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Leadership takes Adelaide High to a new level
Posted Wednesday, July 2, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — In August, Adelaide High School principal Robbie Torchon was assigned a daunting task: to create a new high school out of whole cloth.
Torchon’s job was to imbue the building with meaning — to create a sense of community, a shared mission, where there was none. This was no easy task because the 600 students and the staff were plucked from high schools all over the district. Many of the students, however, came from Harrison Street, a shell of a high school where students and staff felt abandoned.
When school opened, Torchon hit the ground running. He divided the student body into teams of 130 and assigned each teacher to one of five teams, which focused on school climate, data assessment, rules and regulations, a teachers’ handbook and curriculum. On Fridays, the faculty was freed up for one period to discuss the school’s progress.
Torchon runs his building with military-like precision. During a fire drill, he timed how long it took students to leave and reenter the building. He speaks with tremendous authority and passion. Recently, Torchon reflected on what the school has accomplished in its first year and the challenges that still remain.
“The biggest challenge of the year?” he said. “Learning to be patient. I was too quick to implement too many things.”
Without missing a beat, he added, “Next year, I will make sure that 100 percent of the faculty buys into my vision. I will create an appeal from the heart.”
One of the biggest challenges this year was getting teachers to take leadership roles. According to Torchon, teachers were accustomed to an adversarial relationship with administrators. Torchon upended that approach by asking faculty teams to develop their own expertise and make recommendations to the entire faculty.
One team looked at suspension data and discovered that student misbehavior rose immediately before and after vacation. Teachers also found a direct relationship between the quality of classroom instruction and behavior in the classroom. Teachers who were highly engaged had the fewest student behavior problems.
The team met with Torchon and recommended that administrators use suspension as a last resort. This represented a sea change, Torchon said, because teachers typically clamor for disruptive students to be removed from the classroom, not kept in school.
Starting this fall, disruptive students will attend focus groups, where a team of teachers and guidance counselors will help them learn how to address their behavior. The school staff will get an assist from a member of the community who works with at-risk students and who talks with them about anger management and conflict management.
“We’re already seeing a ripple effect on attendance,” Torchon said. “We have an 82-percent attendance rate but we’re aiming for 92 percent.”
Torchon also asked the faculty to think of rituals that would make the school more welcoming to students, teachers and parents. His mantra, repeated at staff meetings and school events, went something like this:
“This is your building, your community. You are no longer guests here, you are hosts. Your diploma’s value will be based on the impressions people have of your school.”
As the year progressed, Adelaide High School began to create its own traditions, which were designed to foster a feeling of shared purpose. On Fridays, students invited their peers from The Met, E{+3} and Central High School to spend an hour or two playing basketball and volleyball. Nothing breaks down barriers between rival groups better than sports, Torchon said, especially when the teams are a mixture of students from different neighborhoods.
“We can invite other schools to get to know each other,” he said. “We have a responsibility to make sure we’re welcoming to one another.”
Adelaide also holds an academic celebration every quarter to recognize honor-roll students. Perhaps because the event is more celebratory than cerebral, it attracts 200 parents, a huge turnout for any urban school. The celebrations are popular, in part because they feature the food of a particular culture. But they are also serious. At each celebration, parents receive a mini-lesson on topics ranging from the senior project to the new statewide assessments.
“We eat together and then we talk,” Torchon said. “We try to alleviate that parental anxiety, that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling that happens when you walk into school knowing you’re going to hear something bad.”
This fall, the International Institute will offer classes to parents on the Adelaide campus, including English as a second language and courses leading to a GED. The institute, which is a clearinghouse for new arrivals to the United States, will also offer Spanish language classes to teachers.
“This suggestion came from the climate and culture committee,” Torchon said. “It’s an example of an idea bubbling from the bottom up.”
Thanks to suggestions from staff, Adelaide has also adopted a fresh approach to parent-teacher conferences. Instead of the typical five-minute meetings with teachers, parents will now be able to make an appointment with a guidance counselor; together, the counselor and parent will discuss how to improve the student’s academic performance.
Adelaide has also developed an academic probation program. Once a month, teachers from the core subjects in each team meet to discuss students who are in danger of failing. Any teen on academic probation must sign up for extra help after school. This year, those students were not eligible to participate in sports, but that policy will change in September.
Why? Because the data team decided that students who are trying to improve their grades shouldn’t be penalized while working toward improvement.
John Craig, one of two assistant principals at Adelaide, said he has never worked for such an inspirational leader, adding this has been his best year in Providence. As Craig put it, “Robbie Torchon isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.”
Torchon said he doesn’t spend much time alone in his office. He’s out in the corridors, popping into classrooms, handling discipline issues and meeting with parents.
“It’s leadership by doing,” he said.
Providence School Department may change financial practices
Posted Tuesday, July 1, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The School Department manages 26 separate health insurances packages. It operates four different payroll cycles. And it processes more than 17,000 benefit checks for former employees.
According to Mark Dunham, the department’s chief financial officer, some employees are paid weekly and some are paid bi-monthly. Complicating matters further, some employees choose to be paid 52 times a year while others choose to have their salaries spread over 42 weeks — the length of the school year.
At least one School Board member, Ronnie Young, called the multi-tiered payroll system “an obvious waste of money,” and asked why the department structured the payroll that way. Dunham said that union contracts dictate part of the schedule and added that the district has had some conversation with the teachers’ union about streamlining this system.
Although he didn’t have any estimates, Dunham agreed with board member Robert Wise that placing everyone on a bi-monthly payroll would significantly reduce overtime costs accrued by School Department staff.
The department processes 127,085 payroll checks a year, which translates into 15,885 checks handled by each payroll employee. His staff also processes 1,437 retirement benefits and 17,244 benefit checks, at considerable time and expense to the district. And Dunham said that he is in the process of talking to the state retirement board about taking over this responsibility.
The discussion over payroll systems occurred during a presentation by Dunham that detailed how the district’s Finance Department functions.
School Board member Rosanna Castro asked why the budget was driven by contractual obligations rather than programs. She referred to a recent audit by a private consultant, Phi Delta Kappa, which concluded that the budget does not reflect curriculum priorities, nor does it lay out a series of scenarios for bare-bones funding, desirable funding and optimum funding.
While Dunham agreed with the audit’s findings in theory, he said that the severe budget constraints under which Providence has been operating recently has prevented the department from using the budget to drive student improvement.
Meanwhile, the budget deficit is something of a moving target. After the School Board failed to approve a 2008-2009 budget, Mayor David N. Cicilline submitted a $319.9-million budget to the City Council, $6.7 million short of what Dunham said was needed to meet the district’s expenses.
Late last month, the General Assembly awarded an additional $3.5 million to the district, but state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters warned districts not to count on getting all of that aid because it is contingent on additional overnight gambling revenues from the Twin River casino, which is dealing with its own financial crisis.
“We’re trying to survive,” Dunham said. “There is no [local] money for student enhancement, no money for intervention. There is nothing left to cut, no money left to be had.”
Providence, however, does get some money from the state Department of Education to provide additional resources to schools that have consistently failed to make annual yearly progress. It also receives federal Title 1 monies, which are awarded to schools with large numbers of children living in poverty. But the federal dollars can only be used to pay for supplemental services; it can’t be used to pay for supplies, building repairs or teacher salaries.
The scale of the School Department budget became clear during last night’s workshop. The school budget is the largest municipal budget in the state. It manages 40 grants totaling $46.6 million and those monies are distributed to nearly 100 schools — more than half of them private or parochial schools. No matter where a Providence student attends school, that student is eligible for a variety of federal grants, some keyed to poverty.
