Warwick School Committee took action on multiple financial matters, including the school’s lunch money debt and layoffs of teachers under consideration Tuesday.

The committee approved the layoffs of five teachers, which Human Resources Director Kimberly Ruggieri said were made based on course enrollment and students’ course requests.

“We agree 100% that one layoff is too many for that one person, the human side of us sees that, [Superintendent Lynn] Dambruch and I went around to those that were getting letters and hand-delivered them, spoke to each person directly and explained to them that it’s not about job performance,” Ruggieri said. “At the same time, we are tasked with being fiscally responsible, to staff to the needs of the district, so that’s where we came up with what we did. This isn’t easy for any of us, but it is unfortunately a necessity with the budget situation that we are in.”

Those laid off include three art teachers, a business teacher and a math teacher, according to Warwick Teachers Union president Darlene Netcoh. The business teacher, Netcoh said, is also the only one teaching the subject at Warwick Veterans Memorial Middle School.

Scott Daigle, Vets’ Arts Department’s Content Lead, argued that laying off the teachers took away opportunities from students at Vets that students at Winman Middle School would still have.

“We still have four art teachers at Winman and we still have a business program at Winman but we take it away from the students at Vets,” Daigle said. “We’re creating the haves and the have nots.”

Asked about how the business program at Vets would be supplemented, Assistant Superintendent William McCaffrey, attending the meeting in place of Dambruch, said he would work to make the business classes at the middle school level into a career and technical education program.

“We discussed the other day about bringing CTE to the middle level, as the state is moving in that direction,” McCaffrey said. “That’ll be our focus this summer and into the fall about planning to bring CTE to the middle level and have a program at Warwick Veterans in the future, pending approval by RIDE.”

Doing that, Daigle said, would be a positive step, but also wouldn’t be enough to retain the current business teacher, who he said “wasn’t going to wait around for a maybe.”

The layoffs were approved by a 4-1 vote, with Karen Bachus the lone dissenter.

Construction Updates

The project to build Warwick’s new high schools wasn’t the only major construction project discussed at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to Director of Capital Projects Steve Gothberg, the project to get Oakland Beach Elementary School ready for students to return on time cleared a major hurdle recently.

“The transformer for the new electrical service arrived and was installed late Thursday afternoon,” Gothberg said. “That’s a real win- it’s something we’ve really been worried about.”

The biggest potential remaining hang up, Gothberg said, would be the installation of the building’s hurricane windows, which are scheduled to arrive in mid-August.

That same month, Gothberg said, construction at Holliman Elementary School would begin.

In regards to the Pilgrim and Toll Gate projects, LeftField project manager John Bates said that both will be participating in the Rhode Island Energy Incentive Program, which will make them eligible for up to $1.50 per square foot incentives while making the building more sustainable.

Newly involved with the project are BR+A Consulting Engineers, who will be the commissioning agents for both high schools, making sure that the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are working, as well as Tighe & Bond, who will be both projects’ environmental engineers.

One of the next steps for the schools, according to Bates, will be reviewing schematic design documents with Dimeo to make sure that the estimated costs of the school design are within budget.

“We’re going to be actively engaged in that aligning process over the next several weeks before we submit the schematic design package to RIDE at the end of June.”

Lunch money increase

Non-Instructional Student Services Coordinator Kayla Quirk requested an increase in lunch costs for students for the 2024-25 school year in order to help offset the costs of labor and purchasing food.

The largest raise in prices was 15 cents, with the cost of secondary school breakfast rising from $1.85 to an even $2. Other raises were the elementary school lunch price, which went from $2.75 to $2.85, secondary lunch from $3.25 to $3.35 and milk prices, which will be up from 60 cents to 75 cents.

“It is the only source other than grants that the food service program uses for funding for our program, so it is our only way to enhance the program in any way,” Quirk said.

Committee member David Testa pointed out that increasing the fund while mentioning the city’s lunch debt was somewhat ironic. Warwick’s school lunch debt currently sits at $271,998.86.

Despite these reservations, the increases were approved unanimously.

Other meeting business

The School Committee also approved the curriculums for fourteen different courses- 8th Grade Social Studies, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Intro to Computer and Data Science, Intro to Computer Science 1, Intro to Computer Science 2, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Computer Science A- JAVA, Cyber Security, Intro to Computing and Data Science, Intro to Work Based Learning, Geometry, Pre-Algebra and Printmaking.

School Committee Chair Shaun Galligan closed off the meeting requesting that those who are free to attend next week’s City Council budget hearing, which will be in the City Hall chambers next Monday at 4 p.m.

“Please join us to support education here in Warwick, and hopefully we’ll get full funding,” Galligan said.