(upbeat percussion music) - Hey y'all.

I'm Kiara Butler, and welcome to Generation Rising, where we discuss hard hitting topics that our diverse communities face every day.

And joining us today to talk about her hopes for the new Central Falls High School is Mayor Maria Rivera.

Hi, Maria.

- Hi, Dr. Butler.

Thank you so much.

Should I call you Mayor?

- You can call me Maria, or you can call me Mayor, but I'm going to call you Dr. Butler.

You worked a lot - I'm going to call you Mayor.

- for that title, but thank you for this opportunity.

I think it's super important that we share the space and we talk about what's happening in our communities, especially in communities of color.

- Yes, definitely.

And to talk about Central Falls in particular, you've put in a lot of work.

You're getting a new high school.

How did you pull that off?

- There's so much I can say about this.

You know, when I came into office, I came in with three priorities.

Education was one of the priorities.

And getting a new high school was one of the priorities.

It wasn't easy work, but I think when you start having conversations with people, and they start believing in the work and the passion you have for the community, people can relate to the needs of the community.

So, you know, speaking with the Speaker of the House, with the Senate President, there was a lot of conversations I had to have.

I had to speak so much for people to believe in why the community of Central Falls, the students of Central Falls needed a new high school.

But, I really have to give thanks to Congressman, now Treasurer, who was the Treasurer then, Seth Magaziner, who was the one who approached me even before I became Mayor.

And he said, "We need to get you a new high school, let's work on it."

But, when I was on the council, I couldn't understand how we were able to manage that, right?

To get a new high school when I have a $20 million budget, how am I going to get a new high school?

But, when I became mayor, he reached back out to me, and he's like, "Mayor, we need to speak.

I want to help you get a new high school for the community."

And that was, you know, the initial conversation was, how are we going to go through this process?

So, we had to submit legislation.

There was a lot of convincing that had to be done.

We had to speak to the representatives, we had to speak to the senators and make sure that people understood what the process was because I don't control this district in the city of Central Falls.

I don't have the budget to be able to get a new high school, so we had to submit legislation for the General Assembly to be able to approve these funds for us to get this new high school in the city.

So, we were able to get $144 million approved.

- [Dr. Butler] Wow.

- Which was super exciting.

You know, now that I look back a year later, a year and a half later, it's such a huge accomplishment.

And this is not for me.

- Yeah.

- This is for the future of the city of Central Falls, for the students of Central Falls.

And this is what they deserve.

- Definitely.

And I just want to congratulate you because you said you had, like, a $20 million budget, and you were able to get over $100 million dollars approved for the high school.

- [Mayor Rivera] Yes.

- The high school was built in, don't, I might be wrong, 1927?

- [Mayor Rivera] Yes.

- And a lot has changed since 1927.

So, what can we expect for the new high school?

- I mean, I graduated from the Central Falls High School in 1995.

- Okay.

- In 1995, when I graduated, the high school already needed a lot of repairs.

It wasn't already, I mean, it was already in conditions that are not good.

And how do we expect our students to learn, to succeed when they're going, walking into a space that's not safe for them?

That they don't have the equipment, the proper equipment, that there's debris falling from the ceiling, from the ceiling.

The bathrooms are not really working.

So, having this new high school, like, this is huge for the community.

They're going to expect to make sure that we have CTE programs, to make sure that we have a community space, to make sure that they have state of the art everything.

Because this is what they deserve.

You know, for years, for years, we have left the community of Central Falls behind for many things.

And education is one of these things that I'm really focused on.

And I know how important it is that we have a new building for the students of Central Falls.

- Mm-hmm, and I know in education, we talk a lot about social/emotional learning and like, how that impacts students' behaviors within the classroom and based on their experiences and their identities.

Can you tell us more about, like, the CTE programs and things that are going to be housed in the new?

- Yeah, but I want to go back a little bit when you talk about social/emotional health.

- Yeah, sure.

- You know, there are many challenges in Central Falls.

We have students who are waiting for their teachers in the classroom to make sure they get a snack because they didn't have dinner the night before.