The district not only administers these grants, it also must send staff to each of these non-public schools twice a year.
Providence high school principal leaving for job in Scituate
Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Michael Sollitto, the principal of Mount Pleasant High School, said he is taking a similar job in Scituate because of the constant turnover at the top in the Providence schools.
Sollitto, who was appointed principal of the 1,500-student school a year ago, is considered one of the district’s most promising new leaders, so much so that both Mayor David N. Cicilline and incoming Supt. Thomas Brady called and asked him to reconsider his decision to resign.
But Sollitto, who is leaving Providence after 14 years to become principal of Scituate High School, said their kind words weren’t enough to persuade him to change his mind.
“The number-one reason I left is that it’s not very stable here,” Sollitto said in an interview yesterday. “There have been six superintendents here in the last 14 years. And there has been a high turnover of staff.”
Sollitto said it’s difficult for school principals to set a course when the district’s mission keeps shifting with each new superintendent. Under former Supt. Melody Johnson, for example, teachers taught English using a lot of original texts. Under outgoing Supt. Donnie Evans, teachers who work with struggling readers have been asked to rely on a specific curriculum that spells out exactly what should be taught and when.
“I’m not leaving because I’m bitter,” Sollitto said. “I was happy at Mount Pleasant. I loved the faculty, the staff and the kids. But this kind of opportunity doesn’t come up very often.”
Sollitto is part of a larger exodus of administrative talent from Providence. This summer, five administrators are resigning or retiring: Sollitto; Nicolau Amaral, an assistant principal at Central High School; Lucille Furia, principal of William D’Abate Elementary School; and Cheryl Gomes, principal of Classical High School. In addition, Brian Baldizar is stepping down as principal of E{+3} Academy, one of the city’s new smaller high schools.
Last summer, two principals and three assistant principals, including the principal of Mount Pleasant, Maureen Crisafulli, and an assistant principal of Mount Pleasant, Michelle Natalizia, resigned or retired.
But Providence school spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly said that these numbers aren’t unusual given the size of the district, which has 36 schools and 2,600 teachers. Of the 78 administrators who work in school buildings, only 5 percent left last year and 6 percent left this year, O’Reilly said.
“Of course, we are sad to see any [highly qualified] administrator leave,” she said, “but these numbers are part of the natural course of organizational turnover. This is not something that will disrupt the continuing delivery of education in Providence.”
Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers Union, disagrees. Since 2000-2001, only three administrators still occupy their original positions, he said.
“There have been an unprecedented number of administrators retiring or leaving for other districts,” Smith said. “The district has to rethink leadership structure in the schools. It has to create leadership positions for teachers. If you feel you’re not going to be promoted, you will take your skills elsewhere. The district has to get better about how it treats its employees. People don’t feel valued.”
Actually, the district does have a path of promoting teacher-leaders, the Aspiring Principals Program, which pairs teachers with experienced principals in addition to the requirement that they take specific courses.
Nationally, two trends are converging to produce a high turnover of school administrators: the baby boomers are retiring in force and the federal No Child Left Behind law is putting more pressure on novice principals, who no longer have the luxury of growing into their jobs.
“Not only are we seeing more retirements, we’re seeing a lot of movement, only some of which is voluntary,” said John Nori, director of program development for the National Association of Secondary Principals. “And the urban schools seem to be impacted to a greater degree.”
Commissioner says progress in city schools inadequate
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Although the Providence schools are starting to improve, far too many are still failing to make adequate yearly progress, according to Peter McWalters, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education.
“We congratulate your central office, the leadership of these schools and their faculties for their efforts on behalf of students,” McWalters wrote in a recent letter to Supt. Donnie Evans. “Balancing this progress however, too many of your schools continue to miss their performance targets year after year.”
Seven schools are no longer classified as needing intervention under the federal No Child Left Behind law and six more are due to come off that list next year if they meet all of their performance targets for a second consecutive year, McWalters said. The state Department of Education declined to release the names of the schools because the classifications have not yet been made public.
More than 40 percent of the district’s schools are low-performing, which puts the entire district in a category called in need of improvement.
In January 2007, McWalters ordered Evans to come up with a “corrective action” plan for improving the lowest-performing schools or face state intervention. With guidance from McWalters’ office, Evans submitted a plan that introduced a new math curriculum for struggling students in elementary and middle school, added reading classes in middle school, and conducted a review of the School Department’s central office to help staff become more effective in improving student achievement.
When he issued the order, McWalters made it clear that this would be a multi-year process whose results would be reviewed on a yearly basis. Although the district was successful in implementing many of the plan’s programs, McWalters said that the school system still has a lot of work to do.
In a recent interview, he acknowledged that the district faces huge financial challenges, but he also said that neither the lack of money nor the absence of contract language would be acceptable excuses. He also said that the timing of his letter is intentional, because he knows that the district is in the middle of teacher contract negotiations whose outcome could affect issues that the state has identified as barriers to improvement.
McWalters, in his latest order, said the district needs to make the following changes:
•Develop a method to ensure teacher stability and for assigning highly effective teachers to the neediest students, especially in schools identified as low-performing. This requirement is a holdover from the original order.
•Implement personnel policies that retain highly trained middle school intervention teachers, district assistant team members and elementary literacy and math coaches.“This stabilization effort,” McWalters wrote, “must include both the elimination of undue annual turnover of staff through seniority-based hiring practices and the continued use of interview-based hiring for vacancies within these three critical positions.”
The district currently relies on seniority to fill positions. For example, if a sixth-grade science position is open, the teacher with the most seniority has the first shot at that job, provided he or she has the appropriate certification.
Evans agrees that the district “needs to assign teachers based on their strengths. But that is a contractual issue. “Can [McWalters] override the contract? Federal law says he can but he would have to proceed with great caution,” Evans said.
Evans said that he would not move to override seniority-based hiring without first getting support from McWalters and the teachers’ union. The issue hasn’t been revisited since contract talks, which were on hold earlier this year, resumed.
Meanwhile, Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith wouldn’t get into the specifics of McWalters’ order, except to say that the union is seeking clarification from the Department of Education on some of the language.
Smith, however, did say that the district must create incentives to attract the strongest faculty to low-performing schools and he said that deep and lasting student achievement will not occur unless the district is willing to empower teachers.
“What frustrates me,” Smith said, “is that the letter doesn’t address programs that have been proven to move student achievement, programs like pre-kindergarten and smaller classes in kindergarten through grade 2.”
Smith also said that the state can’t ignore the adverse effect of at least three years of sustained budget cuts, which have led to the loss of 300 teaching positions and caused numerous classroom disruptions.
“We’re in constant conversations with [McWalters],” Smith said. “He’s open to listening to what we have to say.”
Meanwhile, the state’s latest order, also calls for:
•The district to take over all 38 hours of professional teaching training, a move that is bound to run into resistance from principals who are used to developing their own training.
•Ensure that all teachers who are required to implement curriculum interventions receive training this summer. McWalters wrote that this training is especially important for mathematics, where student performance has been stagnant at every level.
•Obtain letters of agreement from every union stating that they will ensure that their members participate in the summer training and support the district’s new curriculum and programs. This requirement was also listed in last year’s order.
•Fill key positions in the district’s central office, including director of teaching and learning, supervisor of career and technical education, supervisor of secondary school reform, supervisor of mathematics and supervisor of science.
