Town Council - Special Meeting

get started. Um, it's 6:00, so um, uh, we're going to, we have a joint school committee meeting, joint meeting with the council and the school committee. So, I'm going to ask, uh, uh, clerk to take the role for the council, please. Council President Paul M. Rodri, yes. Vice President Thomas P. here. Councelor Peter D. Conson, Senior here. Councelor Christopher M. Logan here. Councelor Charles R. Robert here. Dennis B. Toronto. Councelor Barbara Avon here. We have a quum, Mr. President.

I will now call to order the Middletown School Committee at 6 PM on Wednesday for March 2026. Uh will the clerk please uh do a roll call? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, chair Greg Hwitt present. Vice Chair Wendy Heeney. Member Tammy Holden here. Member Terresa Spangler here. Member William Nash is present. You have a quorum, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Okay. Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [clears throat]

Hey. Oh, sorry. Um, that's louder than normal. Maybe we should have our meetings down here all the time. Yeah. All right. You can hear a lot better. Um, okay. So, uh, we're having a joint, uh, meeting with the a joint meeting with the school committee to discuss regionalization to, um, a lot of questions were posed. I know Greg has a presentation, uh, for us tonight. And, um, so I'm not sure how you want to go. Uh, we can go if you want presentation if you want.

We can do the presentation first and then we'll get to the questions after that. And um if time permits, we'll we'll do some public public comments. Okay. I hope time does permit the public hear. Absolutely. Yep. Okay. So, we'll bring up uh Greg's presentation, please. Yeah. Let me read it in. Thank you for reminding me. I get a little ahead of myself sometimes. So number one is a presentation of Middletown School Committee um in reference to Middletown Joint Council and School Committee meeting March 4th, 2026. Realization discussion

motion begin said presentation. All in favor? I. Okay. First slide.

Good evening. The following presentation has several purposes. First, I want this information to become a matter of public record. It needs to be easily accessible by our voters and more importantly to the parents of our students. Secondly, it reflects the deep frustration of the school committee because of the council's unending pursuit of regionalization without answering the why with factual information. Before I begin the presentation, I want to make it clear that this presentation has nothing to do with Newport. This presentation is about educating each of you and our voters with facts. Next slide. Normally, it is prudent to ask why are we going to do something before determining how we are going to do it. The renewed regionalization issue was reignited by members of the Newport City Council in December of 2024. Five meetings took place between December of 2024 in March of 25 with representation of both councils, both school committees and town administrators. And I will note that no open meeting laws were violated because there was never a quorum present. Those meetings did not end well. It was during this time frame, 12 March 2025 to be exact, that the Newport City Council created and passed its first resolution to form a regional academic integration advisory committee. Additional resolutions were passed by

the Newport City Council regarding regionalization on 13 August 2025 and 14 January 2026. Neither the Newport City Council nor the Newport School Committee passed any of their any of their resolutions unanimously, but your own school committee strongly opposed the 13 August 2025 resolution in a unanimous manner. The school committee and the Middletown community are seeking honest and frank answers from the council. Many of us in the community are perplexed that the Newport City Council appears to be driving this train and it appears that the majority of our town council is riding that train and doing so with little regard for the position taken by the elected body most responsible for education in Middletown, your school committee. Next slide, please. I'm tired of hearing we need to do this for the kids. Do what and for whose kids? The school committee already supports working with Newport school. The Newport school district. The fact is that it is happening every day across multiple areas. Sports, theater are two examples. [snorts] The Middletown School District today sends significantly more students to Newport, 31 students in the CTE programs than the Newport School District sends to Middletown. Six CTE students. Newport also does not allow the Middletown students to attend part-time, but Middletown allows Newport students to attend part-time. This result of this academic collaboration

is nearly a half a million dollars to Newport from Middletown and approximately $50,000 from Newport to Middletown and approximately 400 400,000K plus up to the Newport school district. This is a clear example that mechanisms are Can I can I stop and ask where is this in the president? I don't have that part. That's not in the presentation. These are my notes for slides. Okay. Yes, I'm going through I will have a comment for each slide. Okay.

This is a clear example that mechanisms are currently in place today to support the goals of regionalization without regionalization. Next slide, please. The renewed reutilization issue has been banned about for over a year now and to date no one from the council has provided a plan or any answers other than believing that the Rhode Island legislature, Rhode Island Department of Education, and a newly appointed academic advisory committee will come up with the answers. Do you really believe that the appointed members of the academic advisory committee, half of which are from Newport, know more about the Middletown School District than your own elected members of the Middletown School Committee? If it is the council's expectation that a voter ready regionalization plan will be generated through the recommendations of the academic advisory committee and those recommendations will result in anything meaningful, I have swamp land to sell to you. The cost to our taxpayers for the academic advisory committee starts at $150,000 for the consultant plus expenses. At that cost, several teachers could be hired and the return on investment would be far greater than what you're going to pay the highly paid consultant. Next slide, please. The council is pursuing regionalization, not the school committee. We unanimously opposed it. Is it not incumbent upon the council to

do the hard work and prove to the voters that the financials in this pursuit has merit? The appointed academic advisory committee doesn't even have clear guidance on their tasking. Nor does it possess the capacity to provide any meaningful financial analysis even with a clear understanding of the council's intent which doesn't exist. again. Do you really believe that the academic advisory committee is more knowledgeable about our schools than your own school committee? I strongly suspect that most Middletown voters do not even support regionalization, but we don't know for sure because I've never been asked. Even if they did, they deserve to clearly know what a regionalized school committee's authority is, not hidden in the fine print, because their ability to change the educational environment is broad and may be quite impactful. Everything from transporting students across town lines to changing curriculum to relocating students to different schools and making significant changes to current policies that are currently working well in Middletown. each of which is associated with tax dollars and taxpayers. Next slide, please. The following information is directly from the Rhode Island Department of Education. Next slide, please. I want to look look at the bottom line. The difference in cost per student in Newport, it's almost it's $8,000 more than what is what it is in Middletown.

You can wait till I'm done, then we can go through questions. Next slide, please. This slide is all directly from the Rhode Island Department of Education. These are comparisons between the school districts. English language ELA. This is the competency rate for the students in the school district. The state average is 36% for ELA. We're above it 47.8%. Newport is below the state average at 18.9%. The Newport School District is below the state average in every category in the next two slides. Middletown is well above it in every category in the next two slides. Everybody have a chance to digest that. Next slide, please. on this slide. Chronic absenteeism.

When I looked at the chronic teacher absenteeism, Greg, you got to speak into that mic, please.

Oh, everybody can't see the slides. But my point is All right. All right. You just need to speak into the mic, please. Oh, sorry. Okay. Teach your voice. Could you go back to the previous slide, please? Could you go back to the previous slide, please? You want to?

All right. So, I'll read the numbers. So, ELA, Middletown, 47.8% 8%. Newport 18.9% the state average 36.1%. Math Newport is at uh I'm sorry, Middletown is at 35.6%. Newport is at 13.2% and the Rhode Island average is 30%. Science [snorts] Middletown is at 37.9%. Newport is at 14.8% and the Rhode Island is 30.6%. 6%. Chronic absenteeism, Middletown 19.8%. Newport is at 34.5% and the state average is 22.1. Four-year graduation rate, Middletown 86.7%, Newport 80.8% and Rhode Island 84.1%. Next slide, please. Top column chronic teacher absenteeism Middletown 2.3%. Newport 13%. There is no state average on that. Suspensions per students Middletown 3.1 per 100 students. Newport 15.4 per 100 students. The state average is 10 per 100. Student chronic absenteeism. Middletown 19.8%, Newport 34.5% and the Rhode Island average is 22.1%. Next slide, please.

The star rating uh was implemented in 2018 by the Rhode Island Department of Education and five stars as being the highest one the lowest. We don't have any um fivestar schools. Uh but Middletown has uh four three star and one four star. And Newport has two two stars and one one star. And I'm going to read a couple of these. One one star is the lowest performing schools that require comprehensive support and in some cases intervention by the state. Two star schools with lower performance that need to focus on improvements. Those were both of the Middletown or I'm sorry the Newport uh schools those two GA categories. Three star performing near the state average and and expected levels. Four star high performing schools with some opportunities for growth. And fivestar highest performing schools demonstrating consistent performance across all metrics. And I will tell you that the high school barely missed getting a fourstar this year. Next slide, please. The source of this information is based upon the executive summary from investigator Steven O'Donnell dated to February 2026 regarding an incident occurring at Rogers High School on 17

October 2025. The incident was captured has captured national media attention. This is about organizational um culture and uh I can I can read that. Okay.

Sure. Right. The investigation identifies systematic failures in communication, supervision, disciplinary consistency, and trust between staff and administration. recommendations focus on administrative accountability, structural reform, improved reporting mechanisms, consistent disciplinary practices, enhanced supervision, and culture change to ensure student safety and restore confidence. The report has determined that many cultural issues have developed at Rogers High School over time that were ignored or the path of least resistance was taken. This incident has exposed and brought to the surface serious systematic failures that must be addressed. Next slide, please. No good businessman or businesswoman would ever consider a merger of this character. But for some reason, our council refuses to acknowledge the facts that this merger is a bad idea and to date is unable to produce produce facts that lead us to why a merger of this character is such a good deal. And I'll read the slide. Would any intelligent business person merge their emerging and successful business with another business against his or own board support when the other business is experiencing financial troubles, in the midst of a search for a new CEO, failing in its core mission requirements,

attaining average proficiency standards, experiencing labor turbulence, in the midst of a national public relations issue over a bullying incident and has an organizational culture with serious systematic failures requiring corrective action. And you want to do that to give up total control of your successful organization for shared control with the troubled organization. Next slide, please. It's decision time. Based on the information that was presented, the school committee requests that each council member raise their hand if they still are in support of regionalization after seeing this presentation.

Greg, I think we're not going to do that. We're not required to do that. I'm just telling you that I think you're I think you're a little bit out of line actually even asking that question. Yeah. Why? Because we're going to gather facts is what we're going to do.

Just because you don't agree with the path we're taking, we don't have all the information and neither do you. You're providing facts that you want to provide. We need to find the facts and then when we get all the facts, we'll make a decision. There's a process involved. If we don't agree, we don't we respectfully disagree. This presentation's a little sharp. It's almost like a kind of like a chess match or a battleship match where you know if you don't agree great but the the fact is Greg is that I had talked to you twice on the phone and we agreed we were going to meet before any decision was made and you failed to do that and then you say we don't listen to you. We do listen to you. If you don't like what we're saying that's okay, you know, we can respectfully disagree and you and you and I have a good relationship.

Yes, we do. So, and I hope that can continue. But until we gather all the facts,

then we'll make a decision. We don't make decisions without all the facts. It's that simple to me. And I'm not sure anybody, it would be fair to even ask that question to raise their hand when we don't have the facts. So I I do want to finish up with one other Yeah. One other thing and and I want to ask this to Charlie Roberts. Charlie, during our last conversation at a previous council meeting, you stated you know more about what is happening in our schools than the superintendent. And you also stated that you did not quit the school building committee. You also have been a very vocal proponent based on your public comments in support of regionalization. As a resident of this town, and I likely speak for every resident, we expect elected officials to be honest and transparent when making decisions on our behalf and base those decisions on what is best for the comm community. When you stated that you did not quit the building committee during our last conversation at the previous at a previous council meeting, you weren't honest. The three January 2024 building committee meetings state Greg and I quote,

can I just stop you here? There's a reason for this. This has nothing to do with regionalization. It absolutely does. Let me continue. It absolutely. We're not going to call out specific councils on statements they made. That's not what tonight's about. This has everything to do with regionalization. I'm I just I got to stop you. It just doesn't and come on here. And let's just move past that. I mean, you you got to let go of things that people say it's it's about the town and it's about us working together. And we're not going to be able to work together like this if we're going to single out certain counselors. If we don't agree with what they said, when you're voting on regization, we're not voting on anything yet.

But but you have you voted on appointment of the academic advisory committee. That was a regionalization issue. Mhm. And and so when you have a counselor that is voting on stuff like that's important that hasn't been transparent. I mean he's never said that his brother-in-law is the chairman of the Newport school committee and Newport has aggressively pursued this the Newport finish. All right guys look that's that's the public deserves to know that and we was not coming with that information and he has voted on regalization issues. Okay.

It's an ethics issue. Look, I I just this meeting needs to go back to regionalization and let's just keep it civil. We're not going to single anybody out. We're going to work together and we're going to continue to move forward until we get the answers and we'll make a decision. So, the point tonight was for you to make a presentation and you did. We got a bunch of questions that you're looking for answers for that we all have copies of that we'll review and then we'll move on. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, you Greg, is that your you're finished with your presentation? Yes.

