09/12/2026
Tuesday night's Chariho School Committee meeting was a good look at who's actually representing Hopkinton right now.
During public comment, Justin Bentley, running for a Hopkinton seat on the Chariho School Committee, thanked the committee for approving the new bond information website for the Unified Elementary School project. He pointed out that the committee, minus the Hopkinton delegation, made the right call: the current website is hard to navigate, and the new one will be a real resource for the community.
Right after him, Westerly resident Bob Chiaradio, a familiar face who shows up to make this same speech every year, stood up and spent three minutes explaining to the committee what men are supposed to do for women. His actual ask: a district policy barring transgender girls from girls' sports, despite no identified student, faculty, or staff member at Chariho sharing this concern. In his words, men are "supposed to protect women and children" and some men "choose themselves over the protection and respect of girls because they are afraid." He cast himself as the brave man defending helpless girls, and called the superintendent "the eraser of girls" for not agreeing with him. He pointed directly at committee member Craig Louzon and called him a coward, by name, to his face. He wrapped himself in the language of protecting girls while having no actual stake in a single one of them, no children in this district, no vote here. Two Republican candidates for Hopkinton office, School Committee candidate Rob Greene and Town Council candidate Scott Sunderland, sat in the audience and shook his hand afterward, applauding a man with no children in this district lecturing this committee about what women need men to do for them.
Then Gregg Avedisian, another Hopkinton school committee candidate, took the podium and answered him directly. He talked about protecting women's sports the way people who actually care about women's sports do it, by funding programs, not restricting who gets to play. He spent ten years fighting to get middle school girls' soccer established here, work that mattered so much to him personally because his own daughter aged out before the program existed. His point was simple: if you want to protect girls' athletics, you fully fund the district that runs them. You don't cut budgets and then blame someone else when the newest girls' programs are the first thing cut. Watch what he actually said, right here: https://www.youtube.com/live/5f35VaE0hOs?si=qRgIbjU-ojIw-PTb&t=1369
Later, the committee voted 6-2 to approve the Stage II application for the Unified Elementary School Campus, sending it to RIDE and putting the bond question in front of voters this fall. It was a hard state deadline. Miss it, and the district restarts a multi-year process at a cost of millions. Hopkinton reps Ed Lowe and Larry Phelps voted no. Neither explained why. Dianne Tefft wasn't there.
Then things got messier. Lowe tried to sneak an unrelated Medicare billing question into the consent agenda, couldn't say what he actually wanted, and had to back down when the chair pointed out there was no such bill to even discuss. Minutes later, at the very end of the meeting, he brought up his real agenda: the same policy Chiaradio had asked for earlier. He couldn't keep his own request straight, going back and forth between asking for a new policy and asking for a legal opinion, until the chair had to walk him through it step by step just to get a clean motion on the floor. Chair Ryan Callahan told him directly that the policy he wanted would violate Rhode Island law and RIDE policy. Lowe pushed for an outside legal opinion anyway. It failed, but not before Polly Hopkins, Lowe, and Phelps voted yes to spend district money chasing it.
Hopkinton, you get to decide who represents you here. Justin Bentley and Gregg Avedisian are running because this district deserves better than what Tuesday night showed you.
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