•Provide federal Title 1 monies to high schools, which Providence has already agreed to do. Title 1 monies are specifically allocated to high-poverty schools to pay for instructional programs other than salaries and building improvements.
Last summer, Evans developed an intervention plan for the middle schools, including the creation of student advisories and common planning time for teachers, but the district was unable to implement those reforms because of budget constraints, according to school spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly.
McWalters expects the district to respond with a detailed plan by the beginning of the school year, and he said that if the district doesn’t comply with the order’s conditions, he will get more aggressive in terms of intervening in the way the schools are run and organized.
State certifies Brady as next school superintendent
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Thomas M. Brady has been approved by the state Department of Education to receive his certification as a superintendent in Rhode Island, according to a department spokesman.
Brady, who is interim superintendent of the Philadelphia school district, is now fully certified to take over as the city’s new leader on July 14.
Originally, state and local officials thought that Brady, who has taken an unorthodox path to the superintendency, would need a waiver from the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education. But Peter McWalters, commissioner of elementary and secondary education, told the regents last week that no action from them was necessary because Brady has the credentials to meet the requirements for state certification.
After 25 years in the Army, Brady retired and was appointed chief executive officer of the Fairfax-Va., school district. In 2004, he enrolled in the nationally recognized Broad Center, which trains military and private sector CEOs to become urban school leaders. Although Brady doesn’t have a graduate or a master’s degree in education, his year-long internship at Broad apparently meets that requirement. The state educators’ certification office is also giving Brady credit for teaching at the college level.
In March, Mayor David N. Cicilline announced Brady’s appointment just a week after Supt. Donnie Evans said that he planned to step down at the end of his three-year contract in September. Evans is a finalist for the superintendent’s job in Cincinnati, Ohio.
State will maintain control over Hope High
Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Hope High School will remain under the authority of state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, a decision that is bound to please the principals and teachers at the once-troubled high school.
McWalters’ decision means that the district will not be able to tamper with the way the school is organized. Hope will continue to operate as three smaller learning academies, the school will have control over teacher recruitment and hiring and student advisory periods will be retained.
But McWalters’ new order goes even further, replacing traditional department heads at every high school in the district with teacher-leaders, who are responsible for training teachers, providing model classrooms and otherwise acting in a leadership role. Hope introduced these positions three years ago when McWalters imposed his original order for corrective action.
“The continuance of department chair positions at this time is counterproductive to achieving the new vision for all Providence high schools,” McWalters wrote in his letter to Supt. Donnie Evans. “All job specifications for these new teacher-leader positions shall be forwarded to the commissioner for approval prior to beginning the interview and selection process.”
Under state and federal law, McWalters has the authority to intervene in schools and districts that are chronically under-performing. Because more than 40 percent of its schools have been consistently low-performing, Providence is classified as a district in need of improvement, which can trigger intervention by the commissioner.
“At the time that Hope was put under state order, it was the only school that warranted such intervention,” said Mary Canole, director of the state Department of Education’s office of progressive support and intervention. “Now you have three other high schools — Mount Pleasant, Central and Feinstein — that are in restructuring.”
A school in need of restructuring means it hasn’t made annual yearly progress for six consecutive years. With those schools, the district or the state has the authority to replace the staff, place the school under private or state control or reopen it as a charter school.
Canole said it isn’t unusual for the state to review applications for positions paid for with federal money. The state Department of Education has targeted federal money to schools that are consistently under-achieving.
Canole, however, couldn’t say whether the state order will run afoul of the Providence teachers’ contract, which includes department head positions.
The new order recognizes the considerable progress that Hope has made since McWalters intervened three years ago, but says that the school has a long way to go in terms of student performance, graduation rates and attendance.
In 2005, McWalters set specific conditions for Hope because the school was beset with abysmally low test scores, a high dropout rate and significant discipline problems. Three years later, the commissioner wants to move student achievement at all of its high schools, Canole said. In other words, the district must bring the positive improvements at Hope to scale.
The challenge is how the district can boost the performance of all high schools without losing ground at Hope.
“Some of the things in the original order were implemented very successfully,” said Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the state Department of Education. “Are the results there yet? No. There are still problems with the test scores and attendance.
“There is a different need today,” he said. “What needs to be solved now has to be solved at the district level.”
“We don’t want to lose what Hope has,” Canole added. “That’s the reason the school remains under [McWalter’s] authority.”
McWalters decided to keep Hope under his authority because he said he felt that neither the school — nor the district — has the capacity to support the kinds of change that would lead to even greater success, especially in academic achievement.
“Do they have the staffing they need?” Canole said. “Do they have the budget to pull this off? We already know that they don’t have the technology they need.”
That said, Hope will no longer get a separate line item from the state. Canole said that the progressive support and intervention money will now go to the district, which presumably will have greater latitude in how the federal money is doled out.
There is one other significant change in the commissioner’s new order. Before, the district had little control over Hope’s curriculum. Now, the district will have total authority over every high school’s curriculum because Evans is moving toward a uniform curriculum for all core academic subjects, Canole said.
Hope, she said, will continue to have control over curricula for each of its three smaller theme-based academies: leadership, arts and information technology.
Reaction to the order was muted yesterday because school officials, including Evans, said they hadn’t had a chance to review the conditions, released late Tuesday.
“If it’s back to the old order, we welcome it,” said Arthur Petrosinelli, one of three principals at Hope. “We want to stay under the commissioner’s order. We’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go.”
This winter, Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers Union, testified in favor of keeping Hope under the commissioner’s order. Yesterday, he said that he was pleased with the decision, although he wanted his staff to scrutinize the details.
The new order stems from a show-cause hearing that the commissioner held in February to consider whether Hope should remain under state intervention or be returned to district control.
Numerous speakers, including the school’s principals, argued that the high school was able to turn itself around precisely because of the state’s intervention order.
Staff testified that during the past three years, Hope has moved from a chaotic environment to an orderly one. Student advisory periods are beginning to build bonds between students and their teacher-advisor, individual learning plans spell out each student’s academic goals and effective partnerships have been developed with local universities and businesses.
But Evans urged McWalters to weigh the needs of one school against the needs of the district. Today, he said, the entire district, not just Hope, is listed as being in corrective action.
State allows Brady to head schools in Providence
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The state Department of Education has determined that prospective superintendent Thomas M. Brady is eligible to receive a superintendent’s certificate, according to a spokesman for the education commissioner.
Yesterday, the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education was supposed to vote on whether to grant Brady a waiver from the required certificate, but Commissioner Peter McWalters told the board that no action was necessary because Brady apparently has the credentials to satisfy the state regulations for school superintendents.
The state educators’ certification office has yet to approve Brady’s request for certification, but Education Department spokesman Elliot Krieger said he expects that the board will act quickly since Brady is scheduled to arrive here in mid-July.
“The regents don’t have to do anything,” Krieger said yesterday. “The certification office has to review the waiver. Brady does seem to meet the qualifications.”
Brady, who is interim superintendent of the Philadelphia school district, has a nontraditional resumé. After a 25-year career in the Army, Brady was appointed chief executive officer of the Fairfax, Va., school district. In 2004, he enrolled in the Broad Center, a nationally recognized program that trains military and private CEOs to become urban school leaders. The state Department of Education apparently considers the one-year Broad program as roughly equivalent to a graduate degree in education.
The state certification office is also giving Brady credit for teaching at the college level, although the certificate calls for teaching in a public school. Brady also has extensive management experience, both in the military and in urban education.
Brady was chosen in March to be superintendent a week after Supt. Donnie Evans announced that he would step down in September.
