherry-picked titles until the claim looked plausible.
They used numbers the audited books will not back up.
The salary files they submitted to RIDE tells the opposite story.
The office around our current Superintendent her is not smaller, it grew, and it is still growing according to current budget in 2027.

If the cut was real, the top-boss Executive bucket would not have nearly doubled. Yet, that's exactly what actually happened, according to their own documents submitted to RIDE.

Question: if this is what the savings slide looks like when you check it, what else on that budget night was a performance?

09/07/2026

SCHOOL SCAM, SECOND STRIKE, NURSE NOTE NIGHTMARE, FOGARTY PHISHING ALERT. Do NOT click the link if you got an email from the School Nurse at Fogarty Memorial.

Delete it. Do not click “Read the protected message.”

Multiple parents have now sent us the same email. It arrives in a Fogarty nurse’s name. It uses a real glocschools.org address. It tells you there is a locked school message waiting and that you have to click to open it.

That click is a likely hacker attack.

Proofpoint is a real company schools use to encrypt sensitive mail. A real Proofpoint message stays in that system. This one does not. The link we reviewed opened on a random Vercel website. Vercel is not the school. It is not Proofpoint.

It is not safe.

It is a throwaway webpage anyone can spin up. If a “secure school email” sends you there, you are not reading a nurse note. You are handing a stranger a door into your phone, your passwords, and whatever else is sitting on your device.

Gmail’s own header on the copy we reviewed shows mailed-by glocschools.org and signed-by the school’s Google system. That is the same pattern as the August phishing we already reported when it happened at the Foster-Glocester Region, when a real district email address was used to push a bad link. Familiar name. Real school domain. Trap on the other side.

This latest one is also hitting parents whose kids have not been at Fogarty for years. So “I recognize that name” is not protection. It is the bait.

The Glocester K5 School Committee has said nothing official.

Do not click.
Do not reply.
Do not type a password into that page.
If you already clicked, change that email password now and turn on two-factor authentication.

How many parents have to get this before the Glocester School Committee warns the public?

09/05/2026

MISS THE LETTER, THEY SHARE YOUR FILES: Parents do not sign a "Yes." They have to chase a "No." Miss a key letter in the flurry of Back to School forms, and the district can hand an outside contractor your family financial status and whether you have involvement with a state agency.

Our Resident Audit found the 2026 payment first. About $38,000 out the door for the Rhode Island Student Assistance Services (RISAS) contract, formerly Coastline EAP but now operating under the name C3 Wellbeing. That $38k fee is what the district calls its share of the total cost. The packet says it covers only 39% of the program and the rest rides on grants and donations.

Then we watched the August 4, 2026 meeting. The data list is the story.

The RISAS contractor gets student names, ID numbers, birthdates, race, GPA, attendance, your family financial status (FRPL), and other state agency involvement (like DCYF).

Free and reduced lunch status is your family’s financial picture. Government agency involvement is whether the state is already in your house. That is not a hall pass. That is confidential family business.

Parents do not opt in. They get an opt-out letter. Miss the letter, forget the form, or never see it, and the district treats silence as permission. The data can move before you ever know a meeting happened.

Administration says they call anyway if a student is referred. That call can come after the fact. After the file is already shared. After the contractor already has lunch status and DCYF flags. A phone call is not consent. It is a courtesy that our sources tell us often arrives late.

Do we really trust this administration to get the timing right every time?

These are not new worries. In May 2025 the Committee tabled the same contract after members and legal counsel flagged the passive opt-out letter. The attorney for the Regional School Committee gave a cautionary tale about a legacy incident where a RISAS counselor had to be fired. Kids could be steered into counseling if a parent never mailed the form back. The Regional School Committee sent it back to counsel and the administration to fix the wording on the parent letter.

In August 2025 they approved it anyway. Handbook checkbox. Promise of a later phone call. Same vendor form. The wording on the parent letter that the attorney cautioned about never got fixed. The contract was paid.

