No coal in Burke’s stocking
Once ousted, former School Committee vice chairman voted back in
WOONSOCKET — Former School Committee Vice Chairman Donald Burke got an early Christmas present from his colleagues on the panel this week.
In an ironically happy twist to
Burke’s out-and-in tenure as a school committeeman, the newly-elective panel voted Wednesday to make Burke its vice chairman – again. They also picked former vice chairman Paul Bourget to lead the panel as chairman.
For anyone who needs a refresher course on the recent history of the School Committee, it was Burke’s controversial ouster as an appointee of Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt – just about one year ago – that brought the brief era of the appointed School Committee to a screeching halt. After an outcry of support for Burke from
parents, educators and fellow appointees, the City Council scheduled a referendum to abolish the appointive system, making the Nov. 6 election for school committee members the first since 2011.
Burke was one of nine people who ran for one of the five vacancies on the panel in the general election. The winners held their first official meeting on Wednesday.
During that session, Burke was elected vice chairman, and Bourget, chairman, both on a unanimous vote of all members, including Rebecca Capwell, Eleanor Nadeau and Lynn Kapiskas.
“Don Burke did not get a lump of coal this Christmas,” Bourget remarked. “In the blink of an eye one year went by and Don Burke finds himself vice chairman again, and it’s great to have him back.”
Burke, 65, of 59 Edmund St., served on the board as an appointee of Baldelli-Hunt for three years, until mid-December 2017. Of more than 80 meetings that that took place during that period, Burke had a 99 percent attendance rate. While the mayor explained her decision not to reappoint him as a case of seeking alternative personalities with different skill sets, those who rallied to Burke’s defense argued that he displayed a keen interest in the welfare of students and deserved another term.
An educator at Bridgewater Raynham Regional High School in Raynham, Mass., Burke has been a teacher more than four decades. He has also worked as an adjunct professor of English at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.
“My agenda has always been to work for the betterment of the education of the students of Woonsocket,” he said during the campaign. “And as always, I was there to support students and teachers in and out of the classroom.”
After selecting the chairman and vice chairman, the school committee convened in executive session to appoint a negotiating committee to hammer out a new contract with the Woonsocket Teachers Guild. Talks stalled over the issue of wages in August and are continuing under state-supervised mediation.
Prior to the switch back to an elective school committee, jurisdiction for the talks fell under the executive branch, giving the mayor the authority to name the committee members. With the election of a school committee, jurisdiction returned to that panel, thus requiring them to reauthorize the negotiating committee.
A few of the members the panel appointed are the same as those previously selected by the mayor – School Supt. Patrick McGee, Woonsocket Education Department Finance Director Brad Peryea and state-appointed Fiscal Advisor Paul Luba.
A few were sent packing, including lead negotiator Charles Ruggerio, legal counsel for the Providence School District and the son of Senate President Dominick Ruggerio. Also removed from the panel were former Councilman Richard Fagnant and former School Committee Chairman Soren Seale.
New members, Bourget said, include himself, Burke, City Councilman John Ward – finance director of the town of Lincoln who has previously served multiple years on both the council and the school committee – and Sarah Rapport. She is the school committee’s legal counsel and has broad experience in labor law, said Bourget.
Bourget said resolving the impasse between the roughly 650-member WTG and the district is the new committee’s top priority.
“I expect to have it done no later than the first quarter of 2019,” said Bourget. “We’re going to get it done. Work to rule is killing the kids. Teachers had a sickout. Nobody’s happy right now. We’ve got to get these teachers and students back to the school, students to learn, teachers to teach.”