The regents postponed acting on the waiver last week because the certification office hadn’t had the opportunity to review Brady’s credentials. A special regents’ meeting was convened yesterday to revisit the request, which came from Mayor David N. Cicilline.
Board of Regents delays action on superintendent waiver for Brady
Posted Friday, June 6, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education has postponed acting on a request to grant the city’s prospective superintendent, Thomas M. Brady, a waiver from the state’s superintendent certificate.
Brady, who is interim superintendent of the Philadelphia school district, meets most of the state requirements with two exceptions: he hasn’t attended a formal graduate program in education, nor has he taught in a public school.
Mayor David R. Cicilline, who was instrumental in bringing Brady to Providence, requested the waiver on the grounds that Brady has more than enough experience, given his 25 years of military service and his decade-long career in top management positions in large urban public schools.
The postponement does not signal that Brady’s appointment is in trouble, according to Regents Chairman Robert G. Flanders, who said that the board tabled its decision until the office of the state commissioner of education thoroughly reviews Brady’s credentials.
“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t do this hastily,” Flanders said yesterday. “He has a very impressive background. The regents wanted the staff to take the time to go through his credentials thoroughly and come back with a report concerning what specifics in his background, or lack thereof, need to be waived.”
The regents also listened to the concerns cited by Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, who asked the board to think carefully before issuing a waiver because of the message it might send to teachers and administrators who labor hard to maintain their certifications.
“I didn’t testify against Mr. Brady,” Smith said. “I asked the regents to take time to deliberate this process because the Providence School Board did not. The School Board has taken the position that this is a formality. What would the School Board’s reaction be if teachers were not certified? I was reacting to calls I received from administrators expressing their concern, as well as their disappointment that they didn’t have the opportunity to apply for the job.”
Brady was appointed by the School Board in March a week after Supt. Donnie Evans announced that he would step down in September. Smith and others criticized the process, arguing that it was done behind closed doors without input from the union or the public.
“Steve put them on the spot,” said state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters. “They were about to give a waiver to me without me having the full opportunity to review it.”
McWalters said his office didn’t receive Brady’s complete résumé until Wednesday. McWalter’s staff completed its review yesterday morning and a special regents meeting has been scheduled for Monday at 3 p.m. to act on the waiver. McWalters said that he doesn’t anticipate a problem with the request.
“Here’s a guy with a master’s degree in human resources,” McWalters said, “years of military training, and he’s run a school system bigger than our entire state. He has taught in college but not in elementary or secondary school. We will say that publicly. But his experience in teaching and management, all of those things that the district needs, is perfect.”
Brady began his formal career in education in 1999, when he was appointed chief executive officer of the Fairfield, Va., school district. In 2004, he enrolled in the Broad Center, a nationally known program that trains private and military CEOs to become leaders of large urban school districts. The intensive one-year program has produced a number of urban school superintendents and is considered to be the equivalent of an advanced academic program.
Council wants people to vote on electing School Board
Posted Friday, June 6, 2008
By Daniel Barbarisi
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The School Board holds a unique distinction in Rhode Island: it is the sole appointed board, with members selected by the mayor, rather than elected by the people.
Some on the Providence City Council think that the rest of the state might have the right idea; council members have sponsored an ordinance that would replace the appointed School Board with an elected one, through an amendment to the City Charter.
The change would require voter approval, and if the full City Council approves the resolution, the question would be placed on the November ballot. A simple majority of voters is required to make the switch.
“We don’t believe that the board, as it stands now, is accountable to the people,” said majority leader Terrence M. Hassett, one of four co-sponsors of the resolution.
“We believe that middle management is top heavy. Test scores are down. The School Department itself, our school system has major problems … There has to be a drastic and substantial change, that way the board will be accountable to the people,” Hassett said.
Councilman Luis Aponte, also a co-sponsor, said that removing the School Board from the mayor and the council’s approval would add needed autonomy to the system. Committee members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council, Aponte said, will never be wholly independent.
“That cannot create an independent climate whereby folks can be the kind of independent advocates that our children need,” Aponte said.
The City Council and the School Board have long butted heads on a variety of issues, but the fighting has intensified in recent months.
Council members have hammered the district on school performance, the communication with the council and recently, on its performance and accountability during the Dec. 13 snowstorm. Several called for the removal of Supt. Donnie Evans and others on the council have consistently opposed the appointment of School Board Chairwoman Mary McClure.
McClure could not be reached for comment last night.
A report released last week, however, charged that City Council interference is part of what is bringing the Providence school system down. The council, according to consultant James A. Scott, has trampled on the School Board’s authority by interfering in the superintendent’s efforts to reorganize his top staff.
“That’s interference, plain and simple,” Scott told the School Board last week. “If you’re going to hold someone accountable, you have to let them do their thing.”
City Councilman John J. Lombardi took offense to those characterizations, saying that providing fiscal oversight is at the heart of what the City Council does.
“They were basically telling the council, ‘do not do your job,’ ” Lombardi said. “We really need to do something about this.”
Hassett agreed, saying that the release of the report is just one more reason why this is the right time to change things at the School Department.
As it stands now, a School Board nominating commission accepts applications from potential members and forwards them to the mayor. The mayor makes his recommendations to the City Council, which ratifies his appointments.
Board members serve three-year terms.
Mayor David N. Cicilline could not be reached for comment late yesterday afternoon. It is not known whether he would support or oppose the resolution, and Hassett said he has not yet spoken to the mayor about the proposal.
Even if the mayor opposes it, Hassett said, the council will try to go forward anyway.
“We’re at a breaking point where something has to happen,” he said. “I think it will actually gain traction in the community, because I think people don’t think the School Department is accountable.”
The measure has been sent to a committee of the council and will get a hearing soon. Councilmen Nicholas J. Narducci and Miguel Luna also co-sponsored the resolution.
Central at West Broadway
Posted Friday, June 6, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — If necessity is the mother of invention, then the ninth graders at the former West Broadway Elementary School are a lucky bunch.
What began as an act of desperation (where do you put 200 students while their school is being torn apart?) turned into a model school arrangement that is earning praise from students and staff alike.
Last summer, over the staunch protest of parents and neighbors, West Broadway Elementary School was closed because its lack of exits violated the fire code. In the fall, it re-opened as a temporary home for ninth graders from Central High School and Hanley Career & Technical Center. Both schools are in the midst of wholesale renovations.
At the beginning of the school year, everyone was worried that the freshmen at West Broadway would feel isolated from the “mother ship,” as one teacher refers to Central, a few blocks away on Westminster Street.
What happened took everyone by surprise. Instead of feeling cut off from Central, the ninth graders bonded, creating a community in which they were not only the new kids on the block but the big kids on campus.
“The small size has created a positive culture,” said Bianca Gray, a teacher. “This is a happy little group. It has a different tone. I think it’s a combination of leadership and size.”
The school’s two principals, Ramone Torres and Michael Marino, went out of their way to welcome incoming freshmen and help them stay connected to the main campus, where the extracurricular activities are held. Before the students arrived, the principals invited families to attend an open house where they explained why their children were attending school in an elementary building.
“We embraced them,” Gray said of the students. “We made them feel important.”
Recently, students in three classrooms talked frankly about the pros and cons of a ninth grade academy. Many students said they have gotten to know their teachers better, while others said they feel more secure in a cosseted setting such as West Broadway.
“I love my teachers,” said Daphney Pierre. “This gave us a chance to get to know all of the freshmen.”
“The transition was easier because it’s smaller,” Ariel Betanes said. “I never got lost here.”
Not everyone was sold on the experience, however.
