MEET EAST GREENWICH SCHOOL COMMITTEE CANDIDATE PETER CARNEY, 21 SEP 2021

For my fellow community members who I have yet to meet, I wanted to start by sharing a little of my background to offer a sense of my long ties to the East Greenwich area.

I grew up just across the town line in the Quidnessett area of North Kingstown and attended Our Lady of Mercy School and then Rocky Hill School. Trips to Newport Creamery (now the vacant Webster Bank location near CVS) for Awful Awfuls were a staple of my youth! I received my BA from the University of Richmond and returned to R.I. after graduation where I worked the next four years for a local business located in the Elms Building on Main Street in East Greenwich. My wife Jennifer and I settled in Warwick to start our family (we are now 6 plus a terrier ; ) and after a few years found ourselves very involved in their elementary school with Jen heading the PTG for several years and me being called into service regularly for fundraising and “event organization,” a.k.a. heavy lifting. When it came time to consider the long-term educational goals for our children, East Greenwich was a natural fit given the strong reputation of the school district and our familiarity with the community (my father-in-law, Dr. Jack Kacewicz, was a longtime orthodontist in East Greenwich with a practice now operated by my brother-in-law). So, in the summer of 2016, we made EG our home. Jumping right into our new community and school district with that same spirit and energy, we organized a very successful Spring Fun Run event in both 2018 and 2019 in support of the Frenchtown and Eldredge PTGs, volunteered on the sidelines for EGBA and Flag Football, and I have done some spot duty as third base coach when needed at St. Greg’s Little League or EGLL. It has been a great experience to be a part of such an active community with so many willing to raise their hands and help out around the schools, athletic fields and community events.

Professionally, I am a regional vice president for a national mortgage lender where I am responsible for a sizable budget and also the productivity, and workplace health and safety in the COVID era, of many teammates across New England. In my role, I need to invest and spend budgeted money in the right places to support our clients and teammates. But I need to do so judiciously to balance our revenue with our needs. Strategic, data-driven decisions are a daily requirement for me to succeed in my job and I believe this skill set can be a very helpful addition to the decision-making collaboration in our school district.

It is from this foundation that I have decided to now step forward as a candidate for School Committee in the Oct. 5 special election. The past 18 months created incredible challenges for our students, parents, teachers, administrators and elected officials. Many of those challenges, and effects thereof, remain for our district and community. With children of my own at Eldredge, Cole and EGHS, maintaining the strength of the district and fostering an environment that supports academic excellence and empathy for the social / emotional well-being of our students will be my charge. Amidst continued challenges from the pandemic, you can expect me to continue to advocate for district policies and plans that focus on as much normalcy for our children as possible … a focus of mine since the 2020-21 school year began when I worked with so many great families and community members in advocating for a return to full in-person learning across the district. During that time, I showed a commitment to student-centric policies, a commitment to the health and safety of our teachers and staff by lobbying our state officials to prioritize their vaccinations, and also regularly offering ideas and strategies to administrators and committee members that had been implemented in other districts in Rhode Island and elsewhere during the 2020-21 school year. And as we continue to review and better understand the learning gaps created by COVD challenges, I will engage with district families to understand their opinions and then work with the school administration and fellow School Committee members to develop a plan that addresses community concerns and prevents future recurrences. Collaboration with all viewpoints, transparency with all decisions, solutions-based advocacy, and offering balance to the deliberations of the committee are the charge of my campaign.

Lastly, I wanted to share an aspect of a particularly poignant phone conversation I had in February 2021 with a school official elsewhere as I researched how other school districts were navigating the many COVID-created challenges. The official told me, “We all knew what was best for the students … so we got all the stakeholders together and worked on solutions to overcome our obstacles.” I congratulated them, and said, “Now THAT is leadership.”

I know it when I hear, and see it. And I know the good people of East Greenwich do too. Please vote for Peter Carney for EG School Committee on Oct. 5 at Swift Community Center. Thank you for your consideration.

Peter Carney lives in East Greenwich.