(From The Valley Breeze, March 11, 2009)
By MARCIA GREEN
CUMBERLAND – State funding and approvals may still be pending, but already at least $4 million in grants and low-interest loans sit waiting to help launch the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies concept, a new school plan that’s boldly promised to combine lower operating costs with better test scores.
Speaking during a press conference Wednesday morning in the Blackstone River Theatre, Mayor Daniel McKee, along with a contingent of Rhode Island town and city leaders, described a network of educational leaders across the nation who, he says, are ready with cash and in-kind training services to support this alternative public school system expected to get its first foothold in Valley Falls, perhaps as soon as this fall.
Already, the umbrella organization has picked up the short-hand name RIMA (pronounced ree-ma).
According to McKee:
• In Phoenix, Ariz., the Raza Development Fund, which has a special interest in schooling for Hispanic children, is offering financing up to $2 million over three years to assist in buying and setting up the first school likely in the former St. Patrick School building on Cumberland’s Broad Street.
• In Chicago, Ill., the National Association of Charter School Authorizers has “millions of dollars” available to propel the start up. Greg Richmond, NACSA president, was on hand at Wednesday’s press conference.
• In Quincy, Mass., the Nellie Mae Education Foundation has already given $125,000 that is seeding start-up work including studies.
• In Boston, the BES, Building Excellent Schools, is offering $275,000 in in-kind training services.
• In New York City, Democracy Prep Charter School, headed by Seth Andrew, who was also at Wednesday’s presentation, has filed the first school application under the RIMA umbrella.
• Additionally McKee says a coalition of private Rhode Island area philanthropists are promising “substantial funding” in the $2 million range but details can’t be given until initial contributions and letters of intent are in place.
• Also, McKee anticipates the governor’s office will be able to direct federal stimulus funds for education to the RIMA effort.
McKee said he still has hopes of beginning this fall with kindergarten and first-grade classes based in rental space at Our Lady of Fatima in Valley Falls.
Toward that goal, Gov. Donald Carcieri’s budget, released Tuesday, directs $700,000 specifically to RIMA.
The former St. Patrick Church school building on Broad Street would be purchased and renovated in time to accommodate more grades in the fall of 2010. Slowly, says McKee, kindergarten to grade 12 classes would be established.
The RIMA vision calls for regional schools – starting with Cumberland, Lincoln, Central Falls and Pawtucket – where teachers perform without benefit of the usual salary, tenure and pension benefits and students are in classrooms from 7:30 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon.
The plan won conceptual approval by the General Assembly last year under a modified version of the existing charter school legislation.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Pawtucket Rep. Peter Kilmartin called RIMA “creative, wonderful, innovative” and one of the few new initiatives “that provides what our motto says, ‘hope.'”
It was in 2007 when the re-elected McKee, frustrated with his inability as mayor to impose change in the department that consumes 70 percent of the town’s entire budget, walked away from the struggle.
“What if,” he began to wonder aloud, “we started from scratch?”
It’s that start-from-scratch concept that’s tickled imaginations in educational circles across the nation and attracted not only the interest but participation of leaders in the charter school network.
“They know who we are. They know something is happening here in Cumberland,” McKee told The Breeze this week.
Cumberland’s efforts were even mentioned last month in a taped discussion with the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a program picked up by PBS stations.
Andrew, founder of Democracy Prep, described the kindergarten to grade 12 school that he says will see students immersed in theater, dance, debate and art as well as core subjects.
“Rhode Island has not provided those opportunities to Rhode Island children and they deserve nothing less.”
Andrew, who was sporting a bright yellow baseball cap with his dark suit, said students are accepted by lottery and the waiting list after three years is 2,500 names long. “It’s easier to get into Columbia University,” he said.
Teachers, whose starting pay is in the $65,000 range, apply for positions at the rate of 4,000 resumes for 10 open positions in the three-year-old school.
“When you talk about bringing rigor to Rhode Island, that’s the caliber of the teaching pool,” he said.
Among the speakers Wednesday was Warwick’s Mayor Scott Avedisian who said his community may be the second to open a RIMA school.
“Every city and town council argues with school committees over the budget and feels there is no accountability over the way money is spent,” he said. “This is a real way to allow cities and towns to have a say in the way the money is spent. I’m real excited about the future of education in Warwick.”
Joseph Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, said mayors around the nation are beginning to talk about opening similar schools. He said RIMA is two years ahead of the rest. “They’re talking about realizing their communities will not survive if they don’t think bigger about what they will do about education.”
RIMA has come so far that McKee is spending some of the Nellie Mae funds on a public relations agency, True North Communications, headed by Bill Fischer who was press secretary to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse when he was the state’s attorney general.
Looking ahead, RIMA is still awaiting the funding OK from state leaders. McKee estimates $700,000 is needed to launch the kindergarten and first-grade classes this year.
House Majority Leader Gordon Fox, an early supporter last year when the General Assembly approved the concept in the face of strong opposition from the state’s two teacher unions, has this year renewed his public commitment as did Carcieri in a conversation with The Breeze.
The Democracy Prep application must also win Board of Regents support despite a moratorium on new charter school approvals.
McKee says legislators’ willingness last year “to approve legislation in the face of a great deal of opposition” demonstrated “leadership ahead of the curve,” well before a new Washington, D.C., administration began talking about charter schools and the need for reform.
The result, he said, is “the drawbridge is coming down in Rhode Island and new resources are entering the state.”
“We said, ‘You give us the opportunity and we’ll bring in the resources and that’s exactly what’s happening.
“This has opened huge opportunities for national funding sources,” he said.
“The timing is great,” said McKee, noting he’s heard from Connecticut and Massachusetts residents asking about the concept of a mayor’s office spear-heading a new public school.
“The spotlight is on us,” he said.
Today, says McKee, despite the wide-ranging support that locally includes technology entrepreneur Angus Davis of the Board of Regents and Hasbro’s Alan Hassenfeld, McKee says not a single public school superintendent has expressed an interest.
However, a former principal and superintendent of northern Rhode Island, Richard Lynch, has agreed to serve on the board of directors.
Also on that board will be Ramon Martinez of Progresso Latino in Central Falls; Martin West, assistant professor at Brown University; Williams of Democrats for Education Reform; and Norman “Sandy” McCulloch Jr., a trustee of the McAdams Charitable Trust and former chairman of the Rhode Island Foundation.
Additional board members will be announced, McKee said.
Also on hand at the press conference was Ryan Pearson of the Cumberland School Committee. He said he supports both RIMA and the Cumberland district.
Pearson said he imagines “huge changes” if the Cumberland School Committee was free, as will be RIMA, from the provisions of the thick union contract.