April Comissiong complained that ninth grade “felt the same as middle school. We didn’t have a high school experience because we’re not with high school students.”
Tatiana Ramirez took issue with the dating pool:
“When you’re 13,” she said, “you want to meet the cute high school boys. You want to be with someone more mature. I can’t deal with these little boys.”
A couple of students attended West Broadway Elementary as children and said this year felt like taking a step back.
“Socially, we’re disabled,” one girl said. “You feel left out.”
Perhaps because the students feel more connected to teachers and one another, fighting has been virtually nonexistent at West Broadway. Rather than suspend students for skipping school, Torres meets with parents, a conversation that would be more difficult to arrange in a school with 1,000 students.
The size also allows the school to be more flexible. Recently, students from Michael Colannino’s English class dressed up and had lunch at the Old Canteen, a Federal Hill landmark. Torres treated the students to a fancy lunch because they put on a special performance for Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Rose, who spoke to students about gang violence earlier in the year.
The transition from middle school to high school is one of the most difficult in a child’s life. Suddenly, students are jumping from a familiar environment to a much larger and more anonymous setting, where the pace is faster, the students bigger and the demands on teachers are greater.
At West Broadway, a handsome brick building nestled in a neighborhood of restored Victorians, there is no place to hide, no place to get lost. Teachers know when a student is missing; the principals know which students are the troublemakers and which are having problems at home.
The size of the student body also makes it easier for teachers to collaborate with one another, something that English teachers Jane Moody and Dan Lilley do all of the time. “It’s a joy to come in every day and work on something new,” Lilley said.
A couple of teachers are so taken with the new arrangement that they think it should serve as a model for a new kind of high school, a ninth grade academy, perhaps.
“I love my penthouse apartment,” Moody said, referring to her view of the treetops. “I don’t want to leave. “
The scale of the school has also allowed teachers to reach out to students in new ways. Lilley routinely has lunch with a bunch of students from his class. Because the cafeteria is designed for pint-sized students, Torres allows students to eat outside in nice weather.
“I’ve always been in favor of smaller learning communities,” said Colannino. “There’s a greater sense of community and you get to know your students.”
Teachers also say that they are more willing to go the extra mile because the students are committed to getting the extra help they need. Torres routinely stays until 4 p.m. so ninth graders can play basketball on the school grounds.
With only 200 students, everything from instruction to detention is much more personal. During detention, students write about why they misbehaved instead of doing busy work.
Torres is taking full advantage of the school’s unique status: he’s surveying students to find out how the school lunch is working, and he’s asking teachers to tell him how he could be a more effective leader. He even invites teachers to visit “master” teachers’ classrooms to see how they manage classroom behavior or teach different levels of readers.
Because of its size, Central at West Broadway is also able to be a better neighbor. When a neighbor complained that students were generating trash and scrawling graffiti, Torres spoke to some of his students and they decided to power-wash the neighbor’s fence and paint the rusting iron railing in front of the school.
“Sometimes,” Gray said, “transitions are all about relationships.”
Next year, the school will house about 280 9th and 10th graders from Hanley while the remodeling continues.
Consultants say school district is in ‘bad shape’
Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A private consultant released a scathing report on the school district last night and said that unless changes are made in the way it does business, students, especially boys and minorities, will never catch up with their more privileged peers.
“Your district is in pretty bad shape,” the consultant, James A. Scott, told the School Board last night. “Your district is the most challenging district I’ve seen.”
The team of consultants, who visited the district in February, concluded that interference by the City Council is one of the biggest challenges facing the schools. Scott said that the council has repeatedly undermined Supt. Donnie Evans’ legal authority to reorganize his top staff.
On one occasion, John J. Igliozzi, chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, asked Evans for the resumes of several administrators that the superintendent wanted to appoint, clearly flouting Evans’ authority, Scott said. On another occasion, the council told Evans he couldn’t make certain appointments.
“That’s interference, plain and simple,” Scott said. “If you’re going to hold someone accountable, you have to let them do their thing.”
In his report, the consultants wrote that the superintendent has four bosses: the School Board, the mayor, the City Council and the state. In the future, Scott urged the School Board to shield the superintendent from this kind of meddling by outside forces.
The bulk of the audit focused on the curriculum. The consultants found that the city has no clear and consistent curriculum across schools, yet students are tested to determine if they have mastered “the curriculum.”
Of the 501 courses offered by the district, only 174 have curriculum guides. A lot of material is being taught without any guidance from a curriculum, which means that there is little consistency from one school to another, a big issue in a district with high student mobility rates.
One of the reasons why Providence doesn’t have a curriculum is because of the high turnover in superintendents and principals. The city has had five superintendents in nine years, including Evans, who announced that he would be leaving the district when his contract expires in September. Ten out of 20 principals have less than two years on the job and 6 out of the 10 have less than one year of service.
“The board needs to make a long-term commitment to a superintendent,” Scott said. “This constant churning is detrimental to students and it is wearing on teachers. Many of them told me, ‘We’re just worn out.’ ”
Why is a uniform curriculum such a challenge?
Because the school system doesn’t have enough central office staff to not only develop a systemwide curriculum, but also evaluate how it is taught.
“There are a lot of chiefs and secretaries,” Scott said, “but no one in between. Key positions in math and science have gone unfilled. That’s why your math scores are so poor.”
Scott said there are several ways Providence can get a curriculum: write one, buy one, get someone to donate one or a combination of each. Because the district is facing a $6-million deficit, he suggested Providence consider “borrowing” a curriculum from another school system.
The district also lacks an effective way to evaluate teachers and administrators. Administrators, for example, can select which subject they want to be evaluated on. Tenured teachers can satisfy performance goals by writing a paper on a topic of their choosing.
At the current rate of progress, Providence will never be able to close the achievement gaps between minority students and those who are more advantaged. The consultants also found that Hispanic, black and male students are under-represented in academically advanced programs and over-represented in terms of suspensions.
The consultants recommended that the district establish a core curriculum, recruit minority teachers to fill shortages and review the selection process for academically advanced programs.
The human resources office also came under fire. The office is ineffective, Scott said. There are no job descriptions for 43 percent of the department’s employees. The consultants suggested that the district consider turning over its human resources department to the city because the district has already had seven years of ineffective leadership.
On the positive side, the consultants liked Evans’ strategic plan and urged the School Board to stick with it when the new superintendent comes in. In light of the current budget crisis, however, the school district needs to be more realistic about its technology plan and the proposed $790-million school facilities plan.
“The master plan is very good, but it hasn’t been funded,” Scott said of the facilities plan. “Get to the critical issues first. You need a maintenance plan. Some of your schools are in terrible shape. I saw a school where the bathroom was leaking into the cafeteria.”
Scott concluded by saying that Providence is in trouble.
“You can’t put a new superintendent in every two years,” he said. “It’s bad for the city and the students.”
Parent details supplies left behind at middle school
Posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A Catholic school parent said Nathan Bishop Middle School was full of new desks, chairs and paperback books when she visited the school two weeks ago.
“I am appalled that the City of Providence has let very useful items sit for two years in a closed school without dispersing them,” parent Julie LeBlanc wrote in a recent e-mail. “I have seen multiple classrooms full of brand new student desks. Several pianos! Rooms full of chairs. Rooms full of book shelves. Not to mention … student files with addresses still sitting in file cabinets.”
LeBlanc, whose child attends a Catholic school in Warwick, said she visited the school May 13 after the Diocese of Providence sent a memo to Catholic schools alerting them that furniture and supplies were available for the taking.
