Cumberland officials want ability to cap charters Panel supports resolution to give town power to limit charter school enrollment

CUMBERLAND – As the clock ticked past 11:30 on Wednesday night, the Cumberland Town Council approved a resolution it hopes will lead to the town having more say in the future of charter school expansion.

Town Council and School Committee members said that the resolution is not intended to remove any students currently in charter schools or to request a specific cap.

“This is intended to give you the ability to control it, not the obligation to control it,” said School Committee member Steve Hess. He added, “There are no set numbers in here. We’re just simply saying, rather than having Smith Hill decide how many people should attend, maybe Broad Street should have some say in it.”

The Town Council passed the resolution 5-1, with Councilor E. Craig Dwyer opposed and Jim Metivier absent. It “asks the Rhode Island General Assembly to pass legislation allowing all municipalities, or at least the Town of Cumberland, to set the number or percentage of the municipalities’ students who are permitted to attend charter or nontraditional public schools.”

School Committee Chair Raymond Salvatore said state representatives Mia Ackerman and Alex Marszalkowski will deliver the resolution to Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello.

For some of those in favor of the resolution, their support was primarily about the impact they say charter schools have on funding for traditional public schools.

The resolution asserts, “The impact of tuition paid to the Blackstone Valley Prep Academy, a Mayoral Academy located in the Town of Cumberland, and tuition paid to other charter and nontraditional public schools, creates an annual budget shortfall.”

Budget issues also stem from rising health care claims.

Charter school tuitions have grown from $125,000 in 2008 to $3.4 million this year, according to Salvatore. Per the state funding formula, state and local funding for charter schools follows the student.

Salvatore took his case for the resolution beyond funding alone by asserting, “Cumberland does not need a second school system in this town.” He voiced the opinion that charter schools are “not offering any more of a competitive advantage than we’re doing.”

Many parents do not feel this way.

“BVP students that reside in Cumberland have chosen BVP as their public school,” spokesperson Jen LoPiccolo said in an email. “This year alone, we had 242 Cumberland residents apply to the lottery to attend BVP next year, which is 36 more than we had for this year, but our approved growth only allowed us to accept 59 of them.”

In opposing the resolution, Dwyer argued that having an alternative “actually helps spur on the Cumberland system.” He also voiced the opinion that this resolution drives another wedge between pro-char- ter and anti-charter factions in the state.

Salvatore brought up that Dwyer works for Lt. Gov. Dan McKee, who spearheaded the creation of Rhode Island Mayoral Academies when he was mayor of Cumberland. Dwyer took exception to this point, noting that he works on health and veterans issues in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, not education.

While the Town Council was voting on a resolution titled, “Requesting the General Assembly Limit the Expansion of Charter Schools,” both Dwyer and Salvatore were uncertain about BVP’s current plans for future expansion.

Some of BVP’s schools are not yet at grade level, considering new schools have opened as recently as 2015 and 2016.

Elementary School 1 and Elementary School 2 serve students in grades K- 4, while Middle School 1 is 58. The other schools are not yet at scale: the high school has students in grades 9-11, Elementary School 3 has kindergartners and firstgraders, and Middle School 2 opened in the fall with 83 fifth-graders.

BVP plans to open a third middle school. LoPiccolo said there is no timeline yet for its opening but that it will be 2020-21 at the latest. Current enrollment across BVP schools is 1,588, and once at scale with seven schools, it will be just over 2,000, she said.

This fall, the high school is relocating to a new facility under construction at 15 Jones St. in Cumberland, a move coming as a result of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s decision not to renew BVP’s lease at St. Joan of Arc.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, Cumberland High School student Alexandria Evers – a regular voice at recent Town Council meetings – addressed the Council to suggest that putting forward the resolution could “fuel the fire” for changing the funding formula.

Councilor Tom Kane noted of the resolution, “We’re only looking to have a say in the conversation instead of just allowing the way it’s currently grown to keeping growing and growing and growing without us having any type of voice in the conversation to say, ‘We need to slow down because the finances aren’t working for the town.’”

The Town Council passed the resolution presented to them without any amendments, but it was a sharp departure from the resolution that originally came before the School Committee on April 13.

The resolution initially asked the General Assembly, in part, “to pass legislation limiting the further expansion or increase in enrollment of the Blackstone Academy Prep Mayoral Academy (sic) or any other charter or nontraditional public school located in the Town of Cumberland.”

School Committee member Mark Fiorillo proposed the amendment changing the resolution to its current form, and it passed the School Committee unanimously before coming before the Town Council.