We have students who have to work full-time and then go to school.

So, you know, there's the language barrier.

There's so many different challenges that I'm hoping that, with this new high school, that we're able to get resources to address a lot of these issues.

We're really focusing on trying to figure out, like, what are the needs of the community and try to match that to the CTE programs.

I mean, it's no secret that a lot of students in the city of Central Falls and students in communities of colors, they don't always want to go to college.

So, we want to make sure that we match the CTE programs to what the needs are of the community.

So, whether it's construction, whether it's mechanic, whether it's nursing, whether it's dental.

So, this is what the conversations that are happening right now.

- Yeah, and there has also been, like, a mass exodus of teachers leaving the profession or leaving their district in general.

How do you feel that this new high school is going to bring teachers to Central Falls?

- You know, I hope that having a new building will bring new teachers to Central Falls, but having a new building is not the solution to bringing new teachers to Central Falls.

So, there's a lot of work that needs to be done around this.

And this is not only exclusive to the city of Central Falls.

Like, there's a teacher shortage nationwide.

- [Dr. Butler] Yep.

- Nationwide.

- Yep.

- But, I'm hoping that with these, with the new programming and having this new space, that it's going to motivate teachers to stay, for us to work with the teachers that we have right now so that they can stay.

And that it also attracts new teachers to come into the district.

- Mm-hmm.

Did, were students involved any, in like, I think you said filing a legislation.

I don't know politics, so you're going to have to school me on this.

Were students involved any?

Were they able to share their voices?

Have they been able to shed a light on what they look forward to in the new high school?

- Yes, so what we did in the city of Central Falls, and everything that I do, I want to make sure that the community is at the forefront.

- Okay.

- That we engage.

So, it was we hosted some community meetings.

And I actually had a high school student host the community meeting with me and talk about how much this meant to them and how important it was going to be to have a new high school in the city.

And we did this because we needed to have a special, we needed to have an election, like, to talk about the bond and for people to vote for it.

This is how the student voices came in.

- Okay.

- To be able to speak to the community and speak about why this was so important for them.

- [Dr. Butler] And then what about parent involvement?

- [Mayor Rivera] It's the same thing with parents.

- [Dr. Butler] Same thing?

- Yes, it's really important for me that we engage the community in every process that we have in the city of Central Falls because, ultimately, like, I'm not going to be the mayor forever.

This is not about me.

This is not about the superintendent.

This is about the community that lives in the city of Central Falls.

And their voice is super important in every decision that we make.

So, we needed to make sure that they were part of the process.

- Definitely.

Do you mind telling our viewers more about the anticipation?

Like, are we dropping this high school out of the sky?

I know it has to be built.

Are students going to be in another location?

What's going to happen?

- Yeah, so it's going to be at a separate location.

So, the students right now are going to stay at the high school, at the current high school.

We're hoping to ground break sometime in January or February of this coming year.

The expectation is the high school is completed by 2025.

I think that's very soon and very close.

So, I'm hoping, you know, I tell everybody, "Let's have it completed between '25 and 2026."

- Okay.

- So, I mean, if it's by fall of 2025, thank you, God, you know?

Because these kids are going to be able to go into the new space.

- Mm-hmm, and then, I know a couple of years ago, you all opened the new McKenna Center.

Do you mind telling our viewers about what that center is?

And will students still have access to it?

- Yeah, so the McKenna Center is used for different things, and it's been used for different things throughout the years.

Initially, we received the McKenna Center to have tutors or have teachers be able to stay in the space so that they can tutor students after hours.

It's been used to work with different nonprofits so that these nonprofits can be housed at this space, so that students can go after school and be able to get the support that they need from these nonprofits.

We now have a food pantry in the basement, which is huge for the city of Central Falls.

So, the families can go there and get food.

And we also have some of the administration at the McKenna Center.

So, yes, the McKenna Center is going to be something that's going to continue being accessible.

- And so, Mayor, I know the problems and the issues that our students and families are experiencing in Central Falls is closely tied to your identity.

How do you cope?

Like, what do you do for self-care?