In August 2026 they approved the renewal 7-1. Still opt-out. Still the long data list. No list in the packet of which contractor staff may see it. A blank box where the BCI checks were supposed to be confirmed. Automatic renewal. Services listed. Zero performance milestones. Zero metrics that prove the program works. Yet the Regional School Committee allows this data leak anyway.

This is not a shot at kids getting help. Kids should get help if they need it.

This is a criticism of a School Committee willing to hand an outside contractor student and family data, including financial status and possible involvement with other state agencies, without express parental consent. Mystery staff list. No required BCI checkbox completed in the packet. No scorecard for whether the $38,000 did anything.

If they cannot get that parent letter changed to OPT IN, they should not have approved the contract, in our opinion.

Would you let a vendor you cannot even name by staff list see your family's and student's personal data because you missed an email?

09/04/2026

TWICE TOLD NO WHEN WE ASKED "WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?" Regional School District refuses to send an Excel file of the checks they sent out.

We asked where last year’s budget money actually went.

Not a speech. Not a PDF brick. Excel.

Sortable. Searchable. Checkable.

They said no.
Then they said no again.

It's their work product, they called it. It's their preliminary draft, they said.

They did send a PDF file, and said that was the only thing that was public.

So it is our money they spent.
And their secret when we ask where it went.

Last year’s spend is not a draft. It is the bill we already paid.

A spreadsheet is only "dangerous" if the numbers do not survive a sort.

They will take the tax levy.
They will not send the file in the format we asked for.

So why make it harder to see where they spent our money?

Source: the District’s own letters. Posted below. Read their words.

How would you sort that file if they ever send it?

Drop your questions about how that money was spent below.

09/02/2026

SEVEN STAFF, SHAKY PROCESS: NEW INTENSIVE SPECIAL ED PROGRAM AT WEST GLOCESTER - RUSHED?

Last night the Glocester K-5 School Committee got an "update" from the Superintendent.

They didn't make a motion, or take a vote. They got an update.

The update was an intensive special ed classroom at West Glocester Elementary. Five or six students. The administration could not land on one number. Two are from Scituate. Seven adults assigned to staff that room.

Nobody here is arguing those students off the campus. The question is whether a program stood up this fast can match the services those students were already supposed to receive, and whether it obtained the required approvals along the way, especially from RIDE.

July 29, same Superintendent, joint meeting with the Town Council. The public pitch was one Glocester student who might come home.

4 weeks later, we have 5 (maybe 6?) students enrolled and 7 adults assigned to staff the room. By September 1 the room was already running, Scituate students were already in it, and the Committee was hearing about it after the fact.

The Special Ed Director did the out-of-district money talk. One figure he uses is $130,000 a year in tuition. Transport $40,000 to $100,000 a child. Plus any 1:1. The Superintendent said one student's tuition and transport alone was about $200,000. Those numbers are why schools want kids closer to home. An hour long bus ride far away to get to those out-of-district programs is why families want kids closer to home. Siblings in the same building is a good thing for those families.

The Special Ed Director also discussed with residents at the meeting that this cannot be slapped together. Pulling a student back from an out-of-district program, or taking a student in from another town, only works if the IEP services travel with them and there are observations from the team of the student in their current environment that it's a good fit. Staffing, related services, behavior support, the whole stack. This begs additional questions about how all of that happened for 5-6 students in 4 weeks, with the accompanying IEP meetings happening with the parent's input. These students are apparently already enrolled in this new program. Four weeks ago, Glocester K5 didn't have a fully staffed Special Ed roster per their statements at the Special Joint Meeting.

Seven adults is a lot of payroll. It is not the same thing as a published service model approved by RIDE as a program that can accept students from other districts. Is it 5 students? Is it 6? What minutes are spent in the room as opposed to the other areas in the school building? What 1:1s are necessary, and why was one of the 1:1 contracts tabled last night? Who pays if a Scituate student needs more than the seat?

