Children first.
Every dollar accounted for.
I’m Dan Hersey. I grew up in Poughkeepsie, went north for college in Vermont where I met Tara, and after a stretch in the Bay Area we came east and settled into the Mill Cove Road house she grew up in. Our daughter Charlotte was born last summer, and the question of whether the district she and every other Warwick kid grow up in is being run well is the question that put me in this race.
I’m running for District 2 because the work in front of this committee is operational before it is anything else, and Warwick voters told us so in February when they rejected the supplemental bond. The next term has to begin by answering the question they were asking: is the district being run well enough today to justify being asked for more money tomorrow?
Vote in the September Primary · Sept. 9, 2026
Why I’m running
Charlotte starts kindergarten in 2030. The decisions this committee makes between now and then are the decisions that shape the school she walks into, and every other school in this district.
— Dan Hersey
How Dan Works
The job is operational, not theatrical.
Three commitments for how I’ll do this job. None of them are flashy. All of them are what voters want from a school committee member after the bond vote.
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Account for every dollar
My job, day to day, is to take complicated financial material and translate it into language a non-expert can follow. I think a school committee should treat its own budget with at least that level of care. The work means actual transparency rather than the appearance of it, regular reporting on contract performance, and a habit of asking the underlying data questions until somebody can answer them.
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Be straight with parents
Plain language, no spin, no movement vocabulary. If a contract is bad I will say so, if a vote is hard I will explain the reasoning behind mine, and if a parent asks a question they will get an answer rather than a press statement. Public bodies tend to default to hedging, and I do not plan to bring more of that habit into this one.
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Show up between elections
A school committee member should be present in the neighborhoods between elections, not just in the weeks before one. The actual habits are not complicated: open office hours at the library on a published cadence, visits to schools across the district on regular days, and being reachable by email and phone the way a sitting member ought to be.
Where Dan Stands
Three issues, all Warwick-specific.
Warwick voters just said no to a $50 million school bond. The committee’s next term has to take that seriously. Here’s where I’ll focus.
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Budget, costs, and Providence
Children come first. Costs come in check. Every dollar accounted for.
In February 2026, Warwick voters rejected a $50 million supplemental bond for the new high schools. That was not a vote against schools so much as a vote against more debt without a clearer plan for the district that exists today. The right starting point for the next term is a set of honest questions, not a list of pre-cooked answers. Where is the structural deficit coming from, and how much of it is health-care cost growth that has been allowed to drift for years? What is the operating plan that justifies asking voters for anything more? And what is this committee willing to ask of the Rhode Island Department of Education when state mandates drive Warwick costs up without commensurate state funding? Children come first, and every dollar already inside the FY27 budget should be expected to reach a classroom, a teacher, or a building before we add to it.
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The schools our kids will actually attend
The work of this committee is making sure every classroom in District 2 works the day a kid walks into it.
The operating questions on a school committee, the ones that sit beneath the politics, deserve the same seriousness the politics get. These are the ones I plan to pay attention to: capital planning for the elementary schools, special-education programming, teacher retention, and transportation. The kids in those classrooms are not abstract, and neither are the families who pay for the system.
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Show up and report back
A committee member should be reachable between elections, not just before them.
A lot of the trust gap between school committees and parents is, when you look at it closely, mostly a communication gap. Decisions get made and the public learns later; votes get cast and the reasoning is not explained. I want to bring the same operational habits to public service that I bring to my day job, namely clear written summaries, response times that respect the person who asked the question, and a consistent presence in the neighborhoods I represent throughout the year.
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Help me win in September.
A school committee primary is decided by who shows up, and door knocks, conversations, and sign requests all add up. Add your name to the campaign and we’ll be in touch.