Thank you. Okay. So, um there was I think a list of roughly about 40 questions that were and they were good questions and Sean uh I'd like to thank you for your for your answers on these. I thought they were pretty thorough. Some of them are redundant because some of the questions are almost u the answers to the questions are a little bit redundant because some of the questions are they kind of tie into each other. So how do you guys want to handle this? Do you want to I got to read it in here but do you guys want to let me read it in first number two is memorandum of town administrator in reference to consolidated questions and answers about school regionalization.

Motion to review the answers to the questions. [laughter] Have a motion to second. All in favor? I. So, how do you how do you guys want to handle this? Do you want to just go one by one and review the answers? Give a suggestion. What's that? Can I give a suggestion? Sure. Of course. Just to summarize things maybe and I'm not putting Sean on the spot here, but I just think since Sean was wrote this instead of having to read it verbatim, if we could summarize it in that respect that Sean has that. Okay. And and Sean, if you're not comfortable doing that, I'm just trying not to have to read it because it's 60 pages worth of documents or 50 some pages worth of documents. But I think since Sean did it, he would be able to summize it.

What do you think, Sean? Uh, hang on secon microphone. I'm sorry. Questions or statements on a particular question that we' be allowed to raise our hand? Yeah, I think we should as we go. Otherwise, it's going to get too convoluted and and backed up. So, Sean, are you good with that or?

I I [clears throat] was just going to say, I mean, most of these questions are answered from the legislation that was posed last time and has been being drafted currently, which mostly represents what what what what was considered last time. um you know regionalization is in itself uh it's a f the focus is on governance and I think as you read through the questions questions regarding um detailed questions about finance detailed questions about educational outcomes detailed questions about um um what was I going to say here uh educational programs finance uh those issues those are those are really going to come about from from further work. A lot of that's based on the academic integration advisory committee. You really can't model out the finances accurately without understanding the uh what you're you're actually building. Um at the end of the day um the same with the the academic outcomes. Unless you understand what the vision is for this uh regional model, it's difficult to to make a statement that you know so that the statement about it will be cheaper or more expensive. It's hard to answer that without understanding what what we think the end state might be. It's the same with the educational outcomes. Um I think one thing the questions do do is I they do show that there will be a a new government uh entity to manage education. Um and that highlights the importance of the the enabling legislation itself because your authority will move to this regional body. uh numerous times in these equation uh meetings I think

everyone has done it uh someone will make a statement and there's like and I'll just use an example shared services everyone asked the question well what's going to happen with shared services well they go away there is you know the third entity becomes responsible for the business office facility maintenance all of those things um on my side you know with what I'm left with we decommissioned the de the shared services model uh Colin Kendy will have to do the same thing at the city city side. Um I I think that's that's an important part to this. It's just again, you know, I think that that is answered in the questions. Um there is going to be a new entity. It is separate apart from the town council, the city council. The school committee will cease to exist at some point in time. And and that's sort of the questions you really can answer. and and I think I have answered and the these are all your questions that were submitted um as well as the questions that were posed by the city council and town council when we met at the uh the hotel one time. So this is what I understand the universe of questions are. But when it comes to those next questions about educational and finances without having an idea of what the end state is, you're not going to be able to accurately model it all. Um I think you'll be able to infer certain things. I think uh Greg has a slide. It talks about per pupil cost. Uh I think you can look at what a per pupil cost is for other regional districts. It's not unlike Middletown. Uh so then I think you you know you you can build the financial model, but but but there's also some evidence that says that educating a child at Bristol Warren is similar to the town of Middletown right now. So something happens uh at some point in time where there's not uh this gap that forms where where there's this this extra money. Uh and that also feeds into this idea if if we're going

to take that extra money and use it for education. You know, does the money actually materialize, does it, you know, does it go into education? And you know, again, those are those are things we would have to tease out. But

excuse me, can I can I just ask you so one of the first questions that Greg asked and for those people maybe aren't reading these 60 pages of questions. One of the first questions was what is the reason for pursuing this regionalization at this point. I think you gave a pretty good answer in saying that some people think there's going to be financial, some people think they'll be positive in the education side of things. You also clearly spell out for what has changed since Newport voters rejected this in 2022. And you talk a lot about our bond and our school buildings. You also talk about that Middletown has changed quite considerably in what they've done over at the school department with our three-star ratings, with our financial situation being on board where we're actually under control now with the finances, with the town council's help. um there's been this renewed discussion and you know we're now undergoing building these buildings. So I think for for many people they're wondering that same question. Why are we undertaking this now? So you you jumped right into finances and all the different you know what's going to happen to our shared services models and things like that. I think maybe getting into the weeds a little early in this discussion if there are people who are just hearing this for the first time. Why are we doing this? Why are we still looking at this? When Newport rejected it in 2022, we were all on board at that time, but we've made significant changes in the school department. Our school department has really turned things around as you can see from some of the statistics that Greg brought from us today. So, I guess my question for you is you you talked about a lot of the information and moving forward with this advisory committee. Um, but you talk a lot about the draft legislation. So all these things that were in the last legislation

that was turned down, some of those pieces, we are getting the 55% financing based on that legislation. So my my question goes to who's writing the draft legislation, who who's preparing that, who's drafting this draft legislation and creating all of those details that you're referring to. I understand this draft legislation if we regionalize now we're going to have this big governing body. We talked a lot about that at the last meeting with Newport. Um I believe Sai talked about that over and over that we're creating this new governing body. Okay. So now that loses the control for each town. Newport will no longer have control of their school department. We will no longer have control of our school department. There'll be this joint committee. the way the legislation you talk in here about the legislation being drafted. Well, who's writing that? How are we representation all of those things? Those are some areas that I have some concerns. So, I guess that's my next question. You know, we've gone into some details about what happens. This is all going away if we do this.

Yep. So, just writing again, I I've answered the questions to the best of my knowledge. what both parties have have have asked me what's been discussed publicly [snorts] um and and try to do that in an objective manner. I my role is you're the elected officials you make the decision. Oh, so so to the legislation. Um

at the last meeting of the city and town councils, um myself, the solicitor, Newport city manager and solicitor were asked to go back and draft legis redo the legislation. It's based on the legislation that was passed in 2022. Um there are a number of issues flagged that we're discussing um that need to be worked out and the goal was that once the city and town council scheduled their next meeting that legislation would come back and that would be discussed by the city and town council. Uh this meeting has been scheduled before that next city town council meeting has taken place because I think this this dialogue had to take place. Um, so it's the two solicitors, the manager, the administrator, uh, we are using, uh, Karen Grandandy, uh, who is a legal counsel for both the city and town on different matters, but is seen as a sort of a an arbitrator or a neutral voice in this whole matter. She was involved in the 2022 legislation. Um, so those that that is where the legislation is is right now. So, it's it's it's with the administrations and would come back to the city and town council, but it's mostly modeled on the 22 legislation that that you have copies of.

So, and that and that's not set in stone. No, it comes back to the city and town council and you'll discuss it, right? Are we going to Can I go? Sorry. Are we going to have part of that discussion? Are we going to be part of that discussion? I'm just going to

Well, you want a seat at the table. That's what we're talking about. That's the reason we're having this meeting tonight because you didn't want to participate and you were pretty clear about that. And so I've had conversation with Greg and said, "Hey, look, if you want input, you have to have a seat at the table. If you want a voice, you have to sit at the table whether we agree or not." So that's what we're trying to do because Greg felt like, "Hey, we haven't discussed this." Okay, you're right. We haven't. We were supposed to, but we didn't. So whatever course it took, here we are today, right? So let's let's try and figure this out. And I want to be clear that um from my perspective, there's no timeline. We need to take our time and get the information and once we get the information, we'll make a decision. It's that simple. But you can't make decisions just based on a presentation by Greg. That's not a shot at Greg. That's just he has facts and some of those are just facts. Some of those enlightened us and we appreciate that. But, you know, one of the things that failed last time was because we couldn't answer educational questions. We could answer the financial ones pretty easy. We couldn't answer the financial uh the educational benefits. So, we're going along this path. Um I had a conversation with the mayor in Newport a couple days ago and he's like, "Hey, when's the next meeting?" I said, "Look, we're moving with our school department and school committee and we're going to, you know, figure out the questions and give them some answers to the questions that they have and concerns and we'll schedule another meeting. We'll continue to get a facts. At some point, we'll make a decision whether we want to move forward with this or not, and you'll do the same." And I think that's the fair process.

You choosing to do this now? like why are you choosing to do this to why are you choosing to even investigate regionalization? What is it that has happened now that has made you decide I want to investigate regionalization?

So, so we I'm going to I'm going to get into that in a minute. Um and if I don't if I answer your question, just please let me know. I'll do the best I can, Wendy. So, um you know, I look back four years ago and we kind of look like what Newport's experiencing right now. So, we can't make decisions based upon today. We need to gather those facts and and we all talk about declining enrollment, right? And I know some of my peers don't like this word when I use it, but sustainability. Um, so, you know, you're not making decisions based on our performance today. Um, you know, you're saying, "Oh, Newport has financial uh issues. We're in fin. We were in a deficit four years ago. What did we do? work together, right? We're going to work together on this issue and see if it because look, there was a between both communities, it's a half a million dollars taken out of the communities, the economy. So, let me finish please. So, that's a lot of money and it's again the schools performing great right now. So, that's something we absolutely need to consider. But a few years back, we weren't. We need a change of leadership. They're gonna have a change of leadership. I don't know if it'll work out, but I certainly think it's worth exploring. I think it'd be negligent if we didn't. That's just my opinion. And again, you can't make decisions based on emotions. We we tend to do that sometimes because we're humans. We need to make decisions based on facts. And once you gather those facts, then you make a decision.

Yes, ma'am. Back to the legislator. And Tammy, I apologize. I do owe you a conversation. That's okay. Going back to the legislation that was mentioned in the regionalization word um and I as I read through all of these and I've read through all of them several times, you know, we talked about in 22 governance. It's governance only to have ride come in and say and I can't find the wording right now that there's really no such thing as that and that hasn't really existed anywhere. So that administrative governance that we were talking about that in 22 there was no administrative regionalization proposed. It was full-blown regionalization. It was not in in governance only in this.

No, it was full regionalization. The only time and what is and and what does that mean? Because as I read this regionalization is regionalization as defined by chapter 16. Yes. So right here it says it it has said full and it says unified regionalization. Um, and it says not a hybrid model, not any of that. So, it's a full integration of all the kids at every school. And that and that's what was proposed in 2022. And there was I think at the beginning of this discussion uh I think it was probably mostly Mayor uh D. Marine Npalitano, city councelor Npalitano came up with this this idea of or the word the introduction of the word administrative

regionalization. It was never defined, right? Um but from the last meeting of the city and town council, the city and town council, the councils, um they were back to full regionalization. This this introduction of the word administrative administ uh regionalization, which doesn't exist under statute, is not being contemplated. And and again, just to recap, in 2022, that was a full regionalization vote. And then when there were discussions, and I've been in on all of them, the kids were remaining in their separate schools. So I don't understand how that is full regionaliz you know and it talks about in here they're remaining in their nothing would prevent the regional school committee from integrating the children at any of the locations.

So it can be integrated. It doesn't have to be integrated. It's just whatever people determine whatever the whatever that group determines. We're not voting on that elected body that policing group elected by both communities would make legislation is written. We're not even sure what the proposal really is for. to be determined by that group that we're not even sure what they're going to determine it to be. You would have to if you wanted to restrict the decision making or authority of that group, you would have to insert it into the legislation. Right. Right now, the legislation is full regionalization. They have whatever to that group. That group will make that decision. Yes.

Regionalization is it's it's not when you say what regionalization means to that group. They're governed by Rhode Island state law. If they if they make a decision just like you make a decision, say you want to move the fourth grade to uh to the high school. Okay, you think that's a great idea. Um that's your decision as the school committee and you can make that under the title chapter 16.

