Recognizing that significant and rapid improvements in public education would not occur under the current educational system, in 2007, Mayor Daniel McKee of Cumberland organized a coalition of mayors who wanted to see dramatically different educational outcomes for the young residents of their cities and towns. Drawing from McKee’s graduate work at Harvard’s Kennedy School, the mayors called for major improvements in their cities’ education systems in order to increase the academic achievement, graduation and college going rates of Rhode Island youth. As an initial step of their action plan, they commissioned a report from Public Impact, a national education policy and research organization, to frame the problem, present context data, and offer an analysis of potential leverage points for change. In this report, renowned scholar Bryan Hassel outlined a strategy whereby a coalition of mayors could build a high-performing, regional public charter school network.

Implementing their action plan required a change in state law and prompted a wide range of community, corporatate, and philanthropic leaders to join the mayors in their focused plan for change. The result was the 2008 Mayoral Academies legislation, which enabled Rhode Island mayors to create the first network of public schools led by a coalition of municipal leaders. Change in state law enabled the mayors to create a network of regional high-performing public schools by acting through a nonprofit organization. RIMA is that nonprofit organization. This legislation and accompanying network serves as a model that can be implemented by mayors across the country eager to find ways to transform public education with existing resources.