The Newport School Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday, June 4, at 5:30 p.m. at the Newport Area Career & Technical Center to discuss and vote on an interim superintendent to succeed Colleen Burns Jermain, who steps down June 30.
Interviews for the role took place last week, Jermain said in her May 27 monthly conversation with What’sUpNewp. She said she is not involved in the search.
Jermain wrote in her weekly newsletter to families that the chosen candidate is not expected to attend Thursday’s meeting and is expected to be introduced to the community at the committee’s regular meeting on Tuesday, June 9, at Pell Elementary School. Thursday’s meeting will be taped.
The vote follows a search that had initially been targeted for completion at the committee’s May 12 meeting. Jermain told What’sUpNewp in late April that the committee expected to narrow a field of about a dozen applicants to three or four finalists for a single round of interviews.
The interim structure was a deliberate choice tied to regionalization. School Committee Vice Chair Rebecca Bolan told What’sUpNewp earlier this spring that the committee opted for a one-year hire because Newport was leaving room for a possible November ballot question on regionalization with the Middletown school system.
“We are not intending to hire a permanent superintendent at this juncture,” Bolan said. “We are waiting to see if regionalization gets on the ballot.”
That timeline has since slipped significantly. In her May 27 conversation with What’sUpNewp, Jermain said she has seen no indication that the enabling legislation for a Newport-Middletown merger will move in June, and the earliest realistic timeline now appears to be 2027. Asked about reports that Middletown is leaning against the merger, she said both districts are focused on their own pressing issues and that public sentiment may have shifted as funding and enrollment pressures mount.
Jermain told What’sUpNewp the regionalization slip complicates the interim structure. She floated the possibility that the Newport School Committee could move as soon as this fall to launch a search for a permanent superintendent rather than continuing with a one-year interim.
The interim hire comes as Newport schools face deepening fiscal pressure. In her May 27 update, Jermain pegged the projected deficit for the 2026-2027 school year at roughly $3.8 million, up from a $2 million figure she shared in April. The city has budgeted a 4% increase for schools next year, about $1.1 million, leaving a $2.7 million gap that does not allow the district to recall any of the 17 teachers it has laid off, she said.
A separate $2.8 million deficit in the current fiscal year has triggered a state requirement that Newport file a deficit reduction plan with the Rhode Island Auditor General, which the district presented to the City Council on Wednesday, June 3.
Jermain announced on Oct. 14, 2025, that she would step down June 30 after more than 12 years leading the district, citing the terms of her amended 2023 contract. She is a Newport native and Rogers High School graduate who has held the post since January 2014, making her among the longest-serving superintendents in the district’s history.
Asked in late April whether she was reviewing applications, Jermain told What’sUpNewp she had stayed out of the process because the field includes internal candidates.
“I’m not involving myself at all in this process because we do have internal candidates,” she said. “I did not open any or look at any of the resumes, nor will I.”
Thursday’s School Committee meeting will be followed by the Newport Community School Adult Education graduation at the new Rogers Theatre, beginning at 6 p.m. with refreshments and 7 p.m. for diplomas and certifications.