So as defined then in there, what is what is its meaning? It is, as Sean mentioned, it is full regionalization. There's no such, there's no midpoint. There's no hybrid model. It is full regionalization. And unless which means that that governing body that's elected by both communities and and presumably the people that are being elected will will make their position known on you know where the kids should be going to school and what every grade in

Tammy. Could you just let him finish his questions? It's okay. the the the the control of the overall combined school district would be governed by that regional school committee. So unless there was some guard rail, for example, you say, you know, the kids up through grade X or Ajax are going to stay in the schools within their own community, then it would be up to that governing body to determine where the kids go to school, whether they're integrated at, you know, K through 12 or whether they're integrated from middle school up. That would be the decision. and and then presumably people might, you know, make those their position known when they're seeking election to that body. But if if that body, unless there's something in the legislation that specifically restricts that, then it's going to be up to that governing body, that regional school committee to make those decisions. Just as Sean mentioned, it's it's your decision to decide which grades go where within our existing school district. Lisa,

thank you. So, right now what we're talking about since every there's so many unknowns and we wouldn't know about that elected body yet is very hypothetical scenarios which is very concerning. But so say with say hypothetically that four members we have a body of seven, four members of Newport get on and three members of Middletown get on and Newport has the majority. They could make that decision to do whatever they wanted to if they chose to. And if the three Middletown members voted nay, the four Newport voted yay, that would be that would be the way the district would be. The districts would be subdivided or combined or however. So we actually as the rest of the citizens and parents would have no say. Correct.

So even if Middletown voted the best people in the world, but there was only three Middletown council uh school committee members, we would have no choice but to do what Newport wanted. Correct. And I I I think what's going to be recommended if we get that far is each other is no three and three or four and four whatever the number is

ju just so just to set the expectations correctly the state law says that the representation on the committee is done um according to the relative populations of the districts that are part of the regional district and that's not just Rhode Island law that's that's basically the law across the country because from a constitutional standpoint, it's it's the concept of one person, one vote. And if it's three and three or four and four, that means and we've got a smaller population, that means a vote in Middletown counts more than a vote in Newport. And there are communities or states where um you have equal number of people, but the votes are weighted. So in other words, you might have three from Middletown and three from Newport, but based on whatever the relative populations are, the votes [snorts] of the Newport members might be equal to one vote plus uh some percentage to equalize that. Once again, based on population. So I I I I

I'm confused. I'm sorry. I I'm glad you lost me on part of that and I don't consider myself stupid, but to the basic population, this is something this is something that we discussed last time, right? Um let's just have equal representation. Well, you know, unless the the populations are also relatively equal. It doesn't allow for that. It allows you to have the same number of people in Newport and Middletown, but the the vote the the members in Newport, maybe the new Middletown members would have a vote would count for one and maybe Newport votes count for 1.25, right? Um so the majority because Newport's population is bigger than ours. They would have the majority all the time.

It depending upon how the voting goes, the turnout in Middletown versus the turnout in Newport. But yes, I when you analyze, you look at it, it's probably more likely that Newport would have the majority, the members on that committee, which was when in the model that was put out in 22, we had uh put in there that the the community that had the minority on the school committee had the majority control of the finance committee. Right. [clears throat] So, but but having majority control of the finance is one thing, but having majority control of the academics and the location and the placement of our students is something that I think that parents I mean that that would need to be such clearly stated and don't misunderstand.

No, no, I I don't I don't disagree with you. Confusing to the typical lay person of how you describe that. I understand it because and the reason why I'm asking the question is because I understand it because we've had discussions for years over this, but I feel like that that the way you described it is a little bit confusing to the typical layman and maybe that's Yeah. And I'm I'm describing it to you because you I know that you're aware of it and we've had this discussion going back to the the last round. Um,

but I want the population of Middletown and the community to understand that because our population is smaller and Newport is larger, they would have the majority. So, their majority and their higher population would have more control over a lot of things than Middletown. So, the reality is is that we there is a risk and a potential real factor that we could lose control of a lot of things. Even if we had the majority on the finance, sure, we could say to the to the school committee um that was majority ruled by Newport, "Oh, by the way, we're not going to fund that." Well, at the same time, you have no choice because you got your Middletown kids, too. So, I just think that this is very um too many unknowns, too many uh questionable facts of of where we're going with this. And the other thing that I know that we're talking about with this um uh committee, sorry, what are you calling in?

Advisory committee. I just went blank. Um you know, the the what I think needs to happen in that if this is going to happen, we need to know what the real cost savings is going to be for one superintendent to run a district like this. you know, do we want just one superintendent who's not going to have our who we're not going to have their undivided attention as as Middletowners and for our students? Are there going to be two assistant superintendent, all these different assistant positions that may not even come close to saving um for administration, which which a lot of people think, oh, one superintendent is going to be a savings. If you hire one superintendent, it's going to be $250,000 and they're going to have a couple of assistants. So, that's not there's no cost savings here when our superintendents don't even make that. now as two separate and two separate supers. But I just am very concerned with a lot of hypothetical scenarios. And again, Newport has the higher population. They could control our schools. And that is scary since we're putting $190 million and refinishing these gorgeous programs buildings that we're going to have and the incredible programs that we're going to offer when we are actually going to benefit in my opinion of staying separate to have our CTE programs expand which is what's happening right now. We just got approved for an incredible CNA program. Well, guess what that's going to do? That's going to bring tuition into our program from other district our district from other places. We are looking at the um boat building CTE program which is very much in progress right now. Not approved, but it's certainly in the works. Again, these are programs that we're going to that's going to generate revenue for our district. It's going to I'm telling you, I've said this a long time ago, if we build it, they will come. And it's going to happen. private school students, I can count on it, are going to come back to the state-of-the-art program where our our CTE and our college and career readiness programs are going to explode and we're

going to be top-notch. And I think with our test scores and what Greg presented tonight, we are we are we are on the slope up. Yes, we struggled four years ago, but we as a community fixed that. Newport is struggling with fixing that right now. and and they're struggling as a community, not just as as a school district. We worked together as a community. We had our challenges. We had our differences. No doubt. No doubt, Mr. Ro Rodriguez, you and I had our battles across the table. We did. But guess what? We worked it out. And I'm not going to rehash of what happened to our budget because we all know there were challenges. Listen, that's in the rearview mirror.

But what I'm saying is that we worked through it and we progressed and we've done a lot of progress. And I am concerned that that is may not be happening in the same way with our neighbors. And to consolidate and bring that together is a very big risk right now. And I think we're on a trajectory up and I don't see that from our neighbors. As much as I love them and we do a lot with Newport, I'm we should keep going in that pace. That's my opinion. Okay. Uh Tom, you were next. And Charlie, I'll get to you in a minute.

So, uh couple of things that are all over the place. One is just to touch on Tammy. um because we stood out with regionalization signs last time and I have to admit that myself we were kept saying administrative regionalization right and I was not aware I don't even know when I became aware that there really is no such thing

and what happened along the way was this administrative idea is like the baby step like we're going to get together we're going to pull our finances and facilities and all that and then you know eventually if it works out move on down the myself and and I'll take the blame for it. I did not understand that that was the end game whenever that was going to happen. So that is part I mean I mean I stood out there with the signs and right now I'm looking for more information but you know if I put my chip on a square telling you it's no. So um that's one thing the as far as the the voting for the school committee goes. Um, and I understand what Peter's saying is state law, right? It's by representation. But, but Don MREN, you know, put a piece out that I think is important here to say that you might assume that it's logical that the population and the number of students would coincide, right? But in fact, Middletown has less voters but more students than Rogers than Newport, right? So is it possible Peter to petition the state or who the governing body to say hey listen in this case I saying

if the if the students voted yes because you got equal numbers but because it's the voters and once again it's it's this is constitutional law as opposed to something that's just to get it out there. So that is a no that is not going to happen. Okay. Um, and the other piece I want to throw in here, like why are we why are we doing this right now? We we talked about everything you said, but the other piece is that there's more reimbursement money on the table, right, for both communities. That's I'm sorry. Not yet. It it has

Oh, I'm just saying it's the possibility of more money. So, that that is a driving factor here, right, for both communities. I I mean and and whether it it comes to fruition, uh what the other costs that come out along the way, you know, what that ends up being, there is money is is possible. There's a consideration here, possible money, possible more money. Okay, Charlie.

Thank you, Mr. President. Um I I think we can agree the numbers that were presented, thank you for putting these forward, they're a snapshot, right? They're the last year. You know, it wasn't that long ago some of our numbers were in the red as well. And and I think we all got to understand that. You know, we haven't been the perfect school district either. And many of us have served this town during those times, too. So, you know, I I feel like, you know, the the presentation that was presented by the chair, he started out by saying, "This is about Middletown, not Newport." But it it seemed to be a lot of bashing on Newport. And and you know, I I don't know if that's quite fair. And I do need to respond to some personal attacks. I'm not I'm going to I'm going to keep it professional, but my brother-in-law is the the chair of the school committee in Newport. It has no bearing on any decision I ever make in my life. If anyone thinks that, then attend the meetings and see who I stand up for when I'm up on the dis because I would never let my brother-in-law influence me and any of my decision. And that needs to be stated because I don't I I make decisions on what's best for the town of Middletown. Okay. So those snapshots are important though because I I think you know have you guys talked to the school committee in Newport? Are they making changes? Are they doing anything right now that are improving? They they're going through a struggle right now. It's obvious to say that from a distance. You know the the incident that was put out there. If if we all sit in this room think nothing like anything similar that has never happened in Middletown, talk to your kids because it has happened. And I think that's important. You know, it's it's a horrible thing to happen there. And and in and that community is going through it. That whole community is going through that. But to say that that's never happened in Middletown, I I think you got to really go go home and talk to your kids about that. And you know, I am so happy with our superintendent. I talk to him on a regular basis. I say hi to him. He lives right I I live right across the street from where he works. I

did say that at a meeting that I know more about what's going on in the school as their superintendent and and you know I apologize to him for that for that point. What I really meant to say is I think when you are a parent you have kids in a school you give rides to kids you really hear about what's going on in those schools you know so you guys do your very best but I don't know if you guys hear the whole truth all the time. I don't, you know, even as a parent, maybe I don't, but I I, you know, I hear a lot I hear a lot about stuff that's going on in those schools and I talk to people about it in the administration sometimes. I do. And I know you're trying your best, but you don't see anything. You can't see everything. I I did resign from the building committee. I absolutely did. But what the chair didn't know is six months prior to that, I was talking to the co-chair about resigning because my workload at work was too much for this. I knew what it took to dedicate to fight for those schools. He convinced me to stay and I stayed and I fought for those schools. Like you wouldn't believe I fought for those schools. And every time I drive by there, I'm so proud of that work. But when it came down to it, I told him when we get to that in point, if this thing passes, which I stood out there in Newport and told people about the benefits of regalization, I came up to this dasier on a regular basis and tried to convince the town council at the time why we needed to improve our schools. I fought for those schools, but I didn't quit this town. I didn't quit the the building committee. It was a planned thing that I was working on with that Brady. Did I do it abruptly? Absolutely I did because I had other things to work on for my family and affordable housing projects that were going on in town and and I don't know if I've quit the town if I I've continue I'm I'm crazy to do it maybe but I haven't quit this town. I didn't quit anything. It was a planned I was always going to step away if the bond passed. You can ask Brett Ed Brady that any time

of the week. That was the plan. Okay. Last thing I want to say, I don't know if I'm going to vote for regionalization. I really don't as a voter. I don't know if I'm going to because I need more information. I need more facts before I go and I make that decision at the poll. The only way to get there is to sit down at the table with people and and that's what we're that's all I'm I'm not for regionalization. I'm going be very clear. I'm not going to stand out this time if it makes it to the ballot and fight for regionalization. I'm going to fight for getting the information to our voters because I think 100% they should be making the decision and not us elected officials. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. So, how come I don't get applause like that, John? Thank you. Um, Peter, Peter, I know you would. I'm just kidding with you. [clears throat] A couple things, Peter. Um, I just and after you're done, I want to make sure we get to any questions that this is what tonight's about. Um, we can all hear our feelings on whatever. And I respect and appreciate that, but I want to make sure that the purpose of the meeting is to get to these questions. They wanted questions answered. Here's the answers. So, sir, I I agree. Um, I just want to reference something you've

Peter said, Peter closer. Oh, these are horrible. Huh? There you go. Um, that you've put out there that you're saying there's no time frame on this. Mayor Holden has said no time frame on this. I still don't understand. We're not moving forward with this the way it's recommended by Ride in Chapter 16. If there's no time frame, if there's no rushing, why are we creating a new way of doing this? Why aren't we following their protocols with how it should be done? Why are we finding out what the educational benefits are before we even decide or we allow the town's people to decide? Too close. Too close.

There's no happy medium. Um it just once again it seems like we're putting the cart before the horse and I don't get it. And if there's no truly no time frame, I will support this going forward if it's going to be done by ride the way they look to it get done. If it's not, then I'm going to continue to oppose it, but I will uh continue to try all the facts I can find for the public. But thank you. Thank you, sir. I can follow that. Yeah.

