BONOLLO

PAWTUCKET –– Two years ago, the big issue in the Pawtucket School Committee race was money: The School Department was projecting a multimillion-dollar deficit, while the school budget was being level-funded by the city and state.

This time, the big issue among the candidates seeking reelection to the School Committee isn’t money, even though the School Department is again projecting a deficit.

This time, the big issue is communication.

Although School Committee members say School Supt. Hans W. Dellith has done a great job improving the performance of the city’s schools, some –– most prominently, David A. Coughlin Jr. –– are complaining that Dellith doesn’t communicate effectively.

Others, in particular Nicole A. Nordquist and Amy Breault Zolt, counter that Dellith provides School Committee members with all the information they need to discharge their responsibilities. “I’ve always had good communications with the superintendent,” Zolt said. “I call the superintendent three times a week.”

Ten candidates are running for seven seats on the School Committee, jockeying to take the place of Gordon M. Gould, who is retiring as chairman; and John S. Baxter Jr., who is running for City Council at large.

Besides Coughlin, Nordquist and Zolt, the 10 candidates include incumbents Joanne M. Bonollo and James T. Chellel Jr.; as well as Joseph C. Knight, a retired corrections officer; Raymond W. Noonan, a lawyer and former track star; Matthew F. Gunnip, a social worker; Joseph M. Lima, a former state representative; and real-estate investor Carlos E. Tobon.

All 10 candidates are running as Democrats, setting the stage for a primary on Sept. 9.

Tobon, 26, of 30 Bloomingdale Ave., has never run for public office, but he attended the city’s public schools, where he said he saw for himself how students are being shortchanged.

When he was in the eighth grade, Tobon said, he took the advice of a Pawtucket school official and turned down a scholarship at Moses Brown.

Tobon said he doesn’t regret the decision. But when his younger brother Jorge was offered a Moses Brown scholarship, Tobon said he made sure that Jorge didn’t miss the opportunity: “I rode him. I didn’t give him a chance to mess up.”

Now Jorge is a freshman at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Carlos Tobon is campaigning on the platform that the city’s schools need to do a better job.

Moses Brown “is a great school. But there’s no reason why public school kids can’t get the same education,” he said.

Lima, 62, of 70 Seneca Ave., served four terms in the General Assembly, representing downtown Providence, Fox Point and part of the East Side.

A Pawtucket resident for eight years, Lima said he is running for School Committee not to get back into politics, but to improve the city’s educational system. His interest in education dates back to his years as a state representative, when he fought for legislation to require bilingual education into the state’s public schools.

Lima has never held public office in Pawtucket. He decided to run, he said, when he became concerned about the number of young people dropping out of school before they received the education that they need to get jobs in today’s economy.

“I work for New England Tractor-Trailer Training School as director of admissions,” he said. “And I see it every day –– young people who don’t have a high school diploma and want to drive trucks.”

Gunnip, 28, of 90 Summit St., is also concerned about the dropout rate. “I think one of the solutions is trying to get a relationship with post-secondary institutions. I think that a lot of kids need to get information early in high school as to what possibilities are out there for them,” he said.

Gunnip grew up in Coventry. He moved to Pawtucket 2½ years ago, after he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Rhode Island and got at job with the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

While volunteering for RI CARES (Rhode Island Communities for Addiction Recovery Efforts), Gunnip met Tom Coderre, a former state senator from Pawtucket who, after struggling with substance abuse issues, became field director for Faces and Voices of Recovery, a national group with which RI CARES is affiliated.

Coderre encouraged him to seek an appointment to the city’s Juvenile Hearing Board, Gunnip said, and is supporting his campaign for School Committee.

Noonan, 55, of 405 Grotto Ave., is a son of Raymond F. Noonan, “the oldest living Brown University basketball player.” He grew up in Pawtucket, where his father operated Noonan’s café, and graduated in 1971 from Pawtucket High School West, now Shea High School, where he was captain of both the cross-country team and the track team.

Noonan attended Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, and earned a law degree at the University of San Diego School of Law. He got a job with a Los Angeles law firm, then went into business for himself, becoming a self-employed civil lawyer retained by other attorneys for the purpose of trial preparation.

Noonan returned to Rhode Island in 2002 to take care of his father, now 93 and living in the Epoch Assisted Living Center in Providence. He decided to run for School Committee, he said, because “I’ve always wanted to give something back.”

“I went to these schools when they were great and I think they can be great again,” he said.

Knight, 53, of 104 Lyman St., has filed two complaints that the School Committee violated the Open Meetings Law, charging that it failed to specify what was going to be discussed in executive session and neglected to report out votes that were taken behind closed doors. Neither complaint has resulted in a finding by the state attorney general’s office

Like Coughlin, Knight believes Dellith purposely keeps the School Committee in the dark. A case in point was the cancellation of after-school activities and heightened security on May 2 that he said amounted to a “lockdown” of the city’s schools.

The so-called lockdown was imposed the day a funeral was conducted for a Pawtucket teenager who had been gunned down in a gang fight in Central Falls. Dellith, who subsequently defended the heightened security measures, denied that School Committee members were kept in the dark.

