on 07-06-2009 01:22

BY JIM BARON

CUMBERLAND - Mayor Daniel McKee already has the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley mayoral academy plotted out in his mind.

"It's a celebration and we are going to celebrate," he enthused. "We are going to invite national and state leadership - by the time we are done with this, we are going to have people from the National Alliance of Charter Schools, they will have a presence there. We are talking to the (U.S.) Secretary of Education's office, along with our own Board of Regents.
"We're going to have students in seats in 2009 and there were not a lot of people who believed that was going to happen," McKee said. When the vote was official, McKee issued a statement saying "I will make sure that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is aware of this historic development in the Ocean State."
In fact, it was only a week ago when that seemed downright unlikely.
The House Finance Committee had eliminated $1.5 million for charter schools from the 2010 budget, $700,000 of which was tabbed to open the mayoral academy this year.
It is not easy to get funding restored in the budget once it has been removed by the committee vote, but McKee credited the leadership of House Majority Leader Gordon Fox for carrying the day with a powerful speech on the House floor at 1 a.m. during the marathon budget debate.
The mayor said he "never doubted the strong support" that legislative leaders had promised since last year. "In the end, Gordon Fox and (Reps.) Peter Kilmartin (of Pawtucket) and Ken Vaudreuil (of Central Falls) showed outstanding leadership. I always thought there was a good chance the money would be restored."
McKee boasted that the lottery held earlier this week at the Blackstone River Theatre to fill the 76 kindergarten slots that will now be open in September "the public education event of the decade."
The mayor said his "biggest disappointment" is that there aren't even more openings. The school had asked for 100 students, but the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education authorized only 76.
Each of the four communities that will be sending students to the school - Cumberland, Lincoln, Central Falls and Pawtucket - were allotted 19 spots, but Lincoln used only 8, so the others split the remaining openings evenly. By the luck of the draw, Cumberland got one fewer of the extra spots than Central Falls and Pawtucket.
The drawing left 55 kids on the waiting list, the majority of them from Cumberland, which had the most applicants at 58.
Students will be transported to the school, the former Our Lady of Fatima school in Valley Falls, from their home districts on the same yellow school buses students in regular public schools use.
That is the students. When the school went looking for teachers, said Michael McGee, the CEO of RI Mayoral Academies, 111 applicants showed up to fill just 8 jobs. The candidates sat for two interviews - one individual and one group - and spending from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the process. Most of the applicants were teachers at local public or parochial schools.
McGee said contracts have been offered to four prospective teachers so far. Each of four classes will have a lead teacher and a "teaching fellow."
Jeremy Chiappetta will be head of school when it opens, what traditional schools call the principal.
Next year, McGee said, the school will open a first grade and fifth grade. The year after that will see a second grade and sixth grade, and it will progress like that so that a student who starts at the mayoral academy in kindergarten this September, will in theory be able to continue right through until he or she graduates from high school.