So, yeah, I I concur with what Pete says. uh you know I I I look at the this opportunity to regionalize I think is is a a valid and a worthy exploration study at this time. I mean you talked about it Paul you talked about how um it's not you you don't care how long it takes and frankly neither do I. um you need to move in that direction. But yet we sit down tonight and we see a timeline in front of us that talks about all these dates and when when things are going to line up and legislation. Uh the key fact the key point here I think Tom mentioned it was uh why what what is the if you will the elephant in the room here fact that Newport needs to get their reimbursement by this summertime by July. If they don't, then they will lose out

on that on that extra money. So that is the why. Why are we expediting this? That that's a decision they need to make. That's not a decision we're going to make. So if they decide that, then then that's probably the end of it. But the timeline that landed on our desk tonight here is is confusing and concerning to me. Okay. I understand we're planning for this, but

when I see dates like legislation and a deadline to submit Alec questioned uh deadline to submit housing aid for Newport deferring in July to me that says you can't say on one hand you can't say on one hand that we I don't care how long this takes and on the other hand say here's the timeline of how it's going to happen.

Sean's going to answer that for you. I'm just letting you know where I'm at. He's stating what how the process would work with timelines built into it. That doesn't mean that that's how it's going to happen. I'm telling you right now, I don't I'm one vote. I run a meeting, happen to be the chair, there's six other people. I don't care how long it takes. If we go forward and we gather facts and we like what we see, then we move continue to move forward. If we don't at that point in time and we have enough information to make a decision either way, that's what we're going to do. But Sean, can you answer the timeline question? Let him do that. Just one final Yes.

the the consultant and the $300,000 plus expenses, travel expenses, and the 8week timeline. Again, that see we don't need to be putting numbers like that. If if we're sitting here saying whatever it takes, putting an eightweek timeline and to the tune of $300,000, it seems to be an awful lot of money to be spending in a short period of time when there's still an awful lot of questions to be answered. So, let's take our time and do this the right way. Agreed. I couldn't agree with you more.

Thank you, Sean. So, uh, Councilman Connorton had asked me to provide a timeline, um, just just so we we understood where we're at relative to the discussion, a timeline that took place between the councils on December 2nd. Uh, there's really three main. So, at that time, the councils were talking about having a question on the ballot in November, and that's what this represents. And I think to what the council president is talking about, uh both he and the mayor of Newport have talked about the fact that um they both want to do this right and they're not tied to a timeline. So So I don't know what that other alternative timeline is tonight. So So what you have is what the council's talked about on December 2nd. uh if if nothing was to change, if if it was the council's desire to have uh the question on the ballot for no November 3rd, this is what we would have to do. Um there's three main dates in here. Uh the first is that we would need to have the enabling legislation to the general assembly. Quite frankly, it would need to have we should have had it there March 1st. Um there's a window between March 1st and June 15th for the general assembly to approve the enabling legislation. The next critical date is on around uh August 5th. On that date, the uh question needs to be submitted to the Rhode Island Secretary of State. Prior to that, the councils would need to adopt resolutions authorizing the question to go to the state. the canvasing board would have to ratify the question before it goes to the secretary of state. But that, you know, when we define a critical path going towards November, um August 5th is the the second date. And then the last critical date would be September 21st, which if

we were trying to get all of the questions answered is the date that the mail-in ballots would be distributed to the community. So, um, you know, at that point, however, the two communities work together, you would have to have all of the information out so that voters had enough information to make an informed decision. So, again, uh, the purpose of this was to get something out to respond to Councilman Conton's request. Um I think mostly to address uh this idea or the original idea that the if we were shooting for November 3rd of 2026, this is what we would have to achieve.

Um but again, Paul has uh said tonight we're going to take our time. Uh I believe the mayor in Newport has said the same thing and that's part of the ongoing discussion.

Yeah. I said at the at the last meeting that I think one of the things um you took away from the last regionalization was some people felt like it was rushed. So if there wasn't timelines in here, you'd say, "Well, how does this thing work?" So that's based on, like Sean said, the discussion we had then. Um, but I I I just think, you know, if we're going to if we're going to continue to move forward and we get the information and they have to make a decision based on their reimbursement, that's something they that Newport needs to do.

However, the the the key date in all of those dates is the July date that Newport needs to submit with their reimbursement. We don't meet that date, they won't get their reimbursement. Again, that's a that's a so

that's a decision that they will need to make if they decide they want to move forward. Bill, we we don't make we don't control that. It's like it's like you want to control everything and we can't do that. You have to kind of let this process evolve and get the information and and you're almost negligent if you don't do that at this point in time. We could say no now and walk away and then people are going to say that wanted it like much much of you wanted it last time, right? That's not a shot at you. That's a fact. So, so people would say, well, you didn't gather information. How can you make that decision? That's not what we do. You're going to get the information, make decision. If Newport has to make a decision based upon their timeline for their reimbursement, then they make that decision. They let us know. They've made that decision once already and decided to to postpone their reimbursement. And if they do that again, then that's up to them, but that's certainly not up to us. Uh, yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Um, so I guess my question is if what would go on the ballot? The the question on the ballot would be, do we want to regionalize? Is that what the question would be? So, no, the legislation. Go ahead. So the legislation just like in 2022 there there's a question that's the question is formed in the legislation and then and then the legislative act is is is also I guess behind that that question. I I don't know if you want to desri describe it in a better way but you have you have the the whole act which is summarized by the question that's on the ballot and that's what the voters vote on which would be do we want to regionalize? It probably has some more details.

I understand that. But okay. So, okay. So, my but so if that goes on the ballot, what is not answered and I don't believe we could actually answer it in advance and maybe I'm wrong and somebody can please correct me if I am. Um but the then we're talking about the school committee question of the governance of how it would run and I feel like that that there's so many unknowns about that because we wouldn't know that until the election happens. So again, we go back to four Newport, three Middletown, and and if they choose to send students all over the place, some of our children who are elementary students right now, who those families are looking forward to this brand new high school that we just built, might not even be able to middle school, middle high school, yes, might not even go to our own public schools that we're building, the taxpayers are paying for. They might end up down at Thompson or Rogers because that's what that government governing body of 43 does. And so as a middle I mean I my children have already gone through the system and just so you know that my daughter's only been out of school for high school for three and a half years and yes I know what you're talking about. I've been there done that and did hear all the stories about what was going on Charlie. So I get that but but I but I just want to say that that is not fair. That is not right. That as a Middletown taxpayer, if I have grandchildren in the future and I'm paying all these taxes and help build these beautiful buildings and remodel and do all this stuff, that my children might not even have that option to go to those beautiful schools because somebody else in the neighboring town says, "Nope, those four members said, "Nope, this is the way it's going to be." And guess what? That governing body has total control of what we just did to build state-of-the-art facilities or what we're doing right now. And I think that if I was a parent of elementary children looking forward to this these struct this infrastructure being opened in 2027 and their kids aren't going to be able to go, it's a concern. So I just and and again I think that the other

thing that is still questionable is and how do we find this out? Is the study going to be able to um of this advisory committee going to be able to help determine what the cost savings would be for administration? That's a really big question that I have. Okay. and the unions and what I really and those are valid questions Teresa but those are ones that need to get answered and we can't answer those at this point in time that's why we need to continue to get the information so but we can answer the governing so no we can't we haven't made a decision on that yet that's in the legislation Peter said what if we go 33 no we're gonna we're going to wait till the end okay absolutely but we're going to wait till the end we need to get Do you guys want to get to these questions okay I mean that's kind of what What? Okay.

We've covered a lot of it in different ways, but yeah. Yes. Is it? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Microphone. Microphone came through the I'm sorry. You can't do the equal representation. It's got to be an odd odd number. You You cannot have fully equal representation unless you have essentially equal voting populations. Okay. So, that so that is the difference. That's what we talked about. That's um the the uh so even if it's written in the legislation even if it's written in the legislation because once again it's the concept of one person one vote and if you have okay

three people three reps from Middletown and three reps from Newport that means all voting in this combined regional district it's not two districts it's one regional district a vote in Middletown counts more than a vote in Newport if it works that way. which is unconstitution. Okay, guys, after this question, we're going to the questions. If anybody, if you don't want to do one by one, if you have a specific one that you want to ask that you're not clear on um because it took a few hours to to go over this to slowly to make sure I know for me it did um to understand and make sure that their questions.

Mine is just specific to this. So the process like it is possible to do it would be a what would it be a a change to our Rhode Island uh what's the I'm sorry the term offhand like almost like a charter change so it would have to go onto the ballot correct if to allow for

you it'd almost change this the constit the state constitute which is not going to happen so it just um you'd either have um a different number of reps from each community or you'd have weighted voting which is essentially the same sort of thing. Um, so to the extent that you're concerned about certain things and where kids of certain ages go to school, you would have to, you know, you would have to build guard rail. If if you were concerned about the makeup of the committee and what the committee might do, you'd have to build those guard rails into uh the legislation.

Greg, just a couple things I want to clarify. uh it was brought up about um we need to be at the table and I think people need to understand why uh the school committee made that decision. So we told our superintendent that he is not authorized to engage in any of the regionalization discussions and the purpose of that was one he's not a politician. We want to keep him out of the politics. Two, if he was engaged with that academic advisory group and he could if this if regalization went through, he could potentially be applying for a superintendent job and he could say things that would may not make some of the people happy that he's saying. And so it puts him in a position that he's in a no-win position. So that's why our superintendent is not engaged. Okay. The other thing was that we got two new schools and and we're trying to focus on the day-to-day operations. We don't have the capacity to have him engaged.

Uh so that was the reason why school committee made that decision. The other thing that um uh and I want to clarify what what Charlie said was I didn't bash Newport.

The purpose of that slide was not about the bullying incident. It was about the systematic failures and a culture of the of the school district or of Rogers. That's an important fact. I wasn't bashing Newport and and the the slides Charlie said that's a point in time. Well, if you looked at the slides closely, you would see under each one of those categories, it showed the improvement or or or decrease in each one of those categories based on the previous year. So, it's a trend. It's not a point in time. Um, the last question I have is the academic advisory group. So, there's three resolutions that the Newport city council did and there's one that the Middletown Council did and they don't match. So, could you explain what this academic advisory group is supposed to be doing? Is that a question for me?

Yeah. I mean, what what guidance does this academic advisory committee have? Because the two resolutions by the two towns are different. They don't say the same thing. Yeah. Uh so they came out with a Newport came out with a resolution first, right? And Go ahead, Peter.

They did. Um our first resolution was different from theirs for a number of reasons. One, theirs specified um involvement with members of the school committee and the school department and our situation at that time was different. So those details were not included in that. So ours, you know, the the general gist of um what both communities have discussed is that this committee is going to be focused on the academic benefits or pros and cons of regionalization and I know that there are also discussions with regard to the financial pros and cons of it and the financial modeling that's not the charge of this particular committee and there would need to be another um effort uh and perhaps another consultant um working with the town to do that financial modeling to see what the uh short and long-term uh financial impacts of regionalization would be on the town. So, so this group gets together. How are they going to make decisions on curriculum and the academic part without a full understanding of the financial piece and what potentially this joint school committee, the decision it's going to make to close schools, move schools, move kids around? H how do you do that? That'll be the

I was going to say I mean I think that's the purpose of the consultant that was hired by the city of Newport. The consultants will have to sit down with the group and that's going to be part of the discussion. You're you're going to have they're going to have to create information to support the decision-m process. I I I'm not on that consulting team. We haven't met yet. I think again going back to how the next meeting between the councils was to be structured. Um what what had been shared is that the councils would meet with the econ uh academic uh integration advisory committee. Uh that was to be a joint discussion. Um the three groups would conclude their meeting and then the academic integration advisory committee was scheduled to meet and pick their leadership so they could move forward. So, um,

but that was all put on hold temporarily, Greg, until we met until we had this meeting. So, it'll be catching resolutions, so we're saying it. It has to be to the questions a little bit. Um, throughout here peppered in and out are some of the um cost savings and different things and possible. Can we talk Thank you for getting to the questions. talk about or maybe Sean I don't know because it's in here kind of throughout some of the um financial aspects that we do know I mean we do have the you know per cost per pupil what that really means um and just different things like that because sometimes I come across and it's I see that you know significant savings

um you know if I'm at number 37 what efficiencies or cost savings are expected and you read down in the bottom you know after reading the first paragraph significant savings significant immediate savings are unlikely And I keep reading different things about the facilities and getting down to have less facilities. Well, that might not prove to be financially beneficial by growing the district. Um, so could you just talk to some of the financial aspects that we do have a little bit of information on?

