To the editor:

On Thursday July 14 at 3:45 p.m., the Barrington School Building Committee held a very important meeting regarding its progress in the RIDE Necessity of School Construction Program. The focus of the meeting was a presentation by the consulting firm, Kaestle Boos , to the Building Committee and community members,  regarding various options the school department can take to address challenges they identified in the k-12 schools. This program has caught the attention of the community because 5 out of 6 of the options presented include closing one or two of our neighborhood elementary schools. The building committee will select one of the proposed pathways at its next meeting, just two weeks after this presentation and input from community members, and submit it to the School Committee for a vote. 

I respectfully ask that the School Committee postpone this decision until after the building committee does it’s due diligence on how recently passed House Bill 7943 SubA will affect the Sowams and Nayatt properties once they are no longer used as schools. In the presentation, Kaestle Boos stated that the town of Barrington would decide what to do with the “unused “sites. However, this may not be the case.

In June, state legislatures, including Barrington Rep Jason Knight and Senator Cindy Coyne (Rep Liana Cassar did not cast a vote on this bill), voted to pass legislation that may allow the state Housing Secretary to decide what to do with these properties not the voters in Barrington. The language in Bill 7943 states,

“The department of elementary and secondary education (the “department”) shall, commencing on October 1, 2022, on an annual basis, provide to the speaker of the house, the president of the senate, and the secretary of housing, a list of all school buildings which have been abandoned or are no longer being used by a school district. 

“(d)(1) In the case of a municipality which has less than ten percent (10%) low or moderate income housing as defined in § 45-53-3 the municipality shall provide the department with a complete list of buildings abandoned or no longer being used by the school district for the purposes of conducting a feasibility assessment to repurpose the building as affordable housing.”

Until our community is fully informed regarding what will become of the Sowams and Nayatt property this discussion and vote should be postponed. The people of Barrington deserve all the information before voting on this far-reaching and costly project. The plan to abandon our elementary schools, along with new legislation that removes local control of how to repurpose unused schools, takes decisions that affect our town and puts them in hands of unelected State bureaucrats and legislators from outside Barrington. The full text of the bill can be read here http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText/BillText22/HouseText22/H7943A.pdf

Lisa Daft

Barrington