There is also the paper problem.

The Inter-District Special Ed agreement already on the table says new programs and specialized classrooms get added one way: Superintendent approval AND School Committee ratification. Plus an Annual Service Plan that actually names the room. The agreement says all the member School Committees must ratify it, and a check of the agendas for the Region don't show any discussion of standing up an intensive special ed program at West Glocester in 4 weeks, let alone the three (3!) different School Committee approvals required under that Tri-district agreement.

No ratification turned up last night. No amended service plan. No tuition contract waved in the air. No dollar figure for Scituate revenue. No net savings amount that was stated after seven salaries and benefits. No public staffing plan for the room. No capacity discussion. No entrance rules. No exit rules.

Member Rizzo thanked the Superintendent for trying to generate revenue for the town. Member Ferreira enjoyed the new hopeful energy.

Revenue is a contract and a check. A great relationship with Scituate is not a contract. Hopeful energy is not a tuition payment.

Glocester can want students educated in town and still demand the Committee do this in public, on paper, before the room is already full.

Parents on an IEP team know their own child. The school was supposed to know the program. Was this happening all along and the public didn't know? Or was this hushed and rushed through?

Question for the Glocester School Committee: which vote created this new Special Ed Intensive room, and what proof is there that these students are getting the same level of service they were promised before the hushed rush to create a revenue stream?

Why weren't any of you asking questions about the numbers?

08/30/2026

A MILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS OFFICE... STILL WANTS EXTRA PAY TO BUILD THE BUDGET. DOUBLE-DIPPING? AT YOUR EXPENSE?

$1,073,506.86.

That is what the FY2027 file budgets for the Business Office/Finance and HR. More than a million dollars.

One of their MAIN FUNCTIONS is to produce the budget.

They still wrote extra stipend money into that budget to help... produce the budget they are tasked with themselves according to their contracts?

$31,872 in "stipends" extra. Budget prep is the job of the Superintendent and the School Committee. Why are outside contractors involved? Are the employees that the Superintendent hired not up to the task?

On top of that, another $25,000 for outside admin help. This office already has staff. No other regular office in the file gets that add-on. The only other one is Special Ed summer school.

Yes, $200,000 of the million is the district's property insurance. It has always sat in this office on paper. It is not a hidden employee. Count it. Then look at the extra pay they still stacked on top.

So what are we getting for more than a million dollars?

A budget file nobody can read without a decoder.
Extra help this office should not need. (In our opinion)
Stipends to do the work this office is already paid to do.

They are already paid to do the job. Then paid AGAIN to do the SAME job?

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This is the next installment of Resident Audit, a Files Page series on the FY2027 budget. Same public file. One office, one function, or one expense type at a time. The question is simple. How well can this Superintendent and the School Committee budget? There is a lot more to come.

The Files Page research team obtained the district's FY2027 Budget Only file by APRA. That is the file the district is required to file with RIDE. It is a column of codes and budget numbers. Network specialists on the team matched those codes to RIDE's own accounting manual, gave each line a plain-English name, and added up what the District coded to the Finance/Business Office.

The dollars are the district's. Anyone with the source file can replicate the work.

One member voted no on sending this budget to the voters. The rest sent it to the public. Voters rejected it, then cut it. The Committee never voted again and used the original budget anyway.

A million-dollar office that still wants extra money to create and publish a budget. Do you feel like you are getting your money's worth?

08/29/2026

BIG BUCKS BUDGETED. BUT WHAT DID WE GET?
A PADDED OFFICE AND A PITIFUL PAYOFF.

$480,832.93 is hardly a bargain.

That is what the Region's FY2027 file budgets for the Superintendent's Office. Two people. Salary, benefits, and the non-salary pile.

This is the budget number the district filed with RIDE.

This is just one of the budget numbers the School Committee would not cut.

What are we going to get as a return on that investment? Past performance suggests (in our opinion) not enough service for the amount of the bill.

