School officials rail against charter proposal

WOONSOCKET – The School Committee railed against the proposed Nuestro Mundo charter school Wednesday, voting 5-0 to send a letter of opposition to the dual-language immersion school to the media and the Rhode Island Department of Education.

The adverse financial impact of the city’s fourth charter school on the Woonsocket Education Department’s traditional public schools was the leading reason school board members gave for protesting Nuestro Mundo. Others said the school will have to be unfairly selective to reach its target population – Spanish-speaking students for whom English is a second language – ignoring the district’s most challenging special needs students.

“It’s clear that this charter will not be prepared to reach special education students,” said School Committeewoman Lynn Kapiskas, who has long been active with the Special Education Local Advisory Committee.

Nuestro Mundo would grow slowly over a period of roughly five years, but even by 2026, when the full student body reaches a projected 414 students, Kapiskas said it would only budget about $50,000 for occupational and physical therapy and a speech pathologist. There’s no way those dollars could stretch to reach more than a quarter of its student body – which is roughly the proportion of students in the traditional public school system who have an individualized education plan, or IEP. Thus, Kapiskas said the only plan Nuestro Mundo could have for dealing with with an IEP population would be to send them back to the public school district.

While members voiced several reasons for opposing Nuestro Mundo, all voted to back a letter penned by School Committee Chairman Paul A. Bourget, whose principal concern is the school’s financial drain on the district.

Like all other charter schools in the district, the letter says, funding for Nuestro Mundo will come from local and state sources.

“Woonsocket’s share will range from $1.5 million in year one to $3.4 million in year five,” Bourget wrote. “Over the five-year period, the school department will pay an estimated total of $3.5 million. In addition, Woonsocket will lose a total of $8.1 million in state aid.”

Already, said Bourget, the WED pays out about $800,000 per year to the existing charter schools in Woonsocket, for which approximately $3.3 million in state aid is budgeted.

“Hasn’t this gone far enough?” the letter says. “Massachusetts has the right idea, as the state recently

declared a moratorium on new charter schools. Shouldn’t Rhode Island follow suit?

Shouldn’t the State of RI declare a moratorium also until a new method of funding is in place that would be fair to all?”

During a phone interview after the meeting, Bourget said that he’s also directed copies of the letter to be distributed to the City Council. He said the council passed an ordinance recently that is intended to compel charter schools to obtain the panel’s approval as a condition of operating in the city. Bourget said he hasn’t spoken to council members about their intentions for Nuestro Mundo, but he wants them to know how the school committee feels about the school.

RIDE has a public hearing scheduled for Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Woonsocket Harris Public Library for the purpose of gathering citizen feedback about Nuestro Mundo’s application for a charter. Bourget said the committee is urging residents to attend in order to “voice non-support” for the new charter school.

According to Nuestro Mundo’s application for a charter, the school hasn’t chosen a location from which to operate yet, but it plans on opening with a kindergarten and Grade 1 in September 2020. It would add roughly a grade per year until it’s a fully-seated K-Grade 8 school,

with about 80 percent of its students from the northern Rhode Island area.

Nuestro Mundo is the brainchild of two leaders of the Mendon-Upton Regional School District in neighboring Massachusetts — Joseph Maruszczak and Kathryn Cardamone. They’re identified as the co-founders of the proposed school in the RIDE application.

Maruszczak is a resident of East Greenwich and presently serves as superintendent of the Mendon-Upton Regional School District. He would become the superintendent of Nuestro Mundo if RIDE approves the application.

Cardomone is a veteran educator who presently serves as Spanish Immersion Coordinator and teacher in the Mendon-Upton Regional School District. She would serve as Nuestro Mundo’s program director, one of its top administrative positions.

According to the papers on file with RIDE, other members of the applicant group are David Niguidula, founder of Idea Consulting of Providence, an educational technology company that created Richer Picture, software used by many schools since 2003 to fulfill the state’s proficiency-based graduation requirements; Amanda Seewald, an educational professional with expertise in dual language immersion; and Olgalexandra Grau, founder of a pre-school in Venezuela who’s been working as a Spanish immersion teacher in Upton public schools for the last seven years.

In the 150-page document, the applicants argue that there is an urgent need in the city for a school that specializes in reaching out to pupils who are learning English as a second language.

“There exists a critical need for establishing this new charter school as there is currently a pressing demand for dual-language programs across the state of Rhode Island,” Nuestro Mundo’s application says. “An acute need exists in the diverse and vibrant city of Woonsocket, which has the fourth-greatest number of English language learners in the state.”

RIDE officials have previously voiced support for adding more charter schools to the city’s education mix. Test results last year showed Woonsocket as the second-worst performing district in Rhode Island for English and literacy. Just 12.5 percent of Woonsocket students in grades 3 through 8 met or exceeded expectations on the Rhode Island Common Assessment (RICAS). Providence public schools, which are in the process of being taken over by the state, showed 13.7 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations, by comparison.

Among the criticism that surfaced against the Nuestro Mundo concept from members of the School Committee, however, is that the curriculum is redundant because public school teachers are already equipped to teach students learning English as a second language. Members also complain that the model is too selective because Spanish isn’t the only first language among many students in the city.

“We have a large portion who speak Polish and Russian,” said Kapiskas. “I think it’s inappropriate to segment the ELL (English Language Learner) population that way. If you’re going to deal with ELL you should deal with ELL across the board.”

Two members were skeptical that Nuestro Mundo will accept all students who seek admission – as do traditional public schools. Charter schools are defined as public schools under state law, and they’re publicly funded, but students are selected at random after their names are entered in a lottery.

School Committee Vice Chairman Donald Burke, who taught in a private school in Massachusetts for many years, said he’s come to believe that “charter schools are becoming more and more like the private schools I was involved with.”

“I’m getting to the point,” he said, “where I can’t believe the taxpayers of Rhode Island have been hoodwinked into the thinking, ‘Okay, let’s pay for private schools.’”

School Committeewoman Eleanor Nadeau said she can’t understand how a lottery-based admission system is fair.

How is it fair, she wondered, to students who don’t win the lottery?

“I don’t call that open public education,” she said. “I’m against anything that hurts the public education system and this certainly hurts public education.”