- (laughs) I get this question so much.

(Dr. Butler laughs) It's not easy.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do for self-care.

I mean, I purchased a Peloton that I've had for two years.

I've used it five times.

I started going to the gym, started taking boxing lessons.

You know, I go to Lincoln Woods and walk two miles, but it's really hard because my job is a 24/7 job.

So, it's not like I can say, "I'm going to take these two hours or these three hours every day and really focus on myself."

We've tried to do that, but there's always stuff that comes up.

I think as someone who is so dedicated and passionate, like, Central Falls is a priority for me.

And I want to make sure that if someone needs me, that I'm available to them, if there's an issue that I am there.

So, it's really hard.

I'm still trying to figure out, like, how do I cope with that?

There's a lot of things that people don't prep you for when you run for office.

When you run for office, we're so focused on, you know, what are the priorities, all of the good things we want to accomplish.

But, there's a lot of things that you are not prepped for.

And when these things happen, it's like, "Okay, what do I do?

What do I do?"

So, because I'm so close to the community, and I just love being around people, and I love that they have access to me, it's really hard for me to disconnect.

It's really hard for me to disconnect, and you know, I know I have department heads, and I have directors that should be working.

Like, if we have a pot hole, if there's a flooding somewhere, if there's a homicide in the city.

But, I feel like, as the mayor of the city, it's my responsibility, and I want to make sure that my face is on anything that's happening, and that people know that I am really focused on addressing these issues when they happen.

- Yeah, and I know, thank you so much for sharing.

I know that probably took a lot out of you to be able to share your experiences with us and be vulnerable.

- I'm getting better.

I feel like I'm getting better at it.

Yeah, I am getting better at it.

There are many times, and I said to you at the beginning of the interview, I hope I don't get emotional.

- No, you can be emotional.

- There's a lot of things I take personal, right?

As someone from Central Falls, I think there's a lot of pressure because I'm the first, so I feel like I have to work so much harder.

- [Dr. Butler] Wait, the first what?

- The first Latina female mayor in the state of Rhode Island.

I feel like I have to work so much harder to prove myself to people.

And there have been things that have happened that, if it was a man, or things that have happened that have happened with men that people react with totally different.

And with me, it's like people want to hammer me for certain things.

And when I look at it, I'm like, "Okay, wait a minute.

But, this happens here with this person.

Why does it have to be addressed like this with me?"

- [Dr. Butler] Yeah.

- Yeah, so it's not easy, but I love what I do.

I love what I do.

I think representation is super important.

You know, I have a community that's 75% diverse.

- Yeah.

Representation is super important to make sure you have someone in the position that truly understands the needs of the community, that truly understands when there is an issue within the community and how to address it and work with these families.

And for the families of the city of Central Falls to understand that they have someone that is here to fight for them, to work for them, and that they matter to me.

You know, I say this to everybody.

I didn't have an ambition of running for office.

- [Dr. Butler] Yeah.

- I had no ambition of running for office.

This happened because there was, I took a leadership class.

There was a lot of people that kept saying to me, "You should run for office, you should run for office."

And I said, "Listen, I don't even know how to run a budget."

- [Dr. Butler] And look at you now.

- And now, I'm the mayor of the city.

And people will tell you, like, at the beginning, "You need to run for council."

"There's no way I'm going to run for council."

And then, they were like, "You need to run for mayor.

You're going to be the next mayor of the city."

And multiple times I said, "I'm not going to be the mayor of the city."

But now, I understand why it's so important for me to be in this position because there's things I want to accomplish that, if I wasn't the mayor, I would not be able to accomplish.

And I said, because I have the title of mayor, and I'm in the position, I'm able to accomplish a lot more.

And this isn't about me.

This is about the community of Central Falls.

- I tell people all the time, I don't do politics.

So, I want to commend you and give you your flowers now because you deserve them.

- [Mayor Rivera] Thank you.

- And I also want to say that we spent a lot of time talking about the high school, but you are the mayor of an entire city, right?

And you were able to raise money way beyond your budget for the high school, but also for the other schools within Central Falls.

