Chariho School Committee Meeting Update for March 14th 2023

By Cynthia Drummond For BRVCA
March 15th 2023

RICHMOND – School Committee members voted at Tuesday’s meeting to adopt the proposed 2023-24 schools budget. The vote was nine in favor, with one Richmond member, Kathryn Colasante, opposed and Hopkinton member, Polly Hopkins, abstaining.

Richmond member Clay Johnson, a vocal opponent of the budget, did not attend the meeting.

Reached the morning after the vote, School Committee Chair, Catherine Giusti, said she was surprised that committee members who had opposed the budget throughout the process had voted to adopt it. Giusti also noted that she hoped those members would end their efforts to defeat the budget.

“I expressed that if someone voted for the budget at the public meeting last night, but then went out into the public and tried to get the budget defeated, it would be really disingenuous,” she said. “I was surprised at the vote.”

Before voting to adopt the budget, members agreed to add some funds back to the $57 million spending plan.

“We restored about $70,000 back into the budget so that we would not have to make cutes to the transportation,” Giusti said. “And really, what we saw last night is how the routes were going to change and committee members were worried, really, about kids having to walk a longer distance, but also, some of the main road stops made people nervous.”

Giusti added that the committee agreed to cut about $14,000 in funds for the purchase of books, but a motion to further reduce the district’s unassigned fund balance from 2.25% to 2% was defeated.

 More information on the budget, which will be put to a vote on April 4 by residents of the three towns can be found on the Chariho website.

The coalition

Hopkinton is the only Chariho town, so far, to have officially joined the “tri town” coalition promoted by Richmond Town Council member Michael Colasante and more recently, Hopkinton Town Council member, Sharon Davis.

Despite efforts by Colasante and Davis at Tuesday’s meeting to persuade school committee members to name members to the proposed coalition, the committee took no action.

This followed a similar decision by the Charlestown Town Council on Monday to take no action on coalition membership. With the Richmond council yet to decide on whether to join the group, that leaves only one member town, Hopkinton.

Davis described the two previous meetings of the coalition as informal get togethers of town representatives to address common concerns.

Davis told the school committee that leading the coalition’s list of concerns is the need for a “forensic audit management study” of the school district, an idea long touted, but not described in detail.

It should be noted that although the term “forensic audit” does not automatically imply fraud, it differs from a “management study” and is defined by the Corporate Finance Institute as follows:

“A forensic audit is an examination of a company’s financial records to derive evidence which can be used in a court of law or legal proceeding.”

Davis said,

“I will keep trying to move forward on this issue, and look forward to creating an RFP [request for proposals] with the Chariho Director of Finance, once we are sure of obtaining funding,” she said. “My estimate is approximately $75,000.”

Davis said Sen. Elaine Morgan (R-Dist. 34) had been asked to try to raise those funds.    

Another concern of the coalition is unfunded state government mandates, which place unsustainable burdens on the towns.

The third concern is the Chariho teachers’ contract, which the coalition believes is too generous.

Colasante distributed a 14-page document to school committee members, which states the group’s objectives and asks people to submit their opinions.

The name of the group appears to have been changed from “coalition” to “collaboration.”

Colasante told the committee that despite its Republican origins, the group is not political. Colasante said he first brought up a collaboration between the towns and the school committee in January, at the annual Chariho Omnibus Meeting.

“It’s a culture of collaboration and it’s our opportunity, really, to work together to really humanize the process because it’s really not Democrat or Republican,” he said. “I feel that we have an opportunity, looking at the school committee, looking at the make-up now of the Town Councils. I got to know Sharon Davis, I got to know Steve Stokes.

[Stokes, a member of the Charlestown Town Council, attended the first meeting, held at the Dragon Palace restaurant in Richmond. He did not attend the second meeting, which took place at Colasante’s residence.]

Colasante then recounted an analogy, in which he referred to Charlestown.

“Even in Charlestown, if you have a gentleman – this is my analogy – he’s worth $10 million,” he said. “He sees a $10 bill on the sidewalk. Even though that guy could be worth so much money, is he not going to pick up that $10 bill off the sidewalk? So, everybody can benefit by it, even Charlestown can benefit by it.”

Charlestown Town Council President Deborah Carney told the committee that she remembered a tri-own/ school district committee which was formed about 20 years ago.

Those meetings, she said, were posted and public, with both agendas and minutes.

“What bothered me personally was reading in the paper that Charlestown was part of this tri town collaboration, because it had been given a name when I knew nothing about what was being discussed, so I, too, had my own issues with the way this was originally presented because in my mind, it was not what we discussed at the Omnibus meeting.”

Carney said her council had taken no action regarding joining the group, but had drafted a motion to discuss, if a tri town group is eventually formed, unfunded state mandates, and a possible management study.

Richmond councilor and staunch Colasante ally Helen Sheehan said the collaboration was addressing a need.

“Everybody agreed that something needed to be done, but nobody did it,” she said. “So, Mike started this collaboration. So [there was] a little bumbling about getting all the right forms and everything in order. So, I would like you not to throw the baby out with the bath water, because it’s a really good idea.”

Charlestown committee member Andrew McQuaide pointed out that the coalition’s actions to date had not been collaborative.

“You could have met in a public meeting and you chose not to, and that was a choice,” he said. “You could have vetted this publicly and you chose not to, and that was a choice. And when you cherry-pick individuals to participate, that is not how you develop a concentrated effort for collaboration and it’s definitely not how you develop a culture of collaboration. That’s not bumbling. Those are intentional decisions, and it has clearly impacted the ability for us to move forward. With that said, I share the sentiments that many other people have shared which is, let’s try this again and let’s see if we can do this in a public fashion, in a way that truly develops a culture of collaboration.”

Kathryn Colasante moved to elect two school committee members to participate in the coalition, but there was no vote.