Four School Committee candidates in thick of issues

Consolidation, contract are hot topics

Warwick Beacon ·

After what has been a beyond eventful year for Warwick Public Schools, the city’s School Committee could potentially get two new members.

Member Karen Bachus is up for re-election and Jennifer Ahearn chose not to seek another term, leaving two seats at-large on the five-seat committee.

The race for School Committee began with six candidates. Nathan Cornell and Chad Huddon lost in the September primary, leaving Bachus, David Testa, Dean Johnson and Danny Hall to vie for the two seats. The candidates will face a host of issues if elected (or, in Bachus’ case, re-elected) to the four-year terms, largely regarding teacher contracts, special education and school consolidations.

Tension between school administration, the School Committee and the Warwick Teachers Union has been rife during negotiations.

“Thornton and the School Committee are wasting the taxpayers’ money on their poor, ill-conceived decisions about consolidation and on their numerous attorney’s fees because they would rather litigate and arbitrate than negotiate,” WTU President Darlene Netcoh said during a picketing of the administration building in September. “They need to immediately rectify conditions in the secondary schools, postpone any attempts to consolidate the elementary schools, and drop all costly legal proceedings and instead negotiate a fair and educationally sound contract with the Warwick Teachers Union.”

Mediation on the negotiations was recently halted. School Committee Chair Beth Furtado said she recommended breaking off mediation until there were signs of movement (“It seemed the only ones making headway were the attorneys getting paid.”). Mayor Scott Avedisian requested Wednesday that he sit in on mediation talks once they resume.

The new committee member(s) will have to jump into this issue that’s been ongoing for more than a year – the candidates have said an emphasis on weighting in the contract and bringing new forms of dialogue and compromise to the conversation will help move negotiations forward.

Part of the problem with the contract negotiations, teachers say, is that it is causing IEPs of students to be violated. During public comments at School Committee meetings and at a public forum two weeks ago, educators detailed what they say happens in their classrooms. Some report having classes of 28 with 15 students with IEPs, some of whom require intensive education and there is no special educator in the room.

Elementary consolidation has been the hot-button topic of the past months. The School Committee recently voted to move forward with the consolidation committee’s recommendation to close Wickes and Holden Schools and re-purpose Drum Rock and John Brown Francis in 2018-2019, but tacked on an amendment to transition the sixth grade in 2017-2018 to middle school. The vote was held in the weeks before the election, meaning at least one new committee member did not get the chance to vote on the plan. The current candidates all expressed support for the idea of waiting to vote until a new committee was seated.

Hall said the result was pretty much what he expected, but that he still would have preferred for a hold on the vote.

“I personally would have liked them to wait until the new committee was sworn in,” he said. “No matter what schools you propose to close or refurbish, you’re going to upset a local community.”

Testa said that the complexion of the school committee will only change by two seats at most, so the vote still could have only been a matter of “academic exercise.” However, he thinks holding off still would have had some merit.

“I think the public would have been satisfied with that. What’s the difference?” he said. “We delayed it a year anyway, so if you let the new school committee come in, they could have asked to revisit the choices.”

Bachus was outspoken in her disapproval of the vote, moving to table it until after the election, and stood firm in her defense of John Brown Francis.

“This is just so wrongheaded. It’s going to hurt our city. Instead of building our schools and making them the best they can be, we’re taking them apart and hurting our city,” she said.

Testa said he wasn’t even sure the correct schools were chosen for consolidation and wanted to see more information.

“Personally, I think they essentially took a plan that was questionable to me at best and made it more questionable,” he said. “I wasn’t convinced that we had picked the right schools. I needed more information. In the info presented, we didn’t see the fiscal side. We should have seen that, too.”

Testa also disagreed with moving the sixth grade up after the current academic year, saying waiting would have helped to “tie up loose ends” at the secondary level.

Johnson said the decision was “shortsighted” – if a new committee member has a different approach or idea on consolidation, they won’t be able to act on it, he said.

“I think this is shortsighted. I think they should have waited until the election is over in January because now they’re making it so that whoever is up there is forced with that decision,” said Johnson.

Committee candidates have already gotten a taste of the criticism often directed at the current committee – some have taken hits for apparent political alignments as School Committee positions are non-partisan. In addition, each have been at most, if not all, school committee meetings and consolidation hearings in the past few months and can often be heard asking questions or making statements during public comment. Though they’ll have a busy time ahead, each seems well aware of the tasks the position they want to hold will require them to fulfill.