Could Newport delay school district merger vote? One councilor says it's going too fast.
NEWPORT — With about three weeks left until the City Council’s deadline to add school district regionalization to the November ballot, council member Jamie Bova is requesting the process be postponed to a special election in May.
“There’s a lot of discussion over the 'potential,' 'hypothetical' educational benefits, but there has been no discussion as to what the feasibility really is of delivering those benefits and getting those educational gains and educational courses or something like that when we have separate facilities,” Bova told The Newport Daily News in regards to a resolution she sponsored that will be up for discussion during the City Council's regular meeting Wednesday.
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Bova has been a vocal critic of combining school districts with Middletown without merging facilities, as well as the process the city is using to explore the topic, since her fellow council members voted to request authorization from the General Assembly. Both Bova and Councilor Angela McCalla voted against the action item, citing a lack of information as the primary issue.
Back in May, Bova suggested the ballot question require secondary approval from City Council before it is officially submitted to the Secretary of State’s office for inclusion on the November ballot, in case information revealed during the city’s fact-finding process was unfavorable.
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Middletown approved a similar secondary approval process around the same time, however, only McCalla joined Bova in favor of the suggestion. Now, so long as there is not a council resolution declaring otherwise, the question will automatically be submitted for inclusion on the ballot by Sept. 9.
Despite receiving an interim report from the city’s consultants at the Aug. 10 City Council meeting, Bova said there is still not enough information on what regionalization would look like for voters to make a decision in November. Bova said the case studies used by the consultants to show the potential benefits of regionalization are not applicable to Newport and Middletown’s unique situation.
“Those are very different districts than what a proposed Middletown-Newport district would look like because those districts don’t have separate facilities — they have combined facilities,” Bova said. “To me, that’s not a real analysis of what the district would actually look like.”
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The next community meeting to discuss regionalization will be held Monday, Aug. 22, where representatives from the consulting firms and city staff are planning to discuss the report in depth.
While Middletown needs voter approval from both communities to receive the full projected 80% reimbursement for its $235 million school facility bond from the state Department of Education, Bova said Newport is in no such rush to make a decision.
If regionalization is approved through a special election, she said the town would still be able to take advantage of the reimbursement rate for regionalized districts regardless, but noted the unified district would be on the hook for maintaining all the facilities in the future.
“I really love a plan,” Bova said. “You need a plan for anything to be successful, and I get really frustrated by all the talk of ‘potential' because hope is not a valid program management method. It’s not a valid strategy for managing something, hoping something will be done correctly.”
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport Middletown RI school merger: City councilor wants vote delay