“Everything was up for grabs,” LeBlanc said in a phone interview yesterday. “Art supplies still in the box. Boxes of paper clips and envelopes. Overheard projector screens. A closet full of computers. I was flabbergasted by the whole situation.”
School officials, however, say that the district took extensive measures to ensure that usable supplies, equipment and furniture were moved out and provided to other schools or stored.
According to a report by Mark Dunham, the district’s chief financial officer, math and English teachers visited Bishop during the summer of 2006 to determine which books, paper and office supplies should be sent to other middle schools. Classroom furniture was removed and 189 computers were sent to several elementary schools.
Expensive audio-visual equipment and some office supplies were removed during the same time period.
“Because the actual future of the building was unknown at the close of the summer of 2006,” Dunham wrote, “the balance of furniture and equipment was left in the building.”
Meanwhile, the school’s locks and security codes were changed to prevent vandalism.
Last summer, School Department staff toured the school building to assess and distribute the rest of the inventory, Dunham said. School staff spent approximately 1,300 hours boxing and removing books and supplies. In 2007-2008, more than 600 boxes of materials were removed from Bishop and shipped to other schools or to a School Department warehouse, according to the report.
Denise Carpenter, director of the middle level for the district, and Gary Moroch, director of the elementary level, tagged and inventoried items to be saved during an extensive tour of the school in November 2007.
According to Dunham, the items removed from the building included two grand pianos, televisions, VCRs, DVD players, cameras and projectors as well as computers, monitors, printers and other pieces of computer equipment. School staff also removed faucet fixtures, door knobs, hot water condensers from the boiler area and partitions from the bathrooms.
The entire Bishop library was boxed and moved into storage by professionals hired by Gilbane Construction.
In December 2007, the Follett Book Co. assessed the remaining books and determined that most of them were too old to have any value.
“There may have been some new condition textbooks,” Dunham wrote, “but they were not recent publications. Texts that were not used in district schools and had no resale value were left for disposal.”
But LeBlanc tells a different story.
She said she found boxes of brand new novels that were included on the diocese’s summer reading list. And she said Catholic school teachers were thrilled to discover perfectly good fiction in the school’s library.
“We went into classrooms full of books,” LeBlanc said. “There was so much stuff there. There were tables and chairs and a huge rolltop desk with the original knobs. They could have had an auction and supplied an entire school.”
On May 1, the city turned over Nathan Bishop, including any remaining contents, to Agostini Construction, the company hired to perform a $35-million renovation of Bishop.
In his report, however, Dunham said Agostini jumped the gun, contacting the diocese before allowing the district to make a final tour of the building.
After learning of the contractor’s actions, school officials returned to Nathan Bishop on Friday and determined that most of the surplus items weren’t worth saving.
By then, the Catholic schools had already made at least three trips to Nathan Bishop.
On her second visit, LeBlanc said Agostini told her to leave.
“We were going from room to room,” she said, “and we had everything piled up and they said, ‘You can’t take any of that.’ They shut it down.”
When LeBlanc returned to Nathan Bishop for a third time, on Thursday, she said a woman, possibly a parent, blocked the driveway and prevented the Catholic school teachers from leaving. The teachers complied with her request and returned the items to the building.
“It was obvious that the city had gone back in there,” LeBlanc said. “There were big boxes marked Providence. It’s such a sin that they won’t allow anyone to go in. There was an entire cafeteria full of tables. We could have taken those if we had been allowed to carry them off.”
In his report, Dunham said that middle and high school principals will have a chance to look over the Bishop items in storage and take whatever they need.
Students use their voices to good effect at D’Abate school
Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Fifty third graders and fifth graders at William D’Abate Elementary School made history recently: they persuaded their principal to change the lunchroom policy.
The 50 students participated in Project Citizen, a federally funded program that promotes civic engagement by the nation’s elementary and secondary school students. The program, sponsored by the Center for Civic Education, also trains teachers and provides them with a curriculum to teach lessons in civic responsibility.
Two teachers, Carmen Rodriguez and Amy Wood, and two student teachers from Brown University, Abby Berkelhammer and Alyssa Lopes, participated in Project Citizen, which is being used in a dozen schools throughout the district.
After four months of research, including student surveys and interviews with teachers and lunchroom staff, the students presented their findings before a crowd of teachers and parents.
The students were well prepared, using note cards to explain their work. They were well dressed; some of the girls wore long dresses and several of the boys wore ties. And they were confident, speaking in loud, clear voices and looking directly at the audience.
Their performance was so polished, it was hard to believe that these students were in elementary school.
The students, who took the stage in teams, said they brainstormed different issues, including vandalism, bullying, physical education and more time to talk at lunch.
“After a long discussion,” one child said, “we decided that our lunchroom policy needed to be changed.”
At the time, the policy called for students to wait in two lines before getting lunch. No one was allowed to talk until the last student sat down and students had to read when they were finished eating.
After interviewing students and staff, the children reported that 84 percent of the students surveyed said they wanted to change the policy. D’Abate students complained that it took 11 minutes to get their lunch, leaving them with only 10 minutes to eat. The conclusion? The current policy doesn’t allow students enough time to socialize because it takes too long for children to file into the cafeteria.
Research is one thing, results are another.
“We knew that we needed to meet with our principal, Mrs. [Lucille] Furia,” one of the students told the audience. “She is like the president of our school.”
And so the students spoke with faculty members and staff, gathered data and “started to get the lunchroom problem solved.”
The students eventually came up with a new lunchroom policy: students will enter the cafeteria in pairs, play specific games at the table and sit quietly for three minutes before returning to class. Students who misbehaved would be required to sit at a separate “consequence” table and reflect on their actions. As an added incentive, students would have to sign a contract in which they agreed to follow the new rules.
One group made their pitch to the lunchroom staff; another met with their peers and a third group met with the principal. This group used posters to support their findings and described how other schools have handled this issue.
The students defended their decision to revise the lunchroom policy, using terms like “constitutional,” the “common good” and “freedom of speech.”
“Some advantages are that we get more time to socialize,” one child said. “We also think that the silence will get us ready for class and we believe we will have more time to eat.”
Then another child spoke: “Some of the disadvantages are that games could get out of hand. It might get too loud and be difficult to have silence at the three-minute mark.”
The children argued that their policy is constitutional because it treats every student the same way, and it reflects the common good because it tries to keep students and staff safe by considering everyone’s feelings.
“We also have freedom of speech and have our own opinions,” one child said, “because everyone can think what they want when they play and eat.”
The children also had to field questions from two members of Project Citizen, who later praised the children for their poise and their determination. Michael Trofi, a member of the organization, which advocates for civics education, said that it’s unusual for children to get such quick results on their action item.
Asked why she was willing to change school policy, Principal Lucille Furia said, “How could you refuse them?”
School off intervention list
Posted Friday, May 23, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Acting Principal Edward Halpin recently had a surprise visit from two top school administrators bearing good news: Nathanael Greene Middle School has moved off the state’s intervention list.
Two years ago, all seven of the city’s middle schools were classified as making insufficient progress, which means that the schools missed at least one of the 37 academic targets set by the federal No Child Left Behind law.
This year, based on preliminary test data released by the state, 13 Rhode Island schools have made adequate yearly progress and 7 of those schools have made adequate progress for two consecutive years, which removes them from intervention status. Esek Hopkins and Springfield middle schools in the city were also among the 13 statewide making annual yearly progress this year.
