Examining the pros and cons of the proposed Newport-Middletown school district merger
On Tuesday, Nov. 8, Newport and Middletown voters will head to the polls to decide whether to combine their school districts under one administration.
Over the past week, The Newport Daily News sat down with Newport Mayor Jeanne-Marie Napolitano and Middletown Town Council President Paul Rodrigues, who favor regionalization, and the three members of Building Newport’s Future, who oppose the proposal, to understand the arguments for and against the ballot question.
Although talk of combining Newport and Middletown school districts has recirculated for a number of years, the most recent effort began earlier in 2022, when Rodrigues called Napolitano to ask if the city might be interested in regionalizing. Officials and residents from Newport had posed the same question to Middletown in 2019, after Rogers High School was identified by the Rhode Island Department of Education as having the worst building conditions of any school in the state.
Middletown, including Rodrigues, had rejected Newport’s proposal back then, citing Middletown’s relatively less expensive cost estimates to update its own schools. However, Rodrigues said the town had not yet figured out what it was going to do with its aging buildings.
What are the savings that will be realized by regionalization?
This is arguably the point that drove this recent push for regionalization in the first place. Combining school districts gives Middletown a 80% state school housing reimbursement rate for their two proposed school buildings, which are currently estimated to cost around $235 million to build. It would give Newport an additional $46 million in state aid for the new Rogers High School, which broke ground back in June.
Additionally, the two municipalities would receive an increased state aid for other capital expenses. Napolitano and Rodrigues said these kinds of tax savings could mean a lot for relieving the strain on both municipalities' budgets.
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There is some urgency in taking advantage of this financial opportunity, Rodrigues said. Newport has a small window of time through which it could receive that $46 million additional reimbursement for Rogers High School, since it has already started construction, and RIDE has indicated plans to reconsider its reimbursement formula in general.
Napolitano also said a few legislators have suggested they would not support another act in favor of the two districts regionalizing if this one is to fall through.
“They called me about this whole thing, and they were on the fence about voting for it,” Napolitano said. “They said Aquidneck Island, you guys don’t need the money … If we don’t do it and it comes up again at 80%, I doubt severely they’ll vote for it. So that just made me more angry, more willing to get this done and get it done now. We need our foot in the door, and we’ve got to start somewhere.”
Members of Building Newport's Future, which opposes this proposal for regionalization, have argued against this sense of urgency. Since Newport already has committed to the Rogers High School and Pell Elementary project bonds without the additional reimbursement, they said the city has no need to approve this version of regionalization this year and RIDE will still have increased reimbursement rates for regionalized districts in the future, even if it is not the 80% being proposed this time around.
What's the possibility of combining schools in the future?
Despite his rejection of high school unification a few years ago, Rodrigues said he sees school facility consolidation as a part of the regional district’s future.
“If we were in the same situation four years ago, we would be looking at one high school,” Rodrigues said.
Since the new Rogers High School already is under construction, Napolitano and Rodrigues have their eyes on the area’s middle schools. Rodrigues said there could be a possibility of bringing Newport students out of the aging Thompson Middle School building on Broadway and into a new, or expanded, regional middle school, paid for with the increased reimbursement rate from RIDE.
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While that would appeal to Building Newport’s Future, its members argue there is still a lack of interest in consolidating schools among Middletown residents. They pointed to Middletown’s response to unification in 2019 and more recent social media posts from Middletown parents concerned about regionalization as evidence.
Is this form of regionalization nothing more than a financial opportunity?
Newport residents Amy Machado, Kendra Muenter and Aida Neary initially formed the organization “Building Newport’s Future” to support the bond passage for the new Rogers High School and Pell Elementary addition back in 2019. Now, the organization is dedicated to opposing regionalization as it's been proposed, specifically, with zero school building consolidation across the two communities.
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The three had been in favor of regionalizing when the proposal included one combined Middletown-Newport high school, but they consider the most recent push for regionalization rushed and lacking in detail. They are concerned aspects of the regionalization process have been ignored, such as conducting an impact study, and this is nothing more than a financial opportunity.
“They’re calling it regionalization without doing the work to actually regionalize,” Machado said.
Additionally, the Teachers Association of Newport issued a statement in opposition to regionalizing the two school districts.
“TAN does not oppose conversations or initiatives to improve the educational experiences of the students we serve, but the lack of defined outcomes from regionalizing makes the proposal too risky for students in each community,” TAN President Jennifer Hole said in the statement. “The multiple presentations have not produced a plan for how students will be assigned to schools, no plan for how student outcomes will improve, and no plan for the savings realized to be invested back into students.”
There is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the specific educational benefits in regionalization
The lack of solid details surrounding how regionalizing the two districts would transpire and what the educational benefits it might bring has been a key concern mentioned not only by Building Newport’s Future, but by elected officials in both Middletown and Newport.
While the consultants who prepared the regionalization study suggested aligning the two district’s schedules and operations would open program access for students in both communities, they were unable to delve into anything more specific, as that would be the responsibility of the future regional school committee and finance committee.
“It’s a lot of just, cross your fingers and hope that everything will be OK,” said Muenter, a candidate on this year's ballot for Newport School Committee.
There already is a process by which high school students from Middletown and Newport can take classes at the other school. Rodrigues’ son, who attends Middletown High School for most of his classes, takes a bus to get to his automotive class at Newport Area Career and Technical Center, located on the Rogers High School campus.
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Additionally, while both Middletown and Newport have committed to reinvesting some of the money saved through regionalization into the schools via municipal council resolutions, there is little tying the communities to those promises after new council members are elected Tuesday. If regionalization passes, there will also be an entirely new regional school committee elected into office in November 2023.
Despite the lack of solid legislative guardrails keeping new council members on track with promises made before the election, Napolitano and Rodrigues are confident the people who will be elected into office will support reinvesting that money as the current regime.
“People aren’t going to back off of education,” Napolitano said. “They will pass that because it’s the right thing to do. Our schools need that money desperately.”
There are arguments the proposed regionalization is 'separate but unequal'
By putting multiple separate facilities with similar needs under one administration with one group making the financial decisions for both, Building Newport’s Future is concerned whether Newport’s facilities will fall through the cracks as a result.
“No one is really looking at how this will affect our children,” Muenter said. “We have a lot of families who will not be fine. We have a lot of families who are brown and Black families who will be left behind and forgotten.”
“It’s segregation,” Neary said. “Once you have two sets of buildings in the two different communities, you are promoting separate but unequal. It’s what will happen."
Machado recalled the disparity between Newport’s elementary schools before the city consolidated into one large elementary school, Pell Elementary, back in 2013.
“Underwood hardly had any kids of color or anything,” Machado said. “That’s one reason I was a huge proponent of building one single elementary school is that you get rid of segregation and separation.”
With Newport’s larger population of students of color and economically disadvantaged families, the group is concerned more money and resources will be directed into supporting Middletown’s facilities, especially if Middletown achieves the majority in the future regional school financial committee.
However, Napolitano and Rodrigues said there are guardrails in place to prevent that in the proposal, such as the equally representative regional school committee and finance committee and the funding formula, which will divide the funding among buildings on a per pupil basis.
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport-Middletown school district regionalization: The pros and cons
