Rhode Island Coalition Aims to Start Network of Regional Charters

If Cumberland, R.I., Mayor Daniel J. McKee and a coalition of other Rhode Island town leaders have their way, they’ll ditch public education’s current bureaucracy and start over with a clean slate. It’s just not clear yet exactly what they will be able to write on it.

The plan, as Mr. McKee and his Coalition of Communities Improving Rhode Island were planning to announce it late last week, is to set up a regional, mayorally headed network of charter schools —something that charter school experts say has never been attempted in quite the way the coalition is proposing.

Michael Magee, the director of Cumberland’s Office of Children, Youth, and Learning and a key adviser to Mayor McKee, said the idea was born of both fiscal necessity and some blue-sky imaginings about the ideal school setup...