Elementary and middle school students across the state are tested every fall to determine if their schools are making adequate yearly progress, a standard set by the state Department of Education. If a school is not making adequate yearly progress, the district, and, in some cases the state, can intervene in ways large and small, from changing instruction to removing the principal.
The Department of Education is in the process of examining test data from a dozen other Providence schools which narrowly missed reaching all of their targets, according to school spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly.
Under NCLB, all schools have until 2012 to bring their students to proficiency. In Rhode Island, the bar that defines proficiency is raised every three years; it was raised this year.
At Greene, which has the district’s only advanced academic program, 61 percent of students were proficient in reading, 50 percent were proficient in math and 41 percent were proficient in writing.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled,” said Halpin. “This is something to celebrate.”
He reflected in an interview on the changes that have contributed to improved student performance on the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP.
In September, the school adopted a new, highly scripted literacy program for struggling readers that gives teachers detailed lesson plans. In addition, struggling readers receive one, and sometimes two, additional hours of literacy instruction.
Greene allows students in its advanced academic program, formerly known as the gifted and talented program, to take a foreign language instead of an additional reading class.
The program calls for frequent testing to make sure that students understand the material; it also provides software that tracks individual test scores in real time, allowing teachers to modify their instruction for those students who haven’t gotten the material.
“Kids are assessed as they finish each unit,” Halpin said. “I can pull up a student’s test score and have a conversation with the teacher about it. It’s made us much more nimble in terms of our ability to tweak instruction.”
Faculty members at Greene are also much better at using test data to pinpoint which students are struggling and why. This summer, teachers received training from a middle school intervention expert on how to analyze test data to help individual students.
“The data can be so overwhelming,” Halpin said. “The coach put it in a package we can understand. He said, ‘Let’s see if this strategy works. If it doesn’t, let’s try something else.’ ”
The school identified the top five questions on the NECAP reading exam that students missed and figured out how to revamp specific lesson plans to fill in those gaps. Every week, students were tested to see if the new lesson plans worked.
Greene also has something called lead teachers, who design professional development around the needs of their faculty. Teachers are generally more responsive when training comes from their peers, rather than an outside expert, and the team is much more familiar with the needs of individual students in a particular school.
“This is real,” Halpin said. “It’s not a group hug.”
Finally, Greene, which has 877 students, has developed something called response to intervention. When a student is struggling academically, the teacher can refer that student to a teacher support team. In some cases, the team decides that the child needs to be placed in special education; in other cases, the team can help the child before he needs to be placed in special education.
The Department of Education is expected to release its annual school rankings later this month.
Hope students are taking to the new graduation requirements
Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — They are understandably nervous, these well-dressed teenagers waiting to sum up four years of academic blood, sweat and tears in 15 minutes.
The students, 190 seniors at Hope High School, recently presented portfolios of their best work before small groups of teachers and class advisers. Some students became teary because it was such a momentous event. Others cried because they never thought that they would get this far. Teachers who had pushed and prodded their students to get to class on time, take the algebra test and finish the essay on Oedipus were equally moved by the spectacle of students talking openly about their high school experience.
Hope is one of more than 50 high schools in Rhode Island whose seniors have to satisfy the state’s new performance-based graduation requirements. Students are no longer able to “walk the stage” simply because they have earned a specific number of credits or sat in class for four years.
Starting with this year’s senior class, students have to demonstrate that they have mastered certain skills such as public speaking, problem-solving and analytical thinking. Seniors have to take, but not pass, the New England Common Assessment, complete a culminating project and earn 24 credits. In this district, seniors also have to pass end-of-course examinations. (The NECAP is a new assessment that is designed to measure school performance more than individual performance at this point.)
In Providence, each high school chose how to measure proficiency. Some schools picked a senior research project, while others, like Hope, selected portfolios. With the help of their adviser, each senior had to select five pieces of their best work, one from each subject.
“It could be a piece of music or an essay in English,” said Becky Coustan, a faculty member at Hope. “A lot of kids talked about how Oedipus related to their lives.”
The student work must reflect the skills and the standards set by the high school. At Hope, seniors have to prove that they made a contribution to the school or the community. Students also had to write an essay summing up their high school experience, a reflective piece designed to illustrate how they have grown during their four years at Hope.
Sharnese Williams wrote a personal reflection that was both thoughtful and heartfelt.
“When I first entered Hope High School, I was a young, confused, scared girl,” she wrote. “I thought it was cool to bunk and slack off in all my classes. Studying was not in my vocabulary at all.”
During the summer following her junior year, Williams participated in the Brown University Summer High School, where she finally recognized the importance of getting good grades.
“Once I started 12th grade, I knew I had to grow up and take responsibility and realize it’s about now, it’s about my future,” she wrote. “I had to realize that my biggest weakness was my laziness. Now I am working my hardest so I can graduate. I am getting As in my math class. I never had an A in math. Now I can say I’m proud of myself.”
After her speech, teachers asked about her goals. Williams said she plans to attend the Community College of Rhode Island next year and then attend a four-year college in preparation for law school.
“I want to help people get the justice they deserve,” she told the team that evaluated her presentation. “I don’t just want law school to be about the money.”
One teacher asked if Williams had any advice for freshmen.
“Listen to your teachers,” she said. “Realize that what you do now affects your future. Be the best that you can be because every moment matters.”
Williams said her mentor was her older sister, who became pregnant when she was young, but went on to graduate from high school, get a job and raise two children. She also took care of Williams.
“She’s her own person,” Williams said. “She doesn’t depend on anyone.”
Asked to describe herself, Williams didn’t miss a beat: “I’m smart, outgoing, curious and proud.”
Williams stepped outside while the team evaluated her performance. A couple of teachers said that they were not only struck by Williams’ maturity, but her insight into what went wrong during her freshmen and sophomore years, when she was more interested in making friends than earning good grades.
“Her goals are really focused,” said Amanda Vetelino, an English teacher. “She has seen the brass ring.”
Kenneth DiRaimo, a math teacher, said he was touched by Williams’ wish to represent those who might not otherwise have access to a lawyer.
Every roundtable ends on a positive note, with teachers commenting on the effectiveness of the student’s presentation, as well as constructive suggestions about the student’s future. Jonathan Goodman, chairman of the English department, told Williams that “big dreams happen when you do the right thing each day.”
Another senior, Jessica Campoverde, was asked what she liked the most about high school.
“The teachers,” she told the team. “They didn’t give up on me, especially Mr. Goodman. He made me realize I could do it. Thank you, Mr. Goodman.”
The narrative of each student’s high school experience was eerily similar. Campoverde, who said she was painfully shy, talked about how she slacked off during her freshman and sophomore years. After she joined Students Against Destructive Decisions and began speaking to younger students, she started to become more self-assured. She also said that she had been a hypocrite, preaching one kind of behavior while practicing another.
“Now,” Compoverde said, “I’m comfortable with everyone. I found out who I am.”
She, too, praised one of her teachers for driving home the message that college is an option, even for students whose academic records are less than stellar. At first, she said, the portfolio was terrifying because she worried that she wouldn’t have any quality work to put in her folder. Now, she said she feels proud of her accomplishments: “We’re graduating because we did the work.”
The public presentations, called roundtables, are not designed to be “high-stakes” measurements, according to Principal Arthur Petrosinelli, who runs the Information Technology Academy, one of three small high schools within Hope.
“If they showed up, they passed,” he said. “The teachers want to keep the roundtable low-key.”
The 25 seniors who missed their presentation will get another chance, Petrosinelli said. Those students, many of whom lack the credits to graduate, have been asked to write a letter to the principals explaining their absence.
