Three seats on Little Compton’s School Committee changed hands Tuesday, giving Democrats a 4-1 majority. Unofficial results as of 10:15 p.m. showed Democrat Andrew Rhyne leading the field and Republican Brian K. Snow narrowly winning the final seat over independent incumbent Mark Gleicher.
Rhyne, a Democrat and former budget committee member, received 1,186 votes, followed by fellow Democrat Nicholaus Carter with 1,145. Snow received 945 votes, 15 more than Gleicher’s 930, according to EastBayRI.com.
The New Committee’s Partisan Balance
Rhyne, Carter and Snow will join incumbent Democrats Amy Gleicher and Susan Chase, whose seats were not up this year. The resulting 4-1 Democratic majority matches the partisan balance on Little Compton’s Town Council, the report said.
Two departing committee members ran for Town Council. Travis Auty, the former School Committee chairman and chair of the Democratic Town Committee, won a council seat. Republican Town Committee chairman Michael Rocha also ran, finishing eighth among eight candidates, EastBayRI.com reported.
Candidates Sparred Over Tech, Tuition and Student Stress
At a candidate forum before the election, participants discussed state aid, enrollment trends and changes in education, as well as technology in classrooms, according to a separate EastBayRI.com report.
On classroom technology, Rhyne argued that younger students should build foundational skills before relying heavily on screens. “They need their foundations in math, science and reading before that,” he said. Snow supported hands-on learning while also saying students should be taught to use artificial intelligence tools: “I do think they need to be taught how to use these tools,” he said.
The forum also addressed tuition for students who come from outside Little Compton to attend its schools. Snow estimated that those students pay about $6,000 annually, compared with what he said was a town cost of about $30,000 per student. “Tuition students are paying around $6,000 a year, whereas it costs the town about $30,000 a year,” he said.
What the Tuition Context Shows
A Rhode Island Department of Education FY2021 chart notes that Little Compton does not have a high school and pays tuition to send its high school students to other districts. That historical note does not establish the current cost of educating an individual student or how much tuition revenue the town receives from students who live elsewhere, so it should not be conflated with the forum’s estimates. See the Rhode Island Department of Education chart.
The forum coverage records candidates’ positions, but does not establish whether those views affected Tuesday’s results. The new committee’s composition is settled; the figures cited on tuition and costs, however, are candidates’ estimates rather than current per-pupil spending data.
