Holding school administrators accountable

To the Editor:

On March 23, the public found out that the fire alarm systems at Norwood and Holliman Elementary Schools had been broken since February 24 of this year. The parents and many of the teachers were not informed for those four weeks, either.

If there were to be a fire, intruder, or other emergency to occur at Norwood or Holliman, one custodian at each school would have been in charge of getting the word out. This is a serious safety risk: one custodian, with unknown fire and emergency training, cannot be expected to replace a building-wide alarm system.

Not only did the school administrative leadership fail to inform the public for a month, but they also did not mention it to the Warwick City Council on March 20, 2017 when Councilmen Jeremy Rix and Ed Ladouceur asked questions about why hundreds of thousands of dollars were being allocated to the new administrative building at the former Gorton JHS. I guess that fire alarms in buildings with students and teachers are a lower priority!

One day after the public found out about the broken fire alarms, there was another emergency in the news: a sewage leakage at Vets High School. Isn’t student safety supposed to be the highest priority to our school administration? The lack of communication by the school administration to the public is completely unacceptable.

As Jeremy Rix, the Councilman of Ward 2 which represents the Norwood and Holliman area said, “the Superintendent was not able to have an answer about why all parents and all teachers were not informed.”

This fire alarm situation is also not the only safety issue under this administration. When the students at Vets returned to school in September 2016, they found loose wires from the incomplete renovations done over the summer. There were issues with the air quality that were not addressed for five months after parents started reporting the issues. Also, there are still issues with special education from 2016 which are still yet to be resolved. These issues must not be allowed to continue.

The School’s Administrative leadership must be held accountable for their actions.

Nathan Cornell

Co-chair of the Warwick Community Outreach Educational Committee