Soucy wrong about School Committee

To the Editor,

Mr. David Soucy, in his February 8th letter to the editor, asked the following question: “I may be missing something, but doesn’t the mayor of the City of Woonsocket have the right to propose who he or she wants on the School Board?”

The simple answer to Mr. Soucy’s question is yes, the mayor indeed may nominate whomever she wishes. The practical, constructive answer to that question, however, is that the mayor should nominate individuals that will have the necessary support of the majority charged with making the appointment. Anything else is nothing more than a farce and a political charade.

Pursuant to the city charter, the school committee “shall be appointed by the mayor with approval of the city council.” The key word is “with” – as in “together with.” It is by design a group effort. The charter’s language purposely demands and forces compromise, collaboration and consensus – simple concepts that have proven time and again to be foreign to our current mayor.

The appointing language specifically seeks to ensure that no one individual controls the appointments to the City’s most important committee. To that end, an appointment requires at least five people to be supportive of a nominee – the mayor and at least four members of the council (assuming there are seven council members participating).

Prior to putting forth a nominee, a rational, constructive and collaborative mayor would ensure that their nominee had the necessary support to move forward. However, a mayor simply interested in unproductive political nonsense would instead place names on Council dockets without any prior discussion or collaboration with the individuals who ultimately have the approval authority.

In short, I would suggest Mr. Soucy’s question was the wrong question. He should instead ask the mayor why she has not put forth Mr. Donald Burke, who has the best attendance record among members, who has shown quiet but unwavering resolve and commitment to the betterment of the community’s education system, who by all accounts has done a fabulous job in his three short years on the committee thus garnering near universal support throughout the community and who has the unanimous support of the folks vested with approval authority. He should ask why the mayor didn’t have the courtesy or class to notify Mr. Burke that she was not putting forth his name for reappointment, but instead allowed him to learn of his fate upon seeing another individ- ual’s name on the appointing resolution. Surely, he earned and deserved better – unless of course, you are consumed with petty dysfunctional politics. Mr. Soucy should ask why the mayor was offended by Mr. Burke informing her, in response to her query, that the mayor does not have a vote on the education department’s budget. If the mayor was at all familiar with Title 16 of the Rhode Island General Laws, she would know that Mr. Burke was one-hundred percent correct – the mayor does not have a vote on the education department’s budget. Most importantly, he should ask why it makes any sense to cast aside a proven asset when credible studies have shown that the minimum tenure of high performing school committees is at least six to eight years, when the longest tenured individual on our committee is only half of that.

If he asked those questions, Mr. Soucy would quickly learn that the unfortunate dysfunction and nonsense we see today comes straight from the mayor’s office. Politics is the art of compromise. Sadly, the only politics the mayor practices is petty politics, as even a fool can see.

— James Cournoyer, Woonsocket Cournoyer is a Woonsocket City Council member.