Sasse Calls on RI’s Top CEOs to Step Up on Ed Reform, Get Involved and Do More Than “Fund Chalk”
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
Gary Sasse, the former head of Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council and Director of Administration for the State of RI, is calling on the top business leaders in Rhode Island to individually step forward and to take a direct role in Rhode Island’s school reform.
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To date, the Partnership for Rhode Island — an organization comprised of the Chief Executive Officers of Rhode Island’s largest corporations -- has funded the Johns Hopkins report and on Monday, announced a grant to fund classroom supplies.
“These guys are getting on cheap. First, of all they got all kinds of tax cuts here over the last ten years, from the income tax to the corporate tax...which could have been used to pay for, you know, schools there,” said Sasse on GoLocal LIVE’s Business Monday.
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"It would be great if these 12 guys [there is one woman, Brown President Christina Paxson] would stand up and say we're taking over this high school and we're going to put hundreds of thousands each - millions of dollars into this high school and we're going to make it a demonstration school in a show school and the two thousand kids that attend that high school are going to get a good education," said Sasse.
“Now, they're coming up with a hundred thousand here and a hundred thousand there...if they say they're gonna do good work, that's fine but they've got to get personally involved and committed," added Sasse.
The Partnership for Rhode Island has not issued a public agenda, does not hold public meetings, does not have a website and is staffed by Tom Giordano — a former staffer to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D).
“So I look at the twelve millionaires -- it's like Jesus' Apostles -- they sit on this board say, ‘Oh don't worry, I mean I'm gonna give you a hundred thousand, you get chalk.’ No, I want you to say who you are, I want you to volunteer to be on school committees,” said Sasse.
“But be transparent and out front and I think there's all kind of great things you know could happen if the business community operates in a transparent, not in an elitist fashion,” he added.
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