Knight is married to the former Francoise Labens, a registered nurse who teaches science at Goff Junior High School. He denied that, if he is elected to the School Committee, his wife’s employment would present him with a conflict of interest that would prevent him from voting on a contracts or other matters involving teachers.

In a Jan. 2 e-mail that Katherine D’Arezzo, senior attorney of the Ethnics Commission, said doesn’t constitute a formal advisory opinion, Peter J. Mancini, the commission’s deputy chief investigator for the commission, told Knight, “The Rhode Island Code of Ethics does not prohibit a person from seeking an elected office regardless of the fact that a candidate may have a relative employed by that municipality or school department.

“However, once elected, that person must avoid voting on any issues that would have a direct financial benefit or detriment to their family member,” Mancini said.

Coughlin, 58, of 9 Armistice Blvd., a lawyer in private practice, was first elected to the School Committee in 2006. He said that, other than the failure to communicate, he has had no problems with Dellith’s leadership.

Nevertheless, Coughlin said, Dellith needs to do a better job keeping School Committee members informed of what is going on in the school system, and the business administrator, Thomas J. Conlon, needs to present budget information more credibly than he did when he estimated that expanding full-day kindergarten would add a net cost to the budget of only $2,000.

Coughlin called for a performance audit of School Department expenditures –– not because he believes that money is being spent unwisely, but because such an audit would enhance the School Department’s credibility with the City Council, which appropriates funds.

“It appears to me we are running a pretty tight ship in Pawtucket, overall in terms of dollars spent per student. I think Dellith will probably be vindicated by a performance audit,” Coughlin said.

Nordquist, 29, of 155 Mount Vernon Blvd., a former administrative assistant at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, recently left that job to enroll in Rhode Island College, where she plans to obtain a degree in special education.

As deputy chairperson, Nordquist got the School Committee to vote to expand full-day kindergarten from the Cunningham and Baldwin schools to all 10 elementary schools in the school district.

The move provoked a storm of criticism. Instituting district-wide full-day kindergarten would have added $612,962 to the already deficit-ridden school budget. City Council members denounced the School Committee as “fiscally irresponsible.” Nordquist moved to rescind the vote.

Over the summer, however, school officials identified half a million dollars in federal money that could be used for full-day kindergarten. Because the money is earmarked for schools with large numbers of children living below the poverty level, it cannot be a used for full-day kindergarten in 2 of the 10 elementary schools –– Potter Burns and Curtis, Nordquist said. “It bothers me that people say it’s financially irresponsible,” Nordquist said. “It’s financially irresponsible not to fight for the best education for the kids in our schools.”

Chellel, 32, of 45 Grosvenor Ave., is a telecommunications operator for the state’s 9-1-1 emergency dispatch system. He is also the father of 5-year-old Abigail, who is about to enter Nathanael Greene Elementary School.

Chellel said he has been told by Deputy School Supt. Kimberly Mercer that the money for full-day kindergarten is being taken from a defunct reading program. Like Nordquist, Chellel said he favors expanding full-day kindergarten to all 10 elementary schools. If he is reelected, he said he would seek to include the program in the School Department’s operating budget, rather than pay for it with federal funds, which could eventually be withdrawn.

In October, Chellel clashed with Dellith over plans by the superintendent to assign the teacher in charge of the city’s all-city elementary school band to be a music teacher at Fallon Memorial Elementary School. Dellith defended the decision, which had the effect of killing the band program, as a budget-cutting measure.

Chellel said he hopes to have the band restored as an after-school activity. Although he publicly disputed Dellith on the issue, he praised the superintendent as a “genius” who has finally gotten the Pawtucket school system to moving forward.

Joanne M. Bonollo, 50, of 407 Grand Ave., who is seeking a second term, said it has been sometimes been difficult to get the information needed to function as a School Committee members. “If you ask the questions, you get it sometimes –– slowly, but you get it.”

Despite the difficulty getting information, Bonollo, who works as a bookkeeper, managed to get the School Committee to adopt a wellness policy, and to incorporate teaching about domestic violence in the school curriculum.

She has fought for better upkeep of school facilities. But progress has been slow because money is limited.

“At Slater [Junior High School] one of the hallways has to be closed when it rains because the hallway floods. That really bothers me.”

“It bothers me to go to a school and see buckets in the hall.”

Zolt, 46, of 30 Potter St., is a divorced mother of four boys, three of whom are still in the Pawtucket school system.

She communicates with Dellith, and visits schools personally, she said, because she considers herself an advocate. “My slogan’s always been, ‘A voice for our kids.’ ”

First elected in 1997, Zolt is seeking a fourth term on the School Committee. She skipped a term between 2004 and 2006, when she and her then-husband were going through a divorce.

Zolt disputes claims that the School Committee has violated the Open Meetings Law, and complaints that the quality of education in the city’s schools is poor. The complaints and claims have come, she said, because Coughlin and Knight can’t stand the superintendent. She took particular umbrage at Knight’s charge that the School Committee makes decisions behind closed doors.

“What really upsets me is here we have a man running for the School Committee and all he does is bash the School Committee and the superintendent. I mean, does he want to work with us or against us?” she said.

jcastell@projo.com