Tiverton
I hadn’t intended to attend tonight’s school committee meeting in Tiverton, but I saw on the agenda that they’d be discussing the item on the floor today: full-day kindergarten, rather than the current half day. Superintendent Bill Rearick put the additional cost at $223,953 per year, although he noted that, with next year’s financial difficulty…
My latest video blog is about open negotiations, drawing on material from Tiverton, but applicable elsewhere. I’d be especially interested in feedback on this one, inasmuch as I tried some new tricks (in an effort to throw myself at the learning curve) and am still trying to get a sense of appropriate content for the…
Yes, this is a local instance, but I’ve no doubt whatsoever that similar opinions exist — and the same arguments would be made — in towns across Rhode Island, were school committees to begin considering a demand for open negotiations. I’ve posted video of the discussion about the topic at the last school committee meeting…
Arriving at tonight’s Tiverton School Committee meeting even a few minutes before the usual time wasn’t sufficient for me to catch most of the meeting. According to the current agenda, an executive session began at 5:30, with the public meeting scheduled thereafter, and the committee is almost all the way through the scheduled topics. Luckily,…
David makes a perspicacious comment to my post on the item in the teachers’ contract that the school committee approved in January that effectively extended the contract for an additional year because the deadline for notification of intention to negotiate had already passed: Actually, justin, you may be on to something. Union officials act as…
Given recent developments, I thought I’d review my notes and the audio from the Tiverton School Committee meeting at which the members approved a largely retroactive contract. Several townsfolk warned the committee that approving the contract in the current economy was reckless. I specifically suggested that, former Vice Chair Mike Burk’s suggestion to “hold the…
So I note from the town-by-town chart (PDF) showing the amounts saved by Governor Carcieri’s plan to withhold motor vehicle tax reimbursements from the towns that Tiverton stands to lose $344,616 this year. From where, I wonder, will the money come to replace it? As much as I don’t wish to darken a potential dawn…
As I pulled up to the Tiverton High School at the usual time for a school committee meeting, I saw two of my Tiverton Citizens for Change co-conspirators leaving. The committee scheduled an executive session for 5:00 p.m. and had worked through all of tonight’s interesting public discussions before 7:00. The key results, as conveyed…
It probably isn’t even accurate to call this “liveblogging,” but I’m at the Tiverton School Committee meeting, mostly researching contract issues online while the committee handles small matters of the sort in which most people in the world would have no interest. On the agenda are two families seeking permission to send their children to…
Come on. You’ve got to laugh at the irony: … a pitched zoning battle — ostensibly over a single sign — has horrified more than two dozen merchants and property owners who have invested their savings and their futures in this country crossroads [at Tiverton Four Corners]. … The hearing — over whether a tenant…