Thornton students get a lesson in civics

Sometime around 10:45 last Friday morning, the sudden sound of cheers echoed through the Executive Chamber inside Johnston Town Hall.

Those loud chants of joy came from second grade students, and their teacher and parent chaperones, too, from Thornton Elementary School.

Those cheers came after Mayor Joseph Polisena discussed several subjects of huge interest during the morning visit.

“Your school is old,” Polisena told the attendees who jammed into nearly every available space of his office. “It’s the oldest school in our town … its ninety years old …”

The mayor, as he’s done in recent weeks, told the children about how he’d like to the town to build one new campus for schools just like Citizens Bank is doing with its project off of Greenville Avenue.

He emphasized that “of course we need money to build such a school campus, but first we need to find one big piece of land” that was followed by more cheers.

Polisena then showed the children and teachers the architect’s rendition of what the Citizens campus will look like upon completion when suddenly a student asked “what are those shovels for?”

There are actually seven shovels – some gold and some silver – that are mounted on Polisena’s “Wall of Fame” that includes pictures of national celebrities, trophies and commendations he has collected during his tenure.

He explained that the shovels are used at ground-braking ceremonies and what that type of event means, he also showed a photo of the ceremony at the Citizens Campus.

The mayor then told the group that “our town needs to build a new school complex sooner than later but we cannot do so unless we receive the proper funding … we’ll need to fund a big piece of the project and our Governor (Gina Raimondo) wants to develop a plan for all cities and towns in the state to make schools better.”

There were other questions like “how do you help the people of Johnston” and “what are your duties?”

To which the Mayor responded: “I try to comprise, but most importantly, I never lie to people. You can’t tell someone you’ll do something if you can’t; you must be honest with everyone.”