I I don't think I would. I don't have the information. I did not analyze it. I mean, I again, I think this is something where uh as Paul said, another study is going to have to be done and someone's going to have to break it down um to provide that information. I just note there some information on some financial aspects are in here. Time costs and you know the per pupil as I said and and the different district

there will be onetime cost. Um I think that's a question that was asked even by Don Morren had sent the council and everyone an email. Um those haven't been identified. Um that's something that would need to be done. Um as far as the operating cost, part of that would be based on um deci, you know, even discussion tonight. Um you know it where you know if there's going to be a restriction on where kids go to school, is there a consolidation of schools? I think that's part of what the academic integration advisory committee is doing is trying to, you know, it's basically what that committee is doing is is looking at and creating a, you know, a statement about the future state of what this this regional school district could look like. Um, so until that is a little bit clearer, it's hard to go through. I mean, you know, a lot of it is it's it's similar to a a minimum manning problem. um you have blocks of education you need to provide. You I you know you may not know what all those blocks are in the the sense of a classroom but you know there there are so many hours of instruction that need to be provided or will be provided. You can estimate that cost and look at buildings cost per square foot and you can roll it up but I don't I don't have those numbers tonight. Um and I and I think that as you said clearly in here it there is no I Greg presented some some figures that are presented in the ride data. Um but that that doesn't represent the future state of what could happen with regionalization. Uh and until that future state at least is a little less cloudy it it would be difficult to to calculate right now. I just think that so we there's so many questions but I doesn't it doesn't feel like any of those questions could be answered without having this group analyze it

going to go in circles right that's why you want to gather the information so that's why we have a lot of questions right and that's why many of them can be answered correct but we some answers some questions are not going to be able to be answered until we move forward and then we can make an informed decision and that's the purpose of the exercise is that and maybe I shouldn't call it an exercise or process is kind of let it evolve. Uh as it evolves, we get more answers. If we like those answers, great. If we don't, at that point in time, we feel like we can make an informed decision, then we do that.

Dennis, thank you. So, just, you know, a couple of things observation. I think when it comes to the day-to-day savings, I don't think it's going to be my personal opinion, I don't think it's going to be a big number. I think what's going to be in our school is 80% of what's in our school already. Not like going to flip it on its head and and say, "Well, now we're going to make up 90% of what we're going to be doing." I think it's 80 to 90% there. So, I don't think it's a heavy lift to figure out what this is going to look like to be honest with you. But I could be wrong, but I don't think you're going to save a lot on a day-to-day basis. to try to justify that is I don't think you know it's important and we can look at it it's a good exercise but where the financial savings is going to be is if we do regionalize in the reimbursement that's where the big nugget's going to be right I mean that's a fact it's on the table that's one decision right

possibly it's not on the table definite are guaranteed from all we've heard from Ride and what we've heard just like the first time They voted for it. The same position. That's what we were going to be told. That's what we at the last meeting. Okay. Okay. So,

well, and I just if I can jump in. So, I think what Dennis is saying is the reimbursement rates are statutory. So, they are known. You know, we're at 55%. If by a certain date the building's built, um, we get 82%. If Newport files by a certain date, uh if they defer to from this July to next July, they would realize 82%. Th those are all stat, you know, uh future projects would be reimbured at 67%. Those those are all statutory and known. Um so I I think that's what Dennis is saying. Thank you. Yes. So

what we got to remember too is that the the residents of Middletown did vote for this. As [clears throat] much as you think that we didn't answer all the questions the last time, we must have answered enough questions because [clears throat] the public overwhelmingly voted for it. If Newport would have voted, what was it? 400 votes or 500 votes. 391, we would already be two years into regionalization. The new school bond. No, we would have the bond passed. No, it didn't.

The financial bond for the school passed. in Middletown. They were already building their schools in Newport. Okay. It was actually more. It was $240 million. 235 million. It was going to be two schools. Current bond. Okay. That's what I'm saying. But what you're saying, things have changed since then.

Well, a lot has changed and so is the affordability of Middletown. Okay. So, we got to I'm kind of looking at as two decisions. This academic advisory committee is going to look at what resources are available in Newport and what resources are available in Middletown and talk about what academic advantages can we offer to our children if we combine these resources. We are already so-called regionalized today. All our sports are regionalized. 90% of our sports are regionalized.

You're shaking your head. No, but 90% at all. Okay. What What percentage? Okay. It's going in that direction, right? You have to clarify. Youth sports. Youth sports. Okay. Youth sports. Okay. So, academic. Oh,

we have kids from Middletown that go to Rogers and we have kids who go from Rogers to Middletown. We're going to expand our CTE program. So, I'm looking to say it's probably going to continue that way and I think more kids will come, more kids will go. That's been going on for a long time in Middletown. I talked to a few retired teachers and they said we had scheduling issues then because I asked them to be on the advisory committee. I said I think scheduling is going to be one of the big challenges they're going to have to figure out and they said we we had to do that. We've been doing that. So those, you know, that's just some of the things that I talk with people about. And you know, if Newport's schools, if Newport's education was as solid as our education today, would you support regionalization? Because I keep hearing that you don't support it because their education is as strong as ours. Would you support it if they were as if their grades were where our grades were or maybe ours weren't as good as they are and we were more like their grades? Would you support regionalization? Okay, that I keep hearing that's a reason why you don't want to regionalize is because they're a bad business and we're a good business. Well, two years doesn't make a big difference. Okay. So, that's just kind of some of the things I look at and I do think maybe we can put some guard rails in there and I think there's conversations and I'd like to hear more about that that if it's going to be regionalized that we look at it over a period of time that when we first get out of the gate that the majority of the children in Middletown would go to Middletown and the majority of the kids in Newport would go to Newport and then over a year over a period of time we could start bringing these schools together and I think that's going to

happen because the enrollment's going to change. The classes that are going to be offered and I think elementary will be different than the middle school will be different than the high school. I think the high school we should we should run it more like a a university where kids can take advantage of their time. Maybe we offer education 365. Maybe we can offer Spanish on the weekends or we can offer English on the weekends or we can do a lot of more creative things so that when the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th they get more responsibility, more management time. They're not locked in the classroom. There's virtual learning. There's a lot going on. Education is going to change in the next 5 to 10 years. And for us to sit here and just deny the opportunity of trying to figure this out and branch into that direction, I think is a mistake. But that again, that's my opinion. And I think there's a lot of people who are against regionalization because they don't want to see us regionaliz regionalize across the board. I've had people come to us outside the box and say, "We should regionalize the communities. We should regionalize police and fire and public works. Whoa, that would be huge. Everyone talks about it and says we're going to do it, but no one does it. So, this could be a really great example of how we can regionalize and take that chance and take that opportunity and think way outside the box

because small changes aren't going to make it. I really don't believe that. And I think that this is a good exercise. And I do believe that this academic advisory committee, I'm hoping what they bring back whether we administratively consolidate if we stay Middletown school committee, Newport school committee that the academic program they come back with, we're going to exercise because we want to take advantage of their new schools, their $130 million school and our $190 million school and the things they offer and the things we offer. I think we've got to we've got to do that whether we go with one school committee or we go with two school committees. That's just my thought on it. There are still a lot of questions. But when we keep going back and saying, you know, we need to know the answers. I don't think it's really fair that everyone's turning to the school to the council to say, get us answers. the school comm the council hasn't gotten us our answers. I challenge you to go out and seek those answers out from other groups and maybe come up with some of the answers to these questions. How do you want to see it? When you ask the question, I want to you know what is a going to look like? Well, maybe you can say this is what we think A should look like and propose that to the committee and say we think it should look like this.

And they could say no. and they may say no, but that will help you understand where your position is. And I think it's just a matter of getting enough information in front of the people. I do believe this is a decision that we should leave up to the residents of Middletown. That's just my opinion on it. So, thank you for your time. Thank you tonight. I think it's healthy conversation. Okay. Thanks, Dennis. Tom.

All right. Just quickly uh for a rahrrah good moment. We came here, it was a rough start, right? and and we've been kind of butting heads up until now, but this is exactly why we're here, right? The whole idea is to talk, find out what the questions are. We don't know. The governance is a perfect example. Peter's pretty much all but said it's not going to happen. So, for some people, big one for me, we're not going to have equal representation. And I don't know how I can move past that, right? But anyway, that's that's why we're here tonight. That's why this conversation is good. And we have a process that we have to go through. Everybody's coming up with questions, asking questions, getting as much information as we have now. We're going to go back and dig some more in whatever direction we decide we need to go. So, I'm thankful that we're all here, and I think we're going to have to obviously keep doing it. My question is this. Paul uh talked about the fact that Newport's already held off on the reimbursement once. If it gets to whatever the magical date is, they're going to have to do it again, right? And just Sean can weigh in here, but maybe doesn't need to. Obviously, we are built $190 million schools, right? And as soon as we have to start paying on that and we're substantially done, we start getting reimbursement. We've factored that into how we're going to pay those schools back. So, for Newport to come up and say, "All right, we're not going to take the reimbursement this year." That means they have to make that payment somehow out of their existing budget. If they do it again, they're going to have to make that payment a second year with money that they weren't planning to spend. Now, they are going to get the reimbursement in the end, but in the short term, that creates a problem. How many times can they do that? I have no idea. The question is this. If it's like, all right, we're not going to make it. This this timeline is not going to happen, right? We we that we're not going to get there, so they're not going to get there. If this goes to push them off a second year, at what point do we ask them, are you guys still in? Because if they're out because they're the the

money is is the problem, then we're spinning our wheels here for for no reason. So So somehow somehow we've got to be fair community to community and say, you know, we're we're done. We can't we can't go anymore. So just throwing that out there. I I don't know how we get to that, but that's an important consideration. It's a question we'll ask when we meet with them, right? Thank you. Yep. Tita was next. Wendy.

Yeah. I just I just wanted to go back on some of the stuff Dennis was saying. My problem isn't when looking into it. It's the process and I just I still can't wrap my head around why we're not following the process as outlined by Rod. Addition to that, statements were made. Why is the council doing all this stuff, getting all the information? That's absolutely not true. Greg and the school committee just put on a a very good and comprehensive demonstration. somewhat pointed but still uh a lot of information out there. Um and the other thing is I mean the council has been driving this since the beginning. This hasn't been a community decision. I don't I'm not saying it shouldn't go in front of the voters if we have something to put in front of them. But I have had little contact from anybody even talking about this which I think is an issue. I think we need to get the information out there as soon as we can. we have many of these meetings as we need to hold and to keep asking questions. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Pete. Wendy,

uh I think that Sean kind of broke it down here in the end um as Dennis and I've heard Charlie speak to some of the things that we have already doing with Newport. We have our CTE programs. We have our sports teams working together with the younger kids. And you and I have talked a lot about this. Um and that's great. And so I guess my question would be if we're already doing this, we're already doing this in a lot of ways we can continue to do this. And the question then becomes, are we willing to regionalize when maybe we use memorandums of agreement, continue to do the things we're doing, kids are working together, we're, you know, they're coming to our school, we're going to their school. Um, but then we give up the local control that we have with our school district. Right now, our school committee, I'm on the policy committee. We make the policies that our school follows in regards to how teachers behave, how students behave, all of those kinds of things. Um, are we going to see the benefit of regionalization from this statutory perspective, this governing body that we're now going to create that we're probably not going to have control according to the state law that says the vote is going to happen a certain way? And that doesn't necessarily mean that every time Newport's going to vote to just four against three. you know, we hope that wouldn't happen, but um what are those benefits going to be that are going to outweigh this loss of control over our schools, our school districts, and what our superintendent and where we want our kids to go and how we see them going because we've done a really good job.

Along with that, you talked about the reimbursements. So, from that perspective, it all sounds like a whole lot of money. Sounds great. Oh my god, we're going to get $150 million But when you break that down, you only get that money when you make your payments, if I'm understanding it correctly, that you have to pay back that bond. And so each time you make a payment, you get money. How much is that? A million dollar a year, $20 million a year. What is it? So again going back to is it worth this regionalization joining together losing the control of what we have going in our schools right now.

