Fung's Mayoral Academy Op-Ed Draws Heated Response From Lombardi At School Committee Meeting

Last night, School Committee Member Frank Lombardi responded to a recent op-ed by Mayor Allan W. Fung about the mayor's proposed mayoral academy—a charter school proposal that has been met with resistance from school officials.

The mayor's op-ed is attached to this article.  

Below is a transcription of Lombardi's response. 

Frank Lombardi's speech at the School Committee work session on Wednesday night:

It is with great disdain and great anger and great disgust that I had the opportunity today to read an op-ed piece that will appear in this week's Herald entitled “A case for a mayoral academy in Cranston.”

In that article, the Mayor rather than choosing to speak to his school committee and his constituents directly, chose to speak out in an op-ed piece in the Cranston Herald.

He first raises issue of our superintendent’s use of the accolades that he places upon our schools as “high performing” and negates that by saying, but as we all know our ability to “clear the bar depends on how high or low the bar was set in the first place.”

Then he goes on to cite apparent statistics that he has and comes to the conclusion that we can do much better. That’s his quote.

How he  proposes to do much better is by embracing several statewide reforms including welcoming a mayoral academy an innovative type of public charter school, as he refers to it. Interestingly, he ends the op-ed piece as your Mayor and future chairman of the board of that new mayoral charter school.

Well, first of all, I am a lawyer, and  Supt. Nero is a superintendent and he has given 32 years of his life and as an educator in the Cranston Public Schools and everyone knows what he has done for Cranston Schools.

I want to preface this by saying I would never use this stage or this arena as a political campaign piece and I will tell you now, and you can print this, “I am not running for Mayor of Cranston.”

I am doing this out of disgust for what I read today. I must say to you that my disgust culminates from this op-ed piece, but it begins with the utter lack of cooperation we have gotten over the years from City Hall and I’ll say it again, the utter lack of cooperation we have seen from City Hall.

I’m sick and tired of people saying that my taxes are going up because the school system is wearing on our taxes. The fact of the matter remains that over the last 3 years we’ve suffered three substantial tax increases. By my estimations that equates into about 18 to 20 million in revenue generated in taxes. Let me tell you what the school system got from that 18 to 20 million return in revenue. The school system got $1 million two years ago, the school system got $1 million last year. The city will tell you that they gave us that money. I will tell you that was a promise from the Napolitano administration because they promised to sell the police station and they owed us $1 million. That wasn’t given to us, that was from a prior administration.

This year we’ve got $1.6 million from the mayor and an additional $600,000 segregated with the mayor in an account for special education as we need it. So they will pay it, so let’s call it $2.2 million. For purposes of this discussion that $18 to $20 million in tax revenue got us $3 million over 3 years. So, the next time someone tells you that it’s the school system that’s taxing the city of Cranston, you can tell them those are the numbers, those are the facts, I don’t need an op-ed piece to say my peace, I’m telling you straight in the eye.

I’m also troubled by the fact that a lot has been going on. The 6 people here today and the 7 on the school committee work very very hard. Everybody has a strength in a different area. We are volunteers we are elected by you, we answer to you and we are paid not a penny. We spend a lot of hours at a lot of meetings, at a lot of negotiations, at a lot of special events, at a lot of award ceremonies and at a lot of graduations all because we love the Cranston School System.

Among our responsibilities, two of them that were most near and dear to me was a desire to receive a global resolution with the City of Cranston.

I’m not going to reveal to you what was going on, because that’s executive session stuff. I will tell you that I stand poised here to tell you that we were prepared to offer to the city monumental concessions from our unions, particularly our teachers’ union. Monumental concessions, unheard of, concessions that would have made us proud. That would have put us arm in arm on City Hall steps to the rest of Rhode Island to show them what two diverse groups can do at a bargaining table without the need to fight. But that global resolution required the participation of all the parties and as I said to all the folks on the council and people representing the mayor, because the mayor chose not to come, I said that this is much akin to learning how to dance a ballroom dance.

