Unon members and residents packed a North Kingstown School Committee meeting.
About 300 people packed the North Kingstown High School auditorium for the school committee meeting, many of whom planned to address committee members about their decision to outsource custodians’ jobs to an out-of-state company.
And if you think they were upset at the beginning of the meeting when Dick Welch made a motion to move public comment to the end of the agenda, you should have heard them when the committee closed the meeting without letting the people have their say.
“Shame on you, shame on you,” chanted the crowd, filled with both local residents and union members from around the state.
School committee member Don Boscardin said they adjourned because the crowd was getting too rowdy. Welch declined to comment to RI Future.
Throughout the meeting, members bickered with each other over issues as small as how much toilet paper should be purchased for the next fiscal year.
Committee members Bill Mudge and Melvoid Benson played to the crowd by stalling the meeting with a myriad of mundane questions. School staff and Committee President Kim Page responded by talking down to them and sometimes cutting them short.
Mudge said in an email earlier in the day that the other committee members have frozen he and Benson out of the negotiating process. During the meeting, he threatened to reveal discussions from executive session.
“For the record, I was never advised by phone, e-mail or while I speaking with Mrs. Berglund and/or Mrs. Benson that a negotiations meeting had been convened and was underway in the superintendent’s office between ESP Union officials, Dr. Auger and School Committee Members Mrs. Page, Mr. Ceresi, Mr. Boscardin, and Mrs. Avanzato,” he wrote.
Earlier in the day, the union agreed to return to work on Wednesday, according to Judge Brian Stern, who was hearing a request for an injunction to end the work stoppage. In exchange, the school department agreed to continue working towards a resolution with the union.
The school committee still has some 30 days to nullify its contract with the out-of-state company hired to clean the public schools, though union officials expressed doubt that an agreement could be reached outside of a court decision. There are still some grievances and unfair labor practice complaints that could reverse the decision.
The Projo reports what I think is at least part of the same event with radically skewed numbers:
news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2012/08/unions-rally-at.html
Carrying signs that said “We are one; respect our rights” and “Economic violence,” about 150 teachers and members of other unions turned out Tuesday night to support the school district’s Education Support Professionals.
Larry Purtill, president of the National Education Association Rhode Island, stood on a bench outside North Kingstown High School “to thank the ESP local for the action they took today, which was unprecedented” to strike about the school committee’s outsourcing of support jobs. Providence Journal video by Kris Craig
Not sure from this account whether they turned out at the school committee meeting. Why are the details of the ProJo account so vague, relative to RIFuture??? Hm??
First they came for the custodians…………..
“School staff and Committee President Kim Page responded by talking down to them and sometimes cutting them short.”
I always wonder at the intransigence of these small-town officials. Why do they show such extreme contempt for their neighbours–and not ‘neighbours’ in the general, figurative, Christian sense, but their actual neighbours, the people who live near them?
It’s weird. It’s like watching someone go crazy–like schizophrenic crazy, like ‘here come the UFOs!’ crazy–right in front of you.
You forgot this part:
“Committee members Bill Mudge and Melvoid Benson played to the crowd by stalling the meeting with a myriad of mundane questions.”
I’m sure both sides are very frustrated which leads to bad behavior on both sides.
well, now that they screwed the custodians over, who’s next? I say fire the bus monitors, At $33..00 a day/they’re putting a HUGE drag on the NK town budget. Just think: If they were fired, the athletic department could get artificial grass for the football field, a much needed commodity in today’s fancy, Frilly, gotta-have-a-gimmick world.
We have settled for acting like colonized people in our native land.
Is it good manners or cluelessness that guides this thinking?
Are we starting to see patterns here statewide?
Can these people be turned back peacefully and legally?
(Are we allowed to think that far ahead yet?)