Can you tell our viewers more about that?

- Sure.

So, you know, that 144 million that that was approved, it was 120 for the high school.

The other 24 is for us to fix the other schools and do upgrades to the other schools.

But, there's also the Facility Equities Initiative from the Department of Education and the Governor's office.

We've been able to get a lot of funding for the Facilities Equity Initiative.

So, this is how we have upgraded Calcutt School.

Like, they have a new science room, they have a new multimedia center, like state of the art.

All of the classrooms have been updated to fit the needs of the community.

And when I tell you to fit the needs of the community, like, the details are so specific to the needs.

Like, even the chairs.

- [Dr. Butler] Yeah.

- Even the chairs for a student who has ADHD.

This is how specific we're looking at everything that needs to be done in the community of Central Falls, and this is what they deserve.

So, it feels good to walk into the middle school and see so many things that are brand new and seeing the pride in not only the students, but also the teachers in being able to have new equipment, and for them to know that we care.

Like, we're doing this because this is what you deserve.

We care about you.

You know, we care about the students, we care about the teachers.

This is what you deserve.

- Yeah, I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and if I would've known that something like a chair or a fidget toy, or my teacher giving me breaks would've helped me, I probably would've been less of a problem child growing up.

And so, I'm really excited to see Central Falls move in this direction in meeting the needs of youth, especially our middle school students who are suspended at disproportionate rates than their white peers.

And so, my next question for you is really about what is your vision for the future?

I know Central Falls is still under a state takeover.

- No.

- No?

- It's not.

- No, really?

When, okay, tell us more.

- That happened with the previous mayor.

- Tell us more, tell us more.

With the previous mayor, we were taken out of receivership before I came into office.

- Okay, so what does that mean?

- Now, I run the city, I run the budget, just making sure that we're very focused on how we're running the finances of the city.

You know, with a $20 million budget, this is a huge burden on the taxpayers when you only have a $20 million budget, and there's so many needs in the community.

I have a finance director who's amazing, who's very transparent, very focused on making sure we stay in line with everything that we have to do.

I spend a lot of my time talking to people trying to get money from them.

So, a lot of the work that we've been doing is because I have a lot of people who have supported, supportive of me, supportive of the community of Central Falls.

They understand the needs of the city of Central Falls.

So, like, you know, we have brand new fields, but we're also adding a new tennis court.

We're also adding a new baseball field.

We're also adding a new basketball court.

A lot of this has happened because I've had conversations with people, and I'm practically just begging people to help the community of Central Falls.

But, at the same time, I've had funders or people who want to be supportive to the community, who just reach out to me and say, "I want to help your community because I see the work that you're doing."

So, we've been able to get a lot of funding for a lot of great things in the city of Central Falls.

You know, quality of life is super important to me.

- Yep.

- Super, super important to me.

Making sure that the city's clean, making sure that the city's safe, and being able to have all these brand new fields is super important to make sure, you know, that my community feels safe, that they have these spaces that they could go to.

We're going to have a brand new community garden.

Like, this is all stuff that's being funded by other people, not taxpayers because of the relationships that I've been able to build with people.

- And so, if you could tell us one or two things, what else can we expect to see from you?

- Yeah, so you know, my three priorities when I came in, the high school, housing, getting a community center for the community.

Central Falls hasn't had a community center for over 10 years.

We know how important it is to have a community center, for the students to have a space that they could come to.

It closed over 10 years ago because it couldn't be sustained.

- [Dr. Butler] Yeah.

- So, I've been able to get over $4 million.

We purchased a building, and we're going to get a new community center.

But, this community center is going to be focused on all of the needs that have increased through the pandemic.

When I became mayor, I became mayor in the middle of the pandemic.

There's so many needs that have increased.

Mental health, domestic violence, which was our number one phone call.

So, the first floor of this space is to address all of these needs that have increased through the pandemic.

We're not looking to duplicate services, so we're working with different nonprofits so that they can staff their people at this space.