Um how many years is that going to take? How much are we going to get a year? I mean that's that's another question I have about these reimbursements. The money sounds great. However, in the in the grand scheme of things, is a million dollars a year in the scheme of our budget really worth this? Is it really worth losing control of what we've got going on in our schools? That's that's my concern right now. And I'm not there. Okay. Yeah. When u Wendy uh Tammy, sorry

to comment a little bit um on a little bit what Dennis said and what other things. I mean to talk about our schools for a second and what has been decided. We have a middle high school complex very very unique very carefully planned. We have a high school and a middle school built to our demographic projected demographics. We have the ability to have our eighth grade

combined with our ninth grade for courses for CTE to get a jump start on things. I mean, that was all planned to put the eighth grade nearest to the where they would go to the ninth grade. That's part of the plan. Um, there's all sorts of things happening in the high school. There's all sorts of adult programs that are being investigated. There's um manufacturing that they're thinking of, you know, we can do courses in the evening with adults. Um, speaking to the high school, it's so exciting. Um, we have our Valley Elementary which is a two, three, four, five consolidated with the potential, the thought is maybe if preK ever gets mandated, could we fit a a first grade there? That's being built into the process. And then we have the Forest Avenue, which is the preK K1. Again, the thought there, too, is okay, if PreK does grow. So these things are all being taken into account for our demographic and it's, you know, it's very exciting and this again back to this is that $190 million bond that we um had people vote on and voted for that. Um and so we do have a lot of things going on. There is a lot of thought into what is going on. Um and I think that the whole idea of having a middle high school is amazing. um and having that ability to move from middle to high and you know should numbers change like we have great flexibility in creating that and that environment and that identity. Um so I think that can't be overlooked.

Can you speak into the mic please? Thank you.

Yeah. Sorry about that. No worries. When you say guard rails, are those things that just a question, are those things we can put in there that say we want our educational programs to be, you know, obviously taken into consideration by this advisory committee and being part of the legislation that we want to make sure that it doesn't change. We don't want it to change out of the gate cuz we talked about you you know for the first 5 years or or is there any the guidelines to that? Uh those would need to be sort of negotiated between both communities. I suppose you could put some a timeline in uh before certain things could happen whether and you know once again you could try to um have some guidelines with regard to that might be based on the age of students in terms of where they go but um you know once again as Sean mentioned generally the the the authority of the school regional school committee would be similar to the authority of the current school committee in terms of determining um you know everything about the academic program. So um

and I see that and and this conversation sort of came up when they talked to Ry about if it didn't work out for some reason, right? The question came up and said, "Hey, if this didn't work out between Middletown and Newport for whatever reason, could we get out of this regionalization contract?" I don't recall exactly what the answer was on that. Um, but what I was going with is there the school committee I've heard this a few times is their concern is very proud and we're proud of where the school's going at this time. What programs are being put in place, the development of the school and they don't want to be overrun. I'm not speaking for them, but we don't want to be overruned by this regional group to come in and say we're changing it upside down on you guys so that you no we're changing it all. Is there anything we can put in the legislation and we can negotiate with Newport? Maybe Newport hears what we're doing and says, "Wow, that's good. We should be doing that. We should be looking at these programs. What is Middletown doing to bring their grades to the level that they're bringing them to? and how can we learn from that?

I don't believe you're going to be able to put provisions in legislation at that granular level to talk about how the academic programs are going to be run. Um because you know they're going to change over time. If regalization happens, it's going to happen over a very long period of time. And um you know once again I think you may be able to put in some uh provisions that are much more general in nature and once again maybe in terms of timeline in terms of ages things of that sort but but but

predetermining how the academic programs are going to be run in the future and um you know curtailing the authority of the committee to that extent. And I mean I you guys can mention how you'd feel if you were on a committee and you had those kind of restrictions in terms of how you would operate the schools in the future. Uh I don't see that happening at that level.

No, but going back to one of the original questions, you could put in in as part of the legislation is and it was discussed at um at least one of the meetings if not two of them because it was a concern of hey look, we're building these new schools. Um, you know, torice's point or Tammy's point was, you know, all of a sudden if this thing goes forward and happens to pass, if it gets to that point, um, you know, the regional school board could say, well, no, we're flipping this. But we did talk about, um, there was some discussion about five or 10year uh, numbers came out um, at one of those meetings. So that's something that could be written in.

Yes. I thought I thought the you wouldn't get the reimbursements if you didn't do the fully if you didn't fully regionalize. Um I think that would re regionalization and full integration of student bodies are two separate things. So, um, and once again, it it would be if the regional school committee said all the students are going to go to the schools that are within their own home communities, that Okay. Yeah. Is that the 2% per grade part of that calculation?

So, if we had decided just to regionalize at the high school level, yes, you would only get an 8% regionalization bonus. Two 2% grade. Yep. Okay. So, I believe we had Tom next. So,

just quickly, and maybe I'm jumping ahead here, but I'm looking at how do we continue after where we are tonight. Everybody kind of got happy with each other, right? Then we we we have questions, but more feelings about we what we think about it. We get a lot of information. Um, so in order to move ahead, we're going to have to pick out specific tasks to dive into more information that we need, right? I don't know if we're ready to do that sit around the table right now because not only do you have to say I want I want a financial uh plan on how uh regionalization works or whatever it is. I I think we're going to have to specifically come up with some task and who is going to do it. Do we need to hire a consultant? Do we are we trying to throw it on back on the administration? Who's going to answer the question? So, I don't know how long we go here because we're I don't think we're going to get to a point where we can say what needs to happen next. So, I'm just trying to look at the end so I can say motion to adjurnn.

Can I can I have a I have a comment on that? So, there's a Let me look at the bigger picture here along Tom's lines. There's been an awful lot of reference here tonight to title 16, right? And there's a lot of a lot of what happens with regionalization is tied to title 15, title 16. And as I heard you say earlier, Paul, if I mean, if the if the council moves forward and you already have moved forward with appointing people to the AIC, Yep. whatever it's called, and I know Greg will sit on it along with Barbara and a few others,

and I support that. Uh, but I want to be sure because as we talk about who's, as Tom asks, who's going to do what and who's going to do this and that, I want to be sure and you you did mention that the resolution needs with Newport needs to be the same. So, you're going to need to revisit that as a council and make sure that resolution is similar or the same as Newport. I want to be sure that title 16 is being complied with as far as the why because my understanding is that before you talk about the how do we do it, it's the why do we do it. So without getting into the why we do it tonight already have uh I want to be sure that if the resolution is going to be modified or changed that we we stick with what title 16 lays out as a process and that starts with the why. I just want to be sure on that clear because that's from what I understand is where it begins. Why are we doing this and that if the AI C is going to determine that then so be it but that needs to go into the resolution. Well, there there is an advisory committee.

And so the reason we did that is because when Sai was the mayor, um after the last one didn't pass, I immediately when he was elected, I immediately asked to meet with him because I felt like that at the time that you know the whole thing with Newport and the $20 million shortfall and all that and I think it could have changed some votes in Newport. That's just my opinion. So I met with him and he was all he was a new player in the game, right? So he was uncomfortable at the time. We met probably once a month, 6:00 in the morning, 6:30 in the morning. Once a month we would meet for breakfast and discuss the potential um and I did that because um I thought that a good plan. I thought that uh the benefits um uh one of the things we couldn't answer was the educational benefits and that's why he initially had proposed um in our conversations um from the outside he said Paul one of the things I saw was that I think affected the vote was really you weren't really really weren't definitive in in answering what the educational benefits were. So, and some of them we sat on stage down at CCRI. You and I sat on the stage with Jean and and Lynn Segley and some of those questions we just couldn't answer because some of the questions you're not going to be able to answer as far as what the regional school board would do. People wanted questions on those as far as educational benefits. We didn't have those. So Sai said um you know I would potentially be in favor of moving forward if we could answer some of those questions.

Well I I don't agree with that but I I think if if I think that the scope needs to be broaden then to of course the academics is one part but it's the how but I think title 16 is clear that so let me ask you a question. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Should be part of it. Right. Okay. Part of Sure. the resolution by or at least follow the process as laid out in title 16. Okay. So, I thought I don't know what makes it so different last time when you supported it of the how or the why. I thought we were always following title 16. Not going backwards, going forward. If

Thank you for for being nice to me. If it comes forward, then let's include as part of the resolution or the for the to reconstitute or okay to reduce to be clear that title 16 lays out the process and frankly it begins with the why and I think that's what a fair amount of work should be done on through that resolution through that committee. I thought I think the why was always I don't think it's changed Billy. I think the why has always been um you can put I'm sorry but you can put it out there but I think without doing it tonight let's you know put it as part of your resolution to I see what you're saying keep it in keep it in resolution.

Okay fair enough. Yes sir. So I think everybody recognizes that this is a huge effort. Yes. Probably no one more than Sean. We're spending a lot of time Mhm. which is money. We aren't even sure that the Middletown taxpayers who are the ones who may or may not benefit if we do this. Um before we go through all this expense, why don't we ask the taxpayers in Middletown what your position is before we go through this huge effort? It's not that hard to do.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure we could. Um, I I think you get a better sampling at the poll versus sending out a survey, but that's just my opinion. Typically, when you send out surveys, you get a very small response usually. Maybe I'm wrong on this one. I don't know. Something we can certainly talk about, though. I mean, I think it's worth doing if if there's a lot of time and effort and money involved in this and and we could get an answer right away that

but but you can't you can't ask them for an answer if they don't have the facts. So what that defeats the whole purpose of um you know we can talk about things we feel strong about or agree with or disagree with but the whole purpose of this is to be able to get them the facts so they can make a decision. We don't have those facts yet. And then that's why there should be no timeline on it because we should I certainly learned that lesson last time and and again I don't want to make that mistake and if we get that far

but what was said tonight is a lot of these answers we can't get until until the regional school district is formed up and they're going to ones who are have the authority that are going to drive some of these things and and that's what I think the the residents of Middletown need to understand what authority does that joint school committee have and what is the impact of some of the things that they can do and and that needs to be made very very clear. Yeah. And I think um that hasn't changed since the last time, Greg. It's still still the same answer, but you know, we say when it overwhelmingly passed. So, but things some things have changed to your point and you and I have had pretty deep discussions about that.

$190 million changed. Yep. Okay. Are we gonna let residents speak? Yes, we are. I I have a question that about the questions. Excellent. I've been dying for somebody to ask a question if Okay.

I just um the first thing I wanted to mention is that you had talked about a we're doing an academic I want to call it a feasibility study, I guess you could call it. Um but what about and it's been mentioned here in in passing a financial study. So, we're going to, you know, are we going to spend more money to dig deep of say what is the real cost savings? I understand you're talking about the reimbursements, but let's look at the day-to-day cost savings. Are we going to investigate that? That's come up several times tonight. And what would that cost us to hire a consultant? This is just I'm putting questions on the table.

Food for thought. Um, because I really think that would be important. And I think the residents would want to know what's our long-term tax obligations going to be to to do this per pupil is much more costly in Newport than it is for us. You're talking about special ed departments. You're talking about transportation costs. You're talking about um over a whole b overhead costs and things of that nature. But back to the questions, this is my question that I've been asking all along. Number 47 in regards to contracts. And I think that that's an important thing that the the community would need to know that this school board and I can't remember if it's 47 or whatever it was, but this the school board that would be elected would have the total authority to um rehire once they renegotiate contracts. So what would happen is, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, Sean, is that the contracts would would run out. If the n if if the school board was elected, those contracts would have to run out from both districts. Once those contracts ran out, they would become one large union and the contract would have to be renegotiated. But my understanding of reading this right here, if I'm and I'm meeting I'm reading it wrong, is that teachers would have to reapply for positions. So, they wouldn't be guaranteed their tenure necessarily, unless I'm reading that wrong. I I guess I should not I should ask a question. Would the teachers and teacher assistants would be guaranteed their position in their same or would their would all of that be um uh revamped and restructured because they would be opening essentially a brand new school district. It's like it'd be starting from scratch. Am I correct on that? So that teachers would have to reapply.

I want to just clarify just you do where does it say the teach you said teachers would have to re reapply for their positions. Oh I was skimming through this and said I didn't I didn't see that. I just don't I just don't want the concepts I that's not part of what I presented. So the the the contract would expire and then the new school district would have to negotiate with with the new bar you know the They would they would keep their tenure. Yes. Yeah. Yes. But I just don't

employment in the same or substantially similar positions in the regional district. But what I'm saying is they would not be guaranteed what the position was that they had. They would be offered. So in other words, they would they're not guaranteed what they're doing today. So my concern with that is we would lose a lot of good teachers because they'd be concerned of No, but that's not that's not necessarily true. Okay. And quite frankly, you don't do that now. You're you're contemplating layoffs at the school department. So teachers are going to come back to different jobs potentially. I mean, that's that's just part of school districts and changing the configur configuration of the staff and seniority and collective bargaining. It it really is no different. I I just Okay.

But I just don't I want to just make sure it's clear. I I didn't write that people are going to have to reapply for their jobs. That that was not my response. Um I apologize. I wasn't trying to start anything. I I read that but when this right now the unions the collective bargaining groups have contracts with with you and the and the Newport school committee. Those those agreements are going to end and there's they're going to have to negotiate a new agreement with a new B body that's authorized to enter into those agreements. So, um, that that is the process and they'll do that under the federal statutes, the state statutes, as well as the the regulations that have been adopted by the Rhode Island Labor Board. And it's no different than what they do now.