Nothing is contingent upon something. Forget saying the teachers aren’t willing to negotiate because the mayor isn’t willing to do this or transportation is not willing to negotiate because they’re not willing to do this or the secretaries and on and on and on. It was a long hard waltz that we had to put together and I think the media knows that the global resolution basically said that:  This school committee with the work of its school superintendent achieved savings over the last few years in excess of $7 million.

If you don’t believe me, the Superintendent’s memo is right here, people have seen it, and it’s right here. It’s $7.2 million starting with the move of the 6^th grade back to the elementary school and moving forward with the concessions.

The mayor’s own performance, I’m sorry, it’s not a performance audit, if it was an audit it’d be gospel, instead it was an analysis, it became an analysis because by its own terms, by the mayor’s own auditors, they told us that we were actually  $1.4 million ahead of the concessions that we proposed. It wasn’t 3.3 change it was 4.8 change, that’s what they told us. They also told us that we were below the Basic Education Plan by $3.9 million.

I’m not making it up folks, I’m not writing an op-ed piece. This is their auditors that said that. That’s who said it.

And so consequently armed with this audit and armed with the $7.2 million and armed with the fact that $940,000 was not given to us in state aid, which should have been given to us in state aid, which by state law, the RI department of education told us there’s a burden of the city and not the school department. That was included and that brought Mr. Nero’s concessions to $8.1 million that we saved.

We made a pledge to the council, and we recognize all the members of the Council. And I want to say for the record that the Council opened their arms, opened their ears and opened their eyes. It’s the first time since I’ve been on the school committee that we’ve gotten along, that we’ve shown respect for one another, that we trust one another, that we’ve shown respect for each other’s opinions. They listen to us and we listen to them.

We told them, we looked them right in the eye, and said this guy [Nero] has proposed $8.1 million in savings and we seven are going to go back and beat up all our unions. And we’re going to get the concessions from all our unions and our unions are willing to sit with us to do that in good faith and we’re going to get millions more for you.

Based on that, respectful members of the City Council, we ask that you forgive our debt for 3 years.

The problem is, ladies and gentlemen, that we need three groups to do that. We need the School Committee, we need the City Council and we need the Mayor. The Mayor has chosen to say no to us and we can’t do that.

You can call me whatever you want to call me. My plan was really to wipe the slate clean and get rid of this BS and let’s move forward. As the superintendent says, “all I want to do is pay my bills. I don’t care about magic words like maintenance of effort, I don’t care about any of those things, all I want to do is pay my bills.”

We worked long and hard and the mayor chose not to come, he chose not to send his director of administration, he chose to send his lawyer to the meeting and that was it.

We were supposed to get a response and we got a response and the response is no, but he went beyond that, he said no, and he said no with this op-ed piece.

He said to the people of Cranston your children are underperforming and your teachers, if I were a teacher today I would take this as a direct slap in my face. That’s what this is.

He has no faith in the city of Cranston, he has no faith in the city of Cranston School System. Forgive me for getting personal, but it is personal.

And he’s proposing a mayoral academy, well I hope one thing happens in this mayoral academy:  I hope this mayoral academy only takes Cranston kids and I hope it holds 10,000 kids. It says it will provide excellent public school options for many Cranston students, not for all of them, for many.

If I had to put my money on the line, my money is going to go with a guy that has given 32 years of experience to the district, 32 years of education. Not someone who has served 4 years on the City Council and served as an attorney for an insurance company.

My money is on the school system.

(Thanks and apologizes to a city/ school staff member who he has worked closely with on the global resolution)

This is a personal affront to me, to my school committee and to the students and teachers of the city of Cranston.

I can only think this is maybe a portends of seeking higher office, I don’t know what it is. But, it’s awful, it’s upsetting and it’s troubling to me. I thank you for just listening to me.

Andrea Iannazzi, School Committee Chairwoman's comments before Lombardi's speech:

"For those of you who have not seen it, Mayor Fung saw fit, instead of communicating to the School Committee, communicated [in an op-ed] and released a letter to the editor today. I am too upset, disillusioned and disappointed in the Mayor to comment."