In a regular meeting of the city’s School Committee at Warwick Veterans Memorial Middle School on Tuesday night, teachers at the school implored committee members to retain their principal, Jeff Goss.

Goss sent in a letter of resignation to Warwick Public Schools administration, although several of the teachers speaking said he was forced out.

The safety improvements that had occurred during Goss’s two-year tenure at Vets, many teachers said, were notable to those who had been at the school before him.

“I’ve talked with our nurse a number of times, and you wouldn’t believe how strongly she feels about all of this,” Vets social studies teacher Michael Pierce said. “She’s seen the safety issues and is amazed at how much better it is.”

A petition circulated among teachers at Vets imploring the School Committee to keep Goss as principal garnered 123 signatures from the school’s faculty.

That, speakers said, showed how much respect and appreciation the teachers at Vets had for Goss’s work.

“His leadership has had an impact,” Vets teacher Scott Daigle said. “The signatures, the test scores, all of it says one thing. The man belongs here. He wants to stay. You give him a chance, you let him stay here, you’re going to see some great things out of this school.”

Teachers were also concerned about finding another principal who would commit to Vets, with many saying that the school seems to have trouble retaining principals.

“We have a principal right now who truly wants to be here,” Meredith McSwiggan, a special-education teacher at Vets, said. “For reasons we’re not quite sure why, he’s now being told that Warwick doesn’t want him anymore. We want him. We think he’s doing a good job. He wants us, and that speaks volumes.”

McSwiggan also said that since 2016, when the school was converted from a high school to a middle school, there have been 17 different administrators at the school.

Goss’s resignation will take effect at the end of the school year, according to School Committee Chairman Shaun Galligan. Park Elementary School principal Dan Sylvestre, who similarly resigned, will also serve out the remainder of the school year as principal.

Asked about the two principals leaving, Galligan said he would not comment on a personnel issue.

Additionally, the School Committee accepted the resignation of Finance Director Brandon Bohl, who had been placed on administrative leave last month.

Administrative building study approved

School Committee Chairman Shaun Galligan introduced a resolution to study moving WPS’s administration from its current location in the former Gorton Middle School to elsewhere in the city.

Moving the school’s administrative facilities into a smaller building, Galligan said, would be important given the financial issues that WPS was facing.

“I feel that it wouldn’t make sense financially to maintain that property,” Galligan said. “That facility is going to require a new roof, and that’s going to be several million dollars. The facility is not connected to sewer –  it’s septic, so that’s expensive. There’s building code upgrades that will need to be made depending on if we change its usage.”

The Gorton building, Galligan said, has been important over the last couple of years for temporarily housing elementary schools where extensive work has been done – Sherman, Oakland Beach and Holliman. After Holliman moves out after this school year, however, there are no future plans for schools to utilize Gorton, meaning that only the building’s second floor would be occupied.

Another potential benefit of a new administrative building, Galligan said, would be having the administration more centrally located in the city.

“We’re just looking to do an analysis, not pulling the trigger on anything until we evaluate,” Galligan said. “There’s a lot to consider here, and I’m just asking that we start the process of evaluating it.”

Galligan’s resolution received unanimous support from the committee.

New Pilgrim special meeting Wednesday

With an official groundbreaking on the new Pilgrim High School currently planned for next month, School Committee Chairman Shaun Galligan announced a special School Committee meeting for next Wednesday, March 19 at 5:30 p.m. at Vets.

The meeting, according to LeftField Project Management’s John Bates and Chris Spiegel, will focus only on the new Pilgrim, and will occur the day before Pilgrim’s design team has its final progress review with the state Department of Education..

“They will present to us the [construction design] packet for Pilgrim High School only, and then that will go off to RIDE,” Galligan said. “They will also have a big packet that will be coming out of a special meeting of the Building Committee that is occurring that same day.”

Bates said that another meeting with state officials on the new Toll Gate project would also happen in the near future. Groundbreaking on that high school is expected in May.

Additionally, Spiegel said, LeftField was currently looking at making the basketball courts at both schools NCAA regulation size.

“The challenge is to work within the existing footprint of the building,” Spiegel said. “We have taken a look, and we believe that within the existing footprint, we can potentially provide an NCAA court size. It would be an increase of about 10 feet, so 5 feet on each side of the court. We believe it can be done; we’re triple checking now just to make sure.”

According to Bates, a new cost estimate on Pilgrim showed costs remaining steady, meaning that the estimated cost of the combined high school projects still sits at $372.9 million – $22.9 million over the $350 million approved by voters in a 2022 bond referendum.