One of the biggest surprises, Petrosinelli said, is the willingness of teachers to embrace a new way of measuring high school performance. Now that faculty members have seen the finished product, they realize that the portfolios have value beyond their role in the new graduation requirements. Portfolios help students connect the dots between what they’re learning in English class and math class, between what they have studied in sophomore year and senior year.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is the way that the students have embraced portfolios, which was an alien concept just a few months ago.
“We were wonderfully pleased with the kids,” Coustan said. “They said they loved the portfolio. It gives them a chance to show who they really are. It’s become part of our curriculum and it’s intimately connected to all of the lessons we do in class.”
Because Hope doesn’t have the technology to create electronic portfolios, the staff has created a system that protects student work from getting lost. Teachers save the work in their classrooms. At the end of each year, the student sits down with each teacher and together, they select the best piece of work; that work is collected in a loose-leaf binder and stored in the principal’s office for safekeeping.
So far, the process has worked, Petrosinelli said.
Accommodations are made for students who transfer into the district during their senior year. Special arrangements are also made for English language learners, who make their presentations in Spanish to bilingual teachers. Similar accommodations are made for special education students.
Although students move frequently from one school to another, Hope takes the high mobility rate into account. Under the current standards, a senior needs to present only five pieces of work. Next year, they will have to submit eight pieces.
The portfolio is very much a work-in-progress this year, Petrosinelli said. Next year, seniors will be much better prepared because this year’s juniors are taking a portfolio class where they are learning to revise their work, create Power Point presentations and practice speaking in public.
“This year, the kids didn’t have a lot of support,” Coustan said. “We only started in February. Next year, we want to get kids talking more about the depth of their academic knowledge.”
Meanwhile, Providence as a district is struggling to fulfill the state’s new high school diploma system. The district is one of eight that did not receive preliminary approval from the state Department of Education in January.
One of the state’s chief concerns is that Providence lacks a uniform curriculum in its 11 high schools. The district effectively has 11 different sets of graduation requirements.
This means that algebra I at one high school might look completely different than algebra I at another school, officials have said.
The lack of state approval, however, will not affect the district’s or the school’s ability to award diplomas for the next few years, the state said. Districts have until 2012 to come into compliance with the new diploma regulations.
Earlier this year, district administrators were thinking of adopting senior projects as a systemwide graduation requirement because school officials felt that portfolios were too cumbersome in a district with high student mobility.
The district has not made any final decisions about which graduation requirement it will adopt.
Parents allege contractor offered items from school
Posted Friday, May 16, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A couple of parents said last night that the contractor hired to renovate Nathan Bishop Middle School contacted the Catholic Diocese of Providence and allowed its teachers to cart away books, supplies and equipment that the school district had left behind.
Christine Wilford, whose child attends Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, raised the issue at a meeting of the District Parent Advisory Council, whose mission is to improve communication between families and central administration. Supt. Donnie Evans formed the committee last year to reach out to parents in the wake of several decisions, including the closing of a popular elementary school, that left parents feeling powerless.
“We heard that the contractor at Nathan Bishop allowed parochial school teachers to take whatever they wanted,” Wilford said. “I’m told they took science supplies, books in their wrappers, tables and chairs.”
School spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly said she received two e-mails this week from City Councilman Cliff Wood and Tom Schmeling, an East Side parent, asking for information about the allegations.
She said that the district took multiple steps to ensure that any useful items were removed from Bishop, which is about to undergo a $35-million renovation as part of the first stage of a projected $792-million overhaul of the district’s aging school buildings.
According to O’Reilly, two high-level school administrators made an exhaustive inventory of the East Side middle school in November, tagging everything that was supposed to be kept and labeling where it should go. Some materials were placed in storage while other supplies were shipped to schools or the central office.
Follett Books was brought in to assess the remaining items for resale or trade value and it determined that the remaining items were too outdated to have value to the district or to the company.
In an e-mail to Wood and Schmeling, O’Reilly wrote that “there may have been some ‘new condition’ textbooks but they were not recent publications.”
However, an article in yesterday’s Providence Journal reported that many of the textbooks at Classical High School, the district’s flagship high school, are 12 to 15 years old. A half-dozen department heads said that they don’t have enough money to replace books, much less buy new ones. And school administrators said it would cost millions of dollars to replace textbooks for an entire subject.
According to O’Reilly, School Department staff also visited Bishop and stripped doorknobs, light fixtures and any other useful hardware that could be salvaged. Tables and chairs were removed and Hope High School, because of its proximity to Bishop, was offered a chance to claim anything it wanted.
The contractor, Agostini Construction of East Providence, apparently had permission to dispose of whatever materials were left over, according to Alan Sepe, the city’s acting director of public property.
“This was in accordance with the job requirements that specified that the contractor was to dispose of materials left behind after a through inspection by the district,” O’Reilly wrote in her e-mail to Wood and Schmeling.
But several members of the parents’ advisory group were not satisfied with those answers.
“Who made the decision to allow the diocese to go in there?” said Lorraine Lalli, whose child attends King.
Another parent asked why the two East Side elementary schools, King and Vartan Gregorian, weren’t given a chance to take supplies out of the building.
Wilford said she raised the issue because no one from central administration responded to her e-mail on Wednesday, despite the fact that she forwarded it to several school administrators. She said the latest incident is an example of the lack of communication between the district and parents, a breakdown that the advisory committee is meant to address.
New school on polluted site energizes environmental coalition
Posted Thursday, May 15, 2008
By Peter B. Lord
Journal Environment Writer
No matter which way you look from inside the city’s new Adelaide High School in the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood, the views aren’t good.
Out back, a tall chainlink fence encloses a huge pile of debris. Off to the side, several acres between the school and Mashapaug Pond are also fenced off and signs warn people to keep out.
The front of the school faces an empty Stop & Shop supermarket and parking lot. Inside the store, crews are drilling through the concrete floor so they can test for contaminants in the soils underneath.
Adelaide assistant principal John O. Craig, supervising students at the end of a recent school day, points to the ductwork designed to pull toxic gases from the soil and direct them away from classrooms. He thinks the school is safe, but barely adequate for his students.
“We’re doing the best we can with what we have,” says Craig. “But I’d just like to get a ball field and a running track for my students.”
The only other place in Rhode Island where a school has been built on contaminated land is just a short way up Route 10, also in Providence. The city built a middle school and an elementary school on a closed landfill off Springfield Street. The School Department continually vents harmful gases and fills places where soils and walks have caved in.
Related links
Investigative reports on the Adelaide Avenue School and the two schools that were built on a dumpsite on Springfield Street
"Environmental Justice" blog, with links to other environmental equity resources
Both projects faced neighborhood opposition and lawsuits, but the city, in a rush to serve a growing student population, built them anyway.
Soon, there may be more organized action to ensure that no community in Rhode Island ever again builds a school on a contaminated site.
A coalition of advocacy groups has incorporated the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island. The coalition plans to raise money and hire staff to protect the interests of the poor and minorities in Rhode Island’s cities and to tackle other issues such as dilapidated housing and pollution from traffic.
Two state legislators have also submitted bills that would prevent municipalities from building schools on landfills or Brownfield sites.
Connecticut recently enacted environmental justice legislation that goes even further.
Providence officials insist they have ensured the safety of the city’s children. But the city is old with a history of heavy industry, so it’s not easy to locate significant tracts of land that don’t require some cleanup.
“We don’t have a lot of land to work with,” says Karen Southern, spokeswoman for Mayor David N. Cicilline. She said the mayor would never build