Jamestown and Narragansett are about to try something no two Rhode Island towns have done before outside of a regional school district: share a single superintendent. The newly formed joint school committee will be responsible for selecting one person to lead both districts.
The arrangement grew out of resolutions passed by each town's school board last month. Jamestown adopted its version at an Oct. 22 meeting, a night after Narragansett approved its own, according to jamestownpress.com. The Providence Journal describes the vote as the first time Rhode Island towns outside of regional districts have agreed to share a superintendent, calling it a first for the state after what the paper described as several months of discussion, as reported by providencejournal.com.
What the Joint Committee Can Do
The resolution hands the new ten-member body broad authority. It can establish the job requirements for a joint superintendent, post the position and hire for it, set salary and benefits, and supervise and review the superintendent's performance once hired, per the same account. The joint committee is also empowered to draft its own bylaws and enabling documents, though those bylaws were still only proposed when interim Superintendent Kathy Sipala gave a draft to the joint committee members. “These are proposed. They have not been passed,” Sipala said, according to the report.
Sipala was also careful to define the limits of the deal. “Not a regionalization, not a sharing of students, not even a sharing of staff other than this one position of superintendent,” she said in comments reported by jamestownpress.com. The committee's authority stops at the superintendent's chair — the two districts otherwise remain separate.
A Three-Year Trial With a Hard Deadline
Under the resolution, the joint committee is set to remain in effect for three years, though the two boards can dissolve it earlier if both vote to do so concurrently, the article notes. There's also a built-in trigger: the union will dissolve automatically if the committee has not hired a joint superintendent by Dec. 31, 2026. Officials would seek to fill the position by Jan. 1, 2027.
Quorum rules require at least three members from each town's school board to be present, and the joint committee itself must always include a minimum of three members from each side, per the same source. Rhode Island General Law § 16-2-12, titled “Joint superintendent employed by two or more cities or towns,” has reportedly allowed such arrangements for more than 120 years, though the specifics of that statute's requirements weren't detailed in available reporting.
Untested Model, Part-Time Schedule on the Table
A part-time shared-superintendency model has never been employed in Rhode Island, according to the jamestownpress.com reporting. One option under consideration would have the superintendent working 140 days a year — about three days a week — splitting time between the two districts rather than working full-time for either one.
Who Sits on the New Committee
The joint committee comprises all five members of each town's school board. Jamestown's representatives are Drew Allsopp, Christian Cowan, Lisa Tuttle, Joshua Furtado and Sharron Rallis, all affiliated with the Democratic Party. Narragansett's members are Tammy McNeice, Justin Wolf Skenyon, Denise Manzi, Diane Nobles and Carolyn Tudino.
Kristine LaPierre, Jamestown's board chairwoman, who will not run for reelection in 2026, framed the move in bigger terms. She said the two districts are pioneers, with the shape of education being approached differently than before. Her comments cap off a process that now shifts from the committee rooms where the resolutions passed to the first joint meeting, where the real work of finding a shared superintendent begins.