Um, it just would be different in the sense that those those those agreements will expire and they'll there'll be some new bargaining group that the the regional school district will have to engage with, right? So I I would just say I think it is different because now you're going to take a group of two teachers unions together and I'm not sure what the differential if there's a differential. I think there is. There is. But I'd say it's very likely whoever is lacking in salary when the new district comes out. Yeah. But that's that's that's in the weeds. That's fact. That's probably how it's going.

But I'm talking about Peter. I'm talking about the negotiations. When a contract expires, you renegotiate. That's all I was saying. Whatever changes in the contract changes in the contract. I'm just being respectful. I'm just asking my question is that automatically, in my opinion, because that's behind me. I mean, if we're paying our teachers at a lower rate and we're lucky because I think the vast majority of them are great, that's going to change. Even if we got like a 1.6 six million a year savings in the bond coming back. If you look just at the numbers, and I know it's not that easy to just do it that way, there's going to be a big shift in cost to us. I believe that's what I'm seeing coming. So, I just want to put that out there.

That's why I'm asking about the financial study. Understood. But but that's that's that's an unknown right now. But are we going to investigate that? It has to be. That's that's a negotiation like any other negotiation.

Okay. Because I think that's important. I think taxpayers will want to know what's our fiscal responsibility for this. What is it going to cost us? I understand the bond and I mean the reimbursements and all of that, but okay, you bring the reimbursements in and then you look at the increase in costs because the costs aren't going to be different. I mean, somebody was saying that over there that the costs aren't going to change. You're still going to have potentially the same number of teachers, the same number of students. Then those things are are and facilities. So those things are are unknown. But what but what's going to change is salaries, benefits, wherever the higher benefit is going to be, that's where it's going to go. So there is going to be a cost factor no matter how you look at it. And I think that we just can't look at saying, "Oh, here's our reimbursement." Well, how much of that reimbursement is actually going to be leftover cash flow and where's it going to go?

That that would be part of the financial modeling that's done is that would be part of the analysis. It's not just going to be on reimbursement. would be with regard to what's the what's the ongoing cost of for the town per what's that who's going to do that are we going to hire a financial I'm not I'm I'm sure you can model it I'm not sure you're going to come up with an exact figure no a guesstimate because because again that's negotiations and that's a decision that we're not going to make talking about overall I I understand that cost factor to do this I understand that it's cost savings versus versus where we're today. Are we going to have do something like that as a commission?

Well, you're talking specifically, Teresa, about the contracts. And so, we can't answer that question. But what about overall financials? Have you is the town going to Sean had mentioned something about a consultant? Dennis had said something. Are we going to consider bringing in somebody to do a cost analysis? We're going to have to at some point in time. Okay. So then that is the other question is if this is a deadline and we're looking at saying this at some point, are we really going to try to follow this tight schedule or are we just going to say there is no schedule? I'm not sure if you're not clear on that, but there's no schedule. That one that Sean outlined was just based on discussion from a December meeting. Okay. Um there is no timeline. Okay.

Yes, Greg. Well, one of the easy things I think to do is look at that difference of cost per pupil and and investigate that and say, "Why is Newport $8,000 more than Middletown?" And that may give you some of the answers. Yeah. Well, that's pretty easy to figure out. I'd like to ask if if a We're going to get D. We're going to get to some of the residents. some of the folks that have questions.

Just if a if a if a contract and not necessarily with teachers but with all unions, any contracts that hypothetically a regionalization uh question passes and there's an established date that the new district begins, but a contract extends into that date. How does that how do you deal with that? How do you deal with a contract that extends into the date? Do you have you have to set a re renegotiation or for any not just teachers but any right any labor agreement

can but to me that seems like a such

use the mic they would negotiate mic negotiate a new contract during the transition period to the new regional committee. Yes. Okay. Let's get to some of the folks. Um that gentleman here up in the back had his hand up first. So you're going to need you're going to need a Do we have a microphone? No. But so it's a resident. It's being taped. Name.

All right. So some of the um name Yep. Just do you need my address too? No, no hate mail. Uh Justin Buffman, 31 Evelyn Circle, Middletown, Rhode Island. Um so some of the questions, it seems like one of the overarching themes is about this compo composition of the regional school district. And I'm just curious because what's written on page 10 underneath question 13 seems to be different than what was shared and stated about how that composition would be made. Underneath question 13, it says that the all candidates running for the regional school district would run district-wide, meaning both communities. top three vote getters from Newport, top three vote getters from Middletown would would make it to the committee. The seventh member of the committee would be the next highest vote getter from the entire unified district. So that my I guess my confusion is does that why would that not mean let's say there was a candidate from Middletown who had the next seventh highest overall total. Why would they not be the seventh member of the committee? That's that's my first question. My second question is it says here afterwards each member has one vote, but then we're saying afterwards that these votes are not one vote. they're sort of weighted. But so this an the the the information provided to this document seems to contradict what's being shared and I feel like that's maybe causing okay

some misinformation. I can answer that cuz once again um

there I think the issue with regard to the seventh member of the committee. There was an assumption that some folks were making based on the fact that there were more voters in Newport than in Middletown that it was more likely than not that the seventh member of the committee that would be someone from Newport. Okay, that's not necessarily the case. Um secondly, the way of the legislation is it's one vote per member. What I had said was um and this was based on a discussion someone had raised. Gee, there are some places in Massachusetts where two communities in a regional district have different populations but they have the same number of members. Well, in those districts because once again you have to have the one person one vote. The votes of members in one of the communities are weighed higher than the votes in the other one. So, it's just a different way of doing it if you want to have an equal number of people. It it sort of all works out the same. Um, but but that I'm sorry for the confusion, but that that's what that discussion was about.

The seven I'm confused now. So, the seventh the seventh highest vote getter, whether it was for Middletown or Newport, would be the seventh seat. Yes. Yeah. Newport's not guaranteed. What was said a little while ago? No. No. It's it's absolutely what was said. It's absolutely what was said.

No, you're you're assuming that because Newport has more population, they have more voters and that they would get seventh person would get more votes. That may not necessarily be the case. Someone from Middletown may have more votes. You know, you know how when it votes sometimes it goes all of a sudden you got the top three or the top five are separate than the bottom two and it might drop off by 300. The same thing could happen in either community. Uh, yes, ma'am. Wendy.

Yes, ma'am. Please come up and and have a seat and or stand whatever you prefer and speak into the mic and your name and address.

Wendy Real, 48 Swan Drive. Um, I'd like I I appreciate Mr. Rodrik's um comments about going slow. I think that's a great great statement. Uh, I also think this is very productive. I I like the fact that it's a large group sharing whether they agree or disagree. I think that's really very constructive. Um, a few things and they're kind of helter skelter. Um, in regards to the 190 school bond that was taken out, in regards to Teresa's comment, the residents didn't have the opportunity to get all of the information for that vote. Case in point, interest rates were questionable at best. There was a lot of information that the residents didn't have to make a clear vote. What concerns me about this is, and it's a hypothetical timeline, but if Newport was able to take advantage of the reimbursement, they're looking at July. This is a lengthy process. The residents need as much information as you all do to make a decision if a vote were to come. Um, we don't need a repeat of the 190 bond lack of information for the residents. That's one concern. Um, okay. [clears throat] So the other one jumping ahead um talking about hiring somebody to be a financial consultant. Where does this money come from? Um we as residents are well aware of a lot of

the bonds that are already outstanding for Middletown. The list is growing. Our debt is huge. So that's a huge question that I have. And then my last question is the reimbursement that goes to the town. Maybe I don't understand this correct and and perhaps you could clarify it for me would be payments need to be made by the towns in order for the reimbursements to start. If that is the case, where does that money come from? Because it sounded like to me there could be a lapse in time before the reimbursements actually start so that towns would have to actually put an outlay of money up front. I'd like to know where that money would be coming from. All of these questions Middletown residents need to know and have the information moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Wendy. Good questions. Don's questions. You want answers tonight? I'm not sure we can. We can probably answer some of those. I think I think the financial uh the financial winning my guess would be and this is just me speaking out loud is that if we get to that point where we need to do the financial um piece of it then I'm sure Sean will identify where that money will come from. I'm not sure there's an answer tonight where where it would come from. The general fund. General fund. Okay. The general fund.

Yeah. General fund. As far as the bond, you want to answer the bond question because I think we laid that out the other night pretty clear.

So, in the year of substantial completion, uh I believe the date is it's either July 5th or 15th, we apply for reimbursement and that starts the reimbursement process from RIDE for the uh the bond construction. Uh so it's it's not dependent on making a bond payment. It's dependent on when you submit the uh notice that you've you've completed the project. So, in fact, Newport did not submit their reim for reimbursement last year. That's so they're I I don't know how they're funding their their debt service payments this year, but they're they're they're waiting to get reimbursement from RIDE. Um for the town there there will be a period of time a difference between when bond payments are are needed to when we would need to make payments on the principal and interest for all of the debt. Um there will be a cash flow difference between when when when we start to see the debt service requirements when we see the reimbursement and and what we'll use is the town's fund balance to make that payment. Then in the subsequent year, Ride would basically there'll be a catch-up payment uh that would have been due for the town. We would repay the the fund balance at that time and and that's uh that's that's we've been looking at that and and that would be reflected in the budget that's submitted on April 1.

Yeah, we talked about that the other night. Um um I think 27 is when we'll have to use I think it's about $4 million of um of general fund. It's about four. Yeah. I mean and then that would be reimbured in 28. It was just kind of a timing issue. Yep. And then and then the reimbursement schedule just continues annually until the bonds are paid off.

Yeah. And Ry and and some people say, well, and it's a great question. It's um because I didn't know this until we did this the last time was you know um what if what if the money is not what if Ride doesn't reimburse us. So since its inception in 1960 Ride has never missed one payment to any any any municipality for reimbursement. That's a fact. You you always say just one thing. This is about 10 things. Go ahead. I'm just kidding. I just want to comment of what Sean just the information I was Sean just provided us.

This is a a perfect example of our organization and our planning process of what this community has done with this kind of bond. We are planning ahead. We're planning for that reimburse for when we're not going to get the money, how the timing is going to be, what are where are the money's going to come from to make that first payment while we have the gap of scheduling. I'm just saying that that is something that Middletown is very thoughtful in the planning process and I and I don't see that happening with our neighbors and I think that is a problem.

So as far as the debt goes Teresa um right so as far as the debt goes um the each municipality if it did go forward responsible for their own own debt service payments. It's not like, hey, we're going to pay for Newport's bond. Um, that's not the case at all. We we're responsible for our 190. They're responsible for their 120 or 130, whatever that number is. That there's no there's no crossing. Nobody's paying each other's debt there. That's something your voters voted upon. That's something their voters our voters voted upon. That's something their voters voted upon. That's that's the liability um of each community uh the responsibility of each community to make that debt payment. As far as ours go, um just a little note, we talked about second of the 190, I think it's 105 million and um besides about 3 to 400,000 of it already, it's all of it's already built into the to the to the tax rate.

The other question, no, the other question that that that this um lovely lady asked was who would pay for the fiscal um study? Correct. you asked that question and so I think that's fair to thank you for us to get the you just answer that the general fund yeah for us to get those answers we need to make sure sources of information provided to us so that would if we get that far that would be a cost we would need to incur and that would come out of the general fund Don

Don Mo 549 Turner Road um I'm actually the person that the town solicitor referenced when he talked about equal representation from towns. But anyway, um no, Don Don came from a school regional school board in in Massachusetts that it was on.