One of the first things I did when I came into office was start the Office of Constituent Services so that the residents of the city of Central Falls knew they had a space that they could come to, that we could support them, and not necessarily for us to give them what they need, but for us to be able to connect them with those resources that they were looking for because we have a limited budget.

My other priority was housing.

So, three months after I came into office, I had a housing summit via Zoom with over 200 people to talk about the challenges of the city of Central Falls because while I was campaigning, I could see all of the challenges.

You know, we have the high lead rate in the city.

People, they're living in properties that are not suitable for them, that need work.

There's a housing shortage.

So, you know, we made sure we had landlords there.

We had the Section 8, the Housing Director there.

We had homeless population.

We had someone from the district just to get everybody's voices together and really focus, like, what are the needs?

From the housing summit, a housing report came out.

That housing report speaks about the challenges of Central Falls and also, about how I went around the city and identified all of these properties that are not being used.

So, what we did was we went around the city, we identified these properties, and we contacted the owners and said, "What are you doing with your property because we need housing in the city?

What are you doing with your property?"

And they were either going to present me with a plan, or they were going to sell it to me, or we were going take action to take the property from them.

That has been my focus, making sure that we address the housing needs in the city of Central Falls.

And that was such a huge focus of mine because Central Falls was the hardest hit community with the pandemic at some points.

And it's because of housing.

You know, we have two and three families living in one apartment, and we were asking them to do something they couldn't do, which was isolate.

So then, you have these 10 people in one apartment.

So, we do have a lot of housing projects.

That's the other thing that you're going to be able to see in Central Falls.

We're working with one neighborhood builders on two projects.

You know, we're in the process of finishing two houses for home ownership.

Central Falls has the lowest home ownership rate at 19%.

It's really important for me to focus on how do we increase the home ownership rate.

So, we're building two houses that can be exclusively sold to Central Falls residents.

So, I'm trying to do everything that I can.

I think, you know, in these two years and nine months, we've been able to - accomplish a lot.

- You've done a lot.

And sometimes I question, "How have we been able to do this?"

But, this is what happens when you work in collaboration with people.

Again, because this is not about me.

This is about the needs of the community, and when you work in collaboration with people, there's so much more that you can accomplish.

- I agree.

And how can we stay in touch with you because I want to stay in touch.

- (laughs) So, I mean, I will give you my personal cell phone number.

I won't share it here, but you can, you know, you can stay in touch with me via social media.

So, there's the Mayor Maria Rivera page, there's the City of Central Falls page.

I'm super, super active on social media because it's important for me to have the relationship with the community.

On Twitter, on Instagram.

You can contact City Hall at 727-7400.

- [Dr. Butler] All right.

- If you want to be in contact with me, and anybody who wants to support the city of Central Falls, you're more than welcome to reach out to City Hall.

- Thank you.

- If you want to come to the city, I mean, there's so much more we can talk about.

- Sure.

- If you want to come to the city, I think Central Falls has the best restaurants in the state, like, diverse restaurants.

If you want authentic Mexican food, Colombian food, Peruvian food, Guatemalan food.

(Dr. Butler laughs) Portuguese food, Cape Verdean food, come to Central Falls.

I got you.

- [Dr. Butler] I'm going to hold you to that, Mayor.

- Please do.

Listen, if we could have had this interview in Central Falls, we would've done it in Central Falls so that we can go out.

But, I love when people contact me and say, "I want to meet with you.

I've never been to Central Falls."

We're going to have a meeting at a restaurant.

- Yes.

Well, I want to meet with you.

I'm coming to Central Falls.

We're going to have a meeting at a restaurant.

- We will do that.

- And guess what?

You got to guess.

- Tell me.

- We have run out of time.

- Oh, this went so quick.

- It did.

- I feel like there's so much more we can talk about.

- There is.

But, thank you so much for joining us.

And to our viewers at home, you can watch past episodes anytime on watch.ripbs.org.

And be sure to follow us on Facebook and X for the latest updates.

And Mayor, we have started a tradition where you can grab a piece of chalk and leave your mark on our board over here.

So, I'm going to ask you to head on over.

- Perfect.

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Butler.

- Thank you.

(Soothing music)