East Providence
East Providence, you were warned. Kinda. Faced with a $6.1 million school budget deficit, the new, labor-supported East Providence school committee took action by axing School Department Chief Operating Officer Lonnie Barham and his $109,000 salary. So, they’re down to $6 million! According to the new School Committee Chair Charles Tsonos: We have more school…
Remember when a raucous School Committee meeting in East Providence gave reason to hope that the game might be up for the National Education Association’s unchallenged control of Rhode Island education? If so, odds are that Anchor Rising plays in that memory. We liveblogged, photographed, recorded, and analyzed. And it made a difference. Two days…
Ed Achorn laments the political reality of East Providence. Noting that voters supported a local tax cap, he points out that they removed from office the very people who would strive to meet it. The unions, in short, outhustled, outspent, out-deceived and out-organized the public-spirited incumbents in East Providence, making sure that they won’t be…
The best election-results quotes from Rhode Island conservatives/reformers came out of East Providence: [Soon-to-be-former School Committee Chairman Anthony] Carcieri laughed in the face of defeat and said, “The public has spoken, so get your checkbooks out. We’ll be paying a lot of taxes in the near future.” Soon-to-be-former Mayor Joseph Larisa points to the deeper…
This intra-conservative debate in East Providence points to one of those issues that tends to slide under residents’ awareness: [Mayor Joseph] Larisa is now trying to solidify tax limits by putting language into the city’s Home Rule Charter. Charter amendments have to be approved by voters in a referendum, while ordinances are approved — and…
Little by little, we appear to be moving Rhode Island’s political structure in the right direction: A new law championed by East Providence officials has changed how its candidates and Central Falls’ election contenders collected voters’ signatures. A provision in each of the communities’ charters said voters could sign only one candidate’s nomination papers. The…
Two factors are obvious in making Rhode Island school committees behave as if authority over the jobs is ultimately a weak card in negotiations: Some members see giving as much money as possible to teachers as one of their rightful objectives (whether they’re teachers, themselves, or have some other reason for alliance), and other members…
Here’s the decision from Superior Court Justice Silverstein: PDF. About halfway through the document, it appears that Silverstein would draw his lines very tightly around his ruling in favor of the school committee: Under the language of § 16-2-9 a school committee must bargain in good faith with certified public school teachers in accordance with…
The School Committee in East Providence has won its case in favor of unilateral changes to employment terms in the absence of a contract in Superior Court. On to the Supreme Court, and sneaky legislation, no doubt.
At a time when common wisdom is marching straight toward a cliff labeled “consolidation” (at the bottom of which are sharp rocks of incumbency, special interests, and political corruption), I’m encouraged to see that the independent spirit lives on in some corners of the state: Started in early December by Prescott Avenue resident and Riverside…
