Committee lays off 35 teachers, seeks more oversight on charter schools

Matt Bower
Posted 5/14/15

The Warwick School Committee began Tuesday’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting by laying off 35 teachers at the recommendation of Superintendent Richard D’Agostino.

According to the Warwick …

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Committee lays off 35 teachers, seeks more oversight on charter schools

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The Warwick School Committee began Tuesday’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting by laying off 35 teachers at the recommendation of Superintendent Richard D’Agostino.

According to the Warwick Teachers Union (WTU) contract, the department can issue a maximum of 40 layoff notices but can only lay off 20 teachers per year.

Notices were sent out to 35 teachers last week notifying them of the non-renewal/pre-deprivation hearings being held in executive session prior to the public portion of Tuesday’s meeting. Once the committee returned to open session, the layoffs were announced and approved by a 4-1 vote, with Karen Bachus dissenting.

“It’s criminal that we’re laying off more English teachers when we have a significant problem with literacy,” she said prior to the vote. “I would rather forego technology than not be literate.”

Bachus said teachers that have been in the Warwick school system for as long as 10, 12 or even 15 years were being laid off.

“We’re gutting the system. There has to be a better way,” she said.

School Committee Vice Chairman Eugene Nadeau got emotional and choked up when he spoke prior to the vote.

“This is a heartbreaking time. I feel lousy. When my daughter and son graduated Pilgrim years ago, we had 19,000 kids in the schools and now we’re down to 9,000,” he said. “What do we do? We’re going to City Hall $6.9 million short. It’s an awful reality. These are talented young men and women, who are educated in their subjects very well indeed, but we have no choice. We have to do it.”

School Committee Chairwoman Jennifer Ahearn echoed her colleagues’ comments, saying, “We’re gutting the system due to our budgetary situation and financial constraints. This is something we have to do.”

Ken Genereux, a special education teacher at Warwick Veterans High School, said it was poor timing to issue layoff notices during Teacher Appreciation Week.

“That was a low blow,” he said. “I know of one teacher that was very excited about the blending learning concept we’re introducing. He was telling me all about it, and now he probably won’t be with us next year.”

Darlene Netcoh, English teacher and department head at Toll Gate High School, spoke as an advocate for literacy instruction.

“You cut five more literacy positions after cutting six last year,” she said. “We don’t have a reading specialist for grades four, five and six and we only have three out of six days of literacy instruction at the junior highs, most of which is eaten up by testing. Most teachers can’t even do full novels with the kids because they lose continuity.”

Netcoh urged the committee to put English, math, science and social studies teachers back in the classroom.

Jason Huddon, an English teacher at Pilgrim High School, said he was being replaced by a machine in reference to the Google Chromebook initiative the school district has undertaken in an effort to supply all students with the device.

“And not a very good one,” he added. “You’re paying for a BMW and driving away in a Hyundai.”

In other action, the committee unanimously approved a resolution in support of two bills in the General Assembly that would provide school committees more authority and oversight over mayoral academy charter schools.

Bills 2015-H 5160 and 2015-S 0087 would require approval of the local school committee and city or town council of each included municipality, by either resolution or ordinance, prior to the approval of a new mayoral academy charter school application by the Rhode Island Board of Education.

Bachus sponsored the resolution.

“It’s important to support local control of our schools,” she said. “We don’t need to bleed more students out of our system or bleed more money out of the city. We need to make our schools the best of the district.”

Ahearn pointed out that when a student leaves the Warwick school district to attend a charter school, the district loses money because it follows the student to the charter.

Chief Budget Officer Anthony Ferrucci explained that the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) takes the total amount of local fund support, in Warwick’s case $119 million, and divides it by the number of students enrolled in the district to determine how much is owed to charters.

“It costs us $11,702 to send a student to a charter school,” Ferrucci said during a phone interview yesterday. “In addition to that, the portion of state aid that would be coming to Warwick if that student remained with us also goes to the charter, which is $3,200, for a total loss [to the district] of $14,902.”

Ferrucci said it costs approximately $1,800 per student in district, so Warwick is losing roughly $10,000 to charter schools per student and does not receive an additional $3,200 it otherwise would have in state aid.

Ahearn said the district is not appropriated the proper funding to support its remaining students when one leaves to attend a charter school.

Ferrucci said even though it costs the district nearly $13,000 every time a student leaves for a charter school, the school department must still account for the teacher, space, and heating and lighting a building whether there are 24 or 25 kids in a classroom.

“There’s a disconnect in the funding that follows the child,” he said. “The funding formula needs to address this issue.”

Rosemary Healey, director of human resources and legal counsel for the school department, said currently the mayor can legally open a mayoral academy charter school without the consent of the school committee or city council by submitting an application to RIDE and the Education Board.

“The mayor started a charter school last year that we and the council fought against,” Bachus said. “If you want a private school, pay for a private school with private money.”

Bachus said that she has spoken to Mayor Scott Avedisian at length about the topic and said he wants to see Warwick schools improve and get better.

Terri Medeiros said that while parents have choices in how they educate their children, as a school committee member she has a duty to support public schools and the resolution.

Comments

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  • RIposter

    Let's keep the public tax dollars with our public schools!

    Thursday, May 14, 2015 Report this

  • JohnStark

    Tax money flows into the city's coffers for the purpose of educating children. Period. The location of said education should not matter, and it remains ludicrous that the sole recipient of those private, taxpayer dollars is a system of government-run schools. The money should follow the student; be it a traditional public school, public charter school, private school, or parochial school. Let us trust parents to make the determination of where their child is best served. Ms. Medeiros: you have a "duty" to see to it that Warwick's children are educated. You have neither a duty nor obligation to cling to an archaic model that shackles young people to a school, the quality of which is dependent upon their zip code..

    Thursday, May 14, 2015 Report this

  • Gonewiththewind

    The school committee should have been discussing the layoff of 35 teachers and 1 Superintendent. This is turning into a joke. Administrators who are filling positions that they have not interviewed for or been recommended by a selection committee for appointment by the school committee are in violation of the school district's hiring policies. You don't have to go back very far to see how that policy was in forced to remove a former "interim" administrator.

    Thursday, May 14, 2015 Report this

  • smh

    ...and people wonder why enrollment is declining.....it would be easy to blame it on the Mayor, City Council and School Committee members but, when "We The People" fail to get out and vote &/or continuously vote the same numbskulls in term after term, we have no one to blame but ourselves....

    Friday, May 15, 2015 Report this

  • smh

    Additionally, I believe that the opposition to School Choice/Charter Schools & the like, is because it would actually make the numbers change ~ parents might decide to keep their child(ren) in the Warwick system, ADDING to the total students and thus hindering the School Committee's future plans...just a thought.

    It is also very insulting to talk about how teachers and programs must be cut due to budget deficits when dollar upon dollar upon dollar is frivolously wasted on "consultants" and unnecessary administrative personnel. Unless and until people get fed up enough to come out to the polls, things will continue as they have been...very sad

    Friday, May 15, 2015 Report this

  • connor

    People stop your whining.... I send my children to private schools, never using the Warwick School System and I still have to pay the taxes. Everyone should be responsible for their own children's education or don't have children. No different then buying a car you cant afford and expecting everyone else to pay for it.

    Tuesday, May 26, 2015 Report this