So, um and I've highlighted [clears throat] this a couple of times in the past. You know, two of my main concerns are one, Newport's resolution does call out May 31st. So, when you do try to reconcile the two resolutions between the two municipalities, you got to remove the timeline if if we're serious about doing this right. The second one is really about the governance and I've had this conversation with a town solicitor before. Um the equal equal protection clause right from the 14th amendment one person one vote. So that was based on equal representation in government when you're trying to elect members of the house of representatives because we wanted to make sure the districts are equally represented. Um Supreme Court has typically found that states use total population. So in this case for the regional school district they're referencing total population to decide the membership of the regional school committee. However the Supreme Court has also found that states are not compelled to use this. They have used voting age populations, registered voters and other parameters to try to determine the size of the electorate. For regional school committee when you think about it they're making school decisions. They're not making roads. They're not making beaches, right? They're not making decisions about um waste disposal. They're talking about the school children. Okay. So, from my standpoint, I think we should look at the student population when we try to aortion the representative of the regional school committee. Um I would I would petition the general assembly and see if there was any appetite for that. When you think about it, if you look at the population today, it's around 1,800ish for each of the two towns, right? It's pretty pretty equal. Middletown's a little higher right now. So, let's just take the example that let's instead of 3600, let's just for easy math, let's

say it's 3,500 students and we have seven representatives, okay? They each represent about 500 students because that's the decisions they're making. It's policies around education. If you have an election, and again, it's all around the premise that Newport has 25,000 voters, Middletown only has 17,000, the likelihood of Middletown having four is less. It's it it could happen, don't get me wrong, but it's less likely. So you'll have a seven member board, four of them likely from Newport who will represent 2,000 students and the Middletown three reps will represent 1,500 students when we have an equal representation of student population. That's my major concern. Governance to me is the most important thing to get right. This committee can look at education all they want. If you don't spend enough time on governance, this thing is going to fail. We need to make sure we spend a lot of time on how to set this regional district up. And I did come from a regional school district that had three on each side. It forced us to work together. We could never have, you know, one one town make the decisions because we had equal votes with equal student populations. I think there's an argument to recommend equal representation on the regional school district. Just my opinion. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Don. But you said that wasn't an option, right? It's constitution. Uh basing it on the student population, I don't think addresses the issue that Don had mentioned under the equal to protection clause uh of one person, one vote, but certainly we'll we'll take a look at it. Um let is the same. It is the same. We just happen to have equal representation and it forced us to work. That's all. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, no, not at all. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

Terry Flynn, 34 Warren Avenue. Two points this evening. Um, the listener to this meeting should be aware that there is a Rhode Island definition of true regionalization. It is when two districts merge into one. But let's call it what this is and what it was in October of 2022. It's school administration regionalization and not a stereotypic regionalization where all students are together and integrated in school. Second point is when Middletown was promoting the for voters to approve the school bond for $190 million for new schools in Middletown. Middletown didn't talk about education changing or declining student population. When Middletown was promoting the school bond for a cost of $2 a day only, Middletown did not promote a cost of $2 a day plus a regionalization. Middletown did not promote finances were going to be an issue. Just said $2 a day. If Middletown is saying that finances are an issue, either the public was misled about the school bond or Middletown did not plan properly and has failed Middletown residents. Thank you,

Terry. Just for your information, it's actually under $2 a day right now. I'd like to see those numbers. We'll get them to you. Excellent. Excellent. I didn't know I had more for one question. I didn't know I should have done them all at one time. [laughter] That's okay. Come on up, Justin. Come on up. Be quick. [clears throat] No, take your time.

Do I have to re say my I'm still Justin Buffman 31 circle. Um yeah, you know. Yeah. Um so some of the again a lot of the discussion today seems to have been going over like this idea that once we regionalize that students that maybe live in Middletown don't get to go to Middletown schools and or vice versa. So, um, I'm looking at question 48 on page 36, and it it talks about how under the regionalization structure when you begin, all students stay in their current buildings for that at least that school year. It also says that I guess if we were to vote regionalization while this whole thing is taking effect, it takes a few years for those contracts to run out and for all the machinations to take place to truly get to be fully regionalized. So the students would presumably I guess my question is until that moment are they presumably still in their like town defined school buildings. That's that's

so when we regionalize it's it's a regionalized school district and the decisions are made by the regional school committee. I guess it says that if the voter once it happens there's no middle town in Newport. The buildings Yep. get turned over to the regional school district. There's no Middletown buildings or Newport buildings. They they are under the control of that that school committee.

Right. So I guess my question is though that it says prior to regionalization report likewise assume that existing facility facilities would continue to operate with any future changes to grade alignment program location or building use determined through strategic planning by the regional school committee. But I guess the question is when the thing when everything is first starting even if this passes that you have a superintendent managing multiple bargaining units because those contracts haven't expired and you have um buildings therefore operating sort of even though we're regionalized sort of still independently in a in a sense when the vote to regionalize

happens if it's approved I guess when does that regional school board really take charge of everything? Is it is it that fall or is it when the contracts run out? Like when does that sort of start? It it's approximately a year and a half. So for example, if and and not to say cuz if if you had a vote this November, there would be a transition period where the regional school committee would take control in June and I think June 30th of 28. Okay.

So roughly a year and a half. Okay. Afterwards, in the interim, the two uh community school committees would continue to operate. But one of the things you would do within that year and a half roughly period of time is to negotiate right new contracts between the regional district

and all of those collective bargaining units which would be effective as of that rough once again roughly a year and a half after during that transition. Okay, which ties into my last question, which is question 49 on pages 36 and 37 that talks about the individual star ratings because that was something else that was mentioned that there was a seemed to be a large concern that the three and four star schools in this community versus the one and two star schools in the other that a regionalized district as long as those buildings are continue to operate independently, each building retains their star rating. So if you live in Middletown and your kids are going to Middletown in that first year and a half, maybe possibly longer, that those buildings, if they continue to operate the way they are, they would still be these three and four star schools and the other ones would potentially, if nothing changes, stay those. But isn't the idea that if you regionalize and you look at these ideas about what are transferable um programs or ideologies that the things that are working in Middletown would help those other schools increase their star ratings and vice versa. Like if there's things being done well in Newport that those ideas and ideologies would be transferable to help the schools in Middletown. Therefore, it's a rising tide where all boats go up. I mean, I know it's theoretical and everything, but my I guess my question with that star rating is what does it actually do? Um, does it affect funding? Does it affect anything? Because the only thing that seems to would change would be your overall district rating because it's an average of all the buildings in the district. And so, if you have, you know, the the five buildings here and the three buildings there, when you go together, that's eight. So, your overall rating would be impacted. But what does that rating do? Does it affect financial aid? Does it affect state aid whether it's federal level or whatever? I I guess that's the question um to be to be worried about.

Right. Can I just say that I don't Can we hang on? Are we going to answer that question? Hang on. Are we going to answer that question? Because I don't know the answer to that question. So there's no, as far as I know, there's no financial impact on that. But what it does mean is that when you have people moving into a district like we have a military base here. Yeah. They look at which school district do I want to go to and which school and so that's where it has an impact and it's a report card. It's so it's a it's performance ratings. Yeah.

It's in the seats which we get our reimbursements and our money. So as a military family I hear all the times I want my kids to go XYZ. They want to go to port. They want to go to the east. They want to go where those Barington those school ratings they see that on their report cards. That's where they want to go. So it would bring the rating down for the district. We'll make choices about where they live based on if they have kids in school based on those ratings. The more we have in those seats, the more money we get. Impact eight. Exactly. Impact,

not only the federal money, but just in general stating, you know, it's through that door that our our enrollment is where Okay, that's important. Uh, yes, Mr. Varis, thank you for being patient. Huh? A doctor, a patient. He's got jokes. Hey, Mr. Avers. Hey, three minutes. Three minutes. No, I'm just kidding. [clears throat] I know you got the three minute rule on uh before, but go ahead, sir.

And over 45 uh a lot of talk, but my primary is the uh draw back on taxes. The primary drawback for taxpayers in a regional school system often involves the redistribution of local property taxes, the potential for higher initial cost, and a perceived loss of local control over how their tax dollars are spent. A key downside for taxpayers is the redistribution of property taxes. School funding heavily relies on local property taxes. In a regional school system, property tax revenue from a wealthier constituent town may be used to sub support the entire or part of the district potentially leading to a higher tax taxes or a less direct benefit for the re residents of that specific area with high property values. initial cost and visualization often requires uh significant upfront investments. Merging different systems and the cost of initial studies. These initial costs can place a new or unexpected burden on taxpayers across all member communities. Ballooning operating expenses. Uh regional districts can experience increased operating costs due to expenses such as salary equalization, the need to bring all employee salaries across the new larger district up to the highest previous level. Transportation managing transportation is a large geographical area and increases expenses. During the the during a meeting at the previous regionalization attempt in Newport, council president

Paul Rodri had mentioned that at the last attempt it would increase transportation cost by $20 million. Bureaucracy expenses create a larger administrative administrative cost and may increase administrative cost for taxpayers and residents in in individual towns may feel they lost direct accountability and influence over school board decisions, budget allocations and educational programs. The decisions are made by a larger consolidated board which can feel more distance from the immediate communities needs and references. Uh a disconnect between funding and tax bills due to due to a complex state funding formula and equalization method. A discussed a disconnect can be formed between what voters approved for the total school budget and the actual bill tax bill they receive leading to confusion and potential taxpayer dissatisfaction while also promoting promoted for efficiencies. If not man is well, a larger system can suffer from its own inefficiencies or an ability of the administration to grasp the unique need of several different communities. The Naragazit Time on May 20th, 2025 stated, "Regional districts often suffer ballooning costs due to transportation expenses, salary expenses, and realization of expenses." Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. Mr. Lombardi,

Brooklyn 6, Orville Drive, Middletown. Um, I want to start out first of all by commending every single one of you here. Um, this should have been done a long time ago. You guys should have been in the same room a long time ago. You would have already had some answers to your questions. But I will say this and we had educators in the room. What you've done tonight, this exercise tonight is a shining example in what a representative democracy is supposed to be. [snorts] You're exchanging ideas. You're exchanging uh your feelings and how you feel about this um about this issue. But this is civics's education 101 tonight. Seriously, it really is. But here's what I'm going to encourage you all to do. And it's it's hard. I sat there for six years. I I get it. Facts and data drive decisions. And what you need to do, what you need to try to do, and it's very difficult to do, is to put your personal feelings about this issue aside. And you need to let the facts and the data drive your decision.

You That's exactly what you need to do. It's not easy. I sat up there and some nights I held my nose when I voted. I saw

and I always felt like, you know, you saw me. But but the bottom line is you always if you're there for the right reason, you're doing what's best for the town of Middletown and in this case, what's best for our students. And by the way, don't lose sight of the students in Newport either because they're as important as our kids at the end of the day. So, all I'm going to say to you is get all the facts and data, put it out there, and you want to have a poll. You want to have a poll. I'm going to tell you where the poll should be. You get the facts. You get the data as much as you possibly can. And then at some point in time, you put all those facts and data out in front of the citizens of the town of Middletown to the voters of the town of Middletown. You put it on the ballot and there's your poll. You want to pull the citizens, let them, that's how you pull them. That's how you get their opinion. Give them all the facts and the data. I will tell you that if there was a mistake made in the past, we didn't have all the facts and the data. End of story. End of the day. I think you all know that. I think we've all admitted that at one time or another. So, I encourage you all I I really am happy to see this. This is really a good exercise. Um there are people here who I've disagreeed with in the past and you know fundamentally but we've always been civil and and again civil discourse right this is a good thing. So I I want to commend you all and uh you know keep keep moving forward and at some point uh it'll all wash out whether you do it or not. One way or another, you're going to get your answers and the voters, the voters of the town and the voters of the city of Newport will decide what they want and then you have to honor that decision.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rick. Well said. Okay. So, what I think we should do is um I think we um you know, we obviously got to get the resolution right. uh we have to you know continue to gather the facts but I would like at some point in time to have another meeting like this as these facts evolve because I think it's important um rather long opinion agree or disagree uh I I I agree with Rick. I think what happened here tonight was um a good display of uh working together um trying to figure this thing out. No matter what your perspective on it is, I think we gather the facts and uh we'll make decisions as we go. So unless anybody else has any of the I knew I could see that mind turning. Go right ahead, ma'am. Um when there was a very good question about the timeline. So if this was voted on and the voters approve it, my question is when would the election be for these? Because you can't have that all at the same time. You have to approve it first. The voters would have to approve the regionalization process and then we would have an election for school board members. Am I correct on that? This is just based on the gentleman's question. That's why I was asking that. So during that window of time, it would be the towns would be organizing this, then the school board would be elected, and then I think that that would help answer the questions of when would these things start to happen. I know contracts would have to run out and that kind of nature, but that's when things would actually be implemented. Am I correct on that?

Correct. It's it's essentially a year and a half from let's say a question is approved and there would be election special election. Yeah. I can't recall it's in it's in the draft legislation. Not trying to create work. I just No, we'll get you that answer. It's a quick question because that No, it's a good question. That gentleman was brought that up and I thought

it's a good question. I would just like to thank the school committee. Um I know right now and maybe it'll remain the same that we're uh um I respect your opinion, your position. Um so I appreciate you coming to the table and I appreciate you coming working continuing to work with everyone work together uh regardless of our positions and um I think that's important. I want to say thank you for that. We appreciate that. Okay. Okay. Yes, sir. Thank the council for uh setting this up and meeting with us. Yeah, Greg, thank you and your leadership. Okay. All right. Motion to adjourn. All in favor? I.

Motion to adjourn the school committee meeting. All in favor? Any opposed? School committee is adjourned.