Previously, the district got admonished and fined for being deceptive with the Attorney General on an APRA request. You paid the fine, not them individually.

Recently, the district was found to have violated the Open Meetings Act for failing to file minutes on time.

Resident questions from the FY2027 budget hearing went unanswered, or the answers were considered by many to be misleading.

Now, the current school calendar does not even appear to meet the statutory 180 days of instruction.

Promises from the Superintendent landed in the newspaper about agenda items that were supposed to be there - but never showed up.

Remember when a parent reached out to a School Committee member about bullying. The Superintendent denied even knowing the reports were coming in. Then the text messages landed. That denial was not accurate. The student left the district. The state aid for that pupil left with that child.

CTE numbers presented to the public by the Superintendent still contradict each other. Still unresolved.

After a neighboring district called the Northwest Special Ed fiscal-agent transition one of the worst they had ever seen, the Superintendent disbanded the entire Northwest Special Ed collaborative.

To add insult to injury? The District approved a budget that included MORE FOR CATERING/FOOD THAN IT DID FOR SUPPLIES/MATERIALS for the Superintendent's Office.

So what are we getting for nearly half a million dollars?

Not transparency.
Not accountability.
Not fiscal responsibility.
Not respect for the parents who send their kids there.

That is not a bad week. That is a record. Scroll our Highlights tab. We have 17 posts that document it. This performance problem has been going on for months, even years. The Regional School Committee has failed to do the state-required evaluation of the Superintendent, and then extended administration contracts that were arguably beyond the 3 year legal cap.

Let us repeat - 17 prior posts about the Superintendent's Office. On our Highlights tab. Still there, with documented evidence, just waiting for your review.

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This is the first installment of our Resident Audit Series, a Files Page series on the FY2027 budget. Same public file. One office, one function, or one expense type at a time. The question is simple. How well can this Superintendent and this School Committee budget? Should the public be happy with it? There is a lot more to come.

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The Files Page research team obtained the district's FY2027 Budget Only file by APRA. That is the file the district is required to file with RIDE. It is a column of UCOA codes and budget numbers. Network specialists on the team split the codes, matched them to RIDE's own accounting manual, gave each line a plain-English name, and stacked every line coded to this location, salary and non-salary together. The Superintendent's Office total budgeted expense for the Region is $480,832.93. The dollars are the district's own declaration. Anyone with the source file can replicate the work.

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One member voted no on sending this budget to the voters. The rest sent it to the public. Voters first rejected it, then cut it. The Committee never voted again and used the original budget anyway.

Nearly half a million dollars budgeted for the Superintendent's Office at the Region.

Do you feel like you are getting your money's worth? Is our Regional Superintendent's Office worth nearly half a million dollars?

08/28/2026

NO JOKE. TRAINING MEANT FOR STAFF EYES-ONLY LANDS IN PARENTS’ INBOXES, AND THE PUNCHLINE IS THE KIDS.

Ponaganset Middle School parents got an email from the principal with “important information” and a newsletter link. Read it. That newsletter was not built for you. It was built for staff. Shared staff folders. Internal links. And two training decks on IEPs and 504s that were never supposed to land on a parent’s kitchen table.

Once they did, you can see how this district talks when it thinks parents are not in the room.

The closer on the accommodations deck is not a reminder about data. It is a joke. Big letters: “THANK YOU! And Please Remember, Not Everyone Needs The Accommodations They Think They DO!” Under that, a photo of a man planted on an escalator like the people behind him are suckers for using the thing. That is the send-off after a staff training on kids with disabilities. Not a statute. Not a case. A punchline.

Read that line again. “They think they do.” The kid is the punchline. The parent asking for help is the punchline. The whole posture is that families over-ask and staff should be the ones who sniff out who is faking a need.

That did not appear by magic in a principal’s newsletter. That is how the district trains. Those decks are the culture the Superintendent owns. Professional development is her responsibility. What a principal forwards to families is her responsibility. If this is what staff are taught to remember at the end of an IEP and 504 session, do not pretend the middle school inbox is a one-off oops.

Same packet tells teachers they are “the EXPERT,” the meeting is not a parent conference, and they should bring work samples to “discount” or “discontinue” a need. It says “we don’t write in safety nets.” It tells staff not to say “benefit,” and that the LEA defines “reasonable.” Then it ends on a photo of adults on an escalator and a line that says not everyone needs the accommodations they think they do.

So here is the tell. When they talk to parents, it is partnership and support. When they talk to each other, it is fewer supports, no safety nets, and a joke about kids who “think” they need help.

Parents were never supposed to see that last slide. Now you have. What do you think that training is doing to the next 504 meeting in that building?

08/27/2026

TWO DATES. TWO DAYS SHORT. ZERO EXCUSES. It's welcome back to school, and welcome back to more incompetence.

CAN THE DISTRICT COUNT TO 180, OR IS OCTOBER EARLY RELEASE TWO DATES AT ONCE?

Kids are back. The official Foster-Glocester 2026-27 calendar already has two problems.

First: Early Release. The notes say October 28. The grid marks October 26. On Day ONE of school the district cannot tell parents which October afternoon the buses run early. That is not a vibe issue. That is a calendar and a planning issue.

Second: the year appears to be short. The printed total is days. It only gets there by counting November 2 and March 12, two PD days the same calendar labels no school for students. Take those out and the kids have 178. Rhode Island requires 180.

Districts used to be allowed, under limited circumstances, to count certain PD days as instructional days. That waiver expired two years ago.

The Superintendent owns that count. Building a year that actually adds up is the job. The School Committee owns the rest. Nine people voted this thing.

Oversight is not hoping a parent with a highlighter does the math in August after the sixth- and ninth-graders already walked in. If the Committee did not notice 178 dressed up as 180, it did not read what it adopted. If it noticed and adopted it anyway, that is worse.

So here is the question: is this calendar 178 student days with two leftover PD days sitting inside the 180, or does someone have another explanation for how the kids are in school for a full year?

Which October afternoon should families plan around, and when do the two missing student days show up on the calendar?

08/15/2026

Plan vs. Vibes: A Fiscal Face-Off. After years of school deficits and blame flying in every direction, the Auditor General got involved. What happened next is telling.

The Glocester School Committee has been overspending for years.

They say the Town is not giving them enough money.

The Town says there is no more money to give. The Region is already taking a huge share, and the Town still has to run its own operations.

That is why a joint meeting between the Glocester Town Council and the Glocester School Committee was called on July 29. The Auditor General appeared in person. The topic: a Corrective Action Plan.

But when everyone showed up in the same room, here is what happened:

A member of the Town Council brought a real numbers-backed multi-year plan. Watch the video. They put actual numbers on the table and tried to start a serious conversation about stopping the repeated deficits and keeping future tax increases under control.

The side responsible for the operating budget and the deficits — the School Committee and the Superintendent — brought almost nothing. They showed up with vibes.

No written multi-year plan. No alternative numbers. Just a vague idea about creating some kind of special education program that might bring in tuition from other towns. They had no cost analysis and no numbers to show whether it would even work.

When the Town Council presented a plan for discussion, the Superintendent said the starting number was wrong and the healthcare cost estimate was too low. Then the discussion basically stopped.

That is not problem-solving. That is shutting the conversation down while offering no real solution of their own.

Taxpayers keep getting hit with the same problems year after year. The people in charge of the school budget need to show up with more than a vague idea.

Should the School Committee and Superintendent be required to bring their own written numbers and a real multi-year plan to the next joint meeting?

Foster Glocester School Committee Files

09/08/2026

09/07/2026

09/05/2026

09/04/2026

09/02/2026

08/30/2026

08/29/2026

08/28/2026

08/27/2026

08/15/2026

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