Ousted school board member eyes return
Return to elective school committee was sparked by stalemate over appointment of former chairman Donald Burke
WOONSOCKET – There isn’t a trace of gloat in Donald Burke’s voice when he says it.
But the former chairman of the Woonsocket School Committee knows in his gut he’d never be in a position to run for a seat on the panel if Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt had reappointed him when his term was up last December.
The brouhaha over Burke’s ouster from the panel culminated in a citywide referendum on Tuesday in which voters, by a lopsided margin of 1,355397, decided to replace the appointive system of seating members of the school board with elections.
“I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I would run for political office,” says Burke. “I’m not a rabble-rouser. I’m not a loud voice. I’m a laid back guy.”
An English teacher from Massa- chusetts who moved to the city to get married six years ago, Burke, 65, is one of three current and former members of the appointive school committee who are suddenly mounting campaigns to run for the seat on the November ballot following the results of the referendum.
It was the City Council that laid the groundwork for the referendum, after witnessing the groundswell of support that bubbled up for Burke after Baldelli-Hunt refused to reappoint him. Though she wouldn’t return phone calls about the results of the referendum, she previously said her differences with appointees were philosophical and involved the scope of their autonomy to make financial decisions on behalf of the Woonsocket Education Department.
Burke says the mayor’s support for him seems to have eroded around the time his term was due to expire, after he had a conversation with City Solicitor John DeSimone.
“Mr. DeSimone asked me what role does the mayor play with the school committee,” Burke recalled. “My answer was the mayor appoints good individuals and has faith in them but the mayor does not have a vote on the School Committee.
“I think that last statement was my death knell.”
The City Council repeatedly asked Baldelli-Hunt for a resolution reappointing Burke, so the panel could ratify him. Parents, WED employees and colleagues on the School Committee rallied to support Burke, to no avail. Months of stalemate left only four of the School Committee’s five seats filled, prompting the council to finally adopt legislation to schedule the referendum.
The source of his popularity is something of a mystery to Burke, but he has a theory. Quoting filmmaker Woody Allen, who once said, “Ninety-nine percent of life is just showing up,” Burke added, “I show up.”
After landing a spot on the School Committee in 2015, Burke says, he took time out of work to attend performances of the Woonsocket High School band, special assemblies at the elementary schools, and to read stories in class during Reading Week.
“I always show up,” says Burke, a English teacher in the Bridgewater Raynham School District. “I guess people noticed it. Once this great outpouring of support came out I was really touched by it.”
Burke enjoyed his time as an appointive member of the School Committee and never gave a thought to running for the position until recently. As an appointee, he said he felt as though the city had tapped into his experience as an educator, and he felt as though he was performing an honorable public service.
His evolution from appointive to elective hopeful is beginning to seem natural.
“I still want to serve,” he says. “I think I was doing a good job. I want to continue doing the job I was doing. I love being a teacher, because it’s not a job to me. It’s really a vocation. I feel just like I’ll be transferring those feelings to serving the children of the city of Woonsocket.”
Despite the tempest that erupted over his reappointment, Burke still isn’t sure whether voters who cast ballots in favor of restoring School Committee elections cared about the details, or whether their primary concern was something else, like regaining the power of the ballot box in choosing their representatives, or ending a stalemate that left the School Committee’s roster only partly filled.
“Some people had expressed concerns that I was not reappointed – and I’m not talking about a large number of people,” said Burke. More voters, he surmises, opted for the elective School Committee “so they could get their rights back, to be able to elect the School Committee. That makes perfectly good sense to me.”
School Committee Vice Chairman Paul Bourget – who also intends to run for a seat on the panel – agrees, saying there are multiple ways of reading the message voters sent in Tuesday’s referendum.
“They said a few things,” said Bourget. “Obviously, one is we want our vote back. That’s the number one thing.”
But Bourget said there was “a soup” of reasons for the results, including blowback over Burke, the mayor’s controversial efforts to secure unilateral control over Barry Field and opposition to the notion that one person – the mayor – should dictate policy affecting a 6,000-student public school system.
City Council Vice President John Brien – Bourget’s son-in-law and a leading advocate for the return to an elective School Committee – says it’s impossible to divorce the referendum from Baldelli-Hunt’s limited view of the appointees’ role.
“I think to characterize this election as one to be simply about members of the School Committee being appointed or not is wrong,” says Brien. “This was about the mayor and the solicitor’s opinon that (state law) gives them total control over every decision at the education department because it’s an appointed School Committee. The voters felt that’s way too much control and power for any mayor to have.”
In keeping with its view, the administration appointed a group of officials other than the School Committee – the traditional authority – to negotiate a new contract with the Woonsocket Teachers Guild not long ago. It’s an open question whether contract talks will be concluded before the new School Committee is elected in November.
Despite the coming changes, Woonsocket Teachers Guild President Jeffrey Partington is advocating for continued talks with the mayor’s negotiating team. He says it would take a new School Committee too long to get up to speed, putting an unnecessary crimp in talks.
He’s says the WTG should try to negotiate the best deal it can with the existing administrative team, and move on.
But Partington is wholly on board with the new path voters charted in Tuesday’s referendum, which puts the city on track for the first elected school board since 2011. The system was abolished by voters – in a 2012 referendum – called after financial troubles in the WED nearly thrust the city into bankruptcy.
“I think it was a kneejerk reaction back in 2012 and that was because of problems within the school department,” he said. “Our position is we always thought voters were crazy to abdicate their right to choose their representatives. Yesterday I think they might have realized their mistake and decided to reclaim their right to choose their representatives in a democratic society.”
In addition to Bourget and Burke, School Committee Chairman Soren Seale and Lynn Kapiskas, a lawyer who serves as chairwoman of the Special Education Advisory Committee, have all emerged as early candidates for the newly elective School Committee.
The ballot for the general election on Nov. 6 has already been firmed up for other candidates, including those for council, mayor and state lawmakers. Those who aspire to serve on the School Committee will appear on the same ballot, though it will technically be a special election for them.
To secure a spot on the ballot, School Committee candidates must file declaration papers at the Board of Canvassers, Aug. 22-23. Nomination forms will be distributed by the board on Aug. 29, and candidates must return them, with 100 signatures of qualified voters, no later than Sept. 4.
If more than 10 candidates qualify to run for the five vacancies on the board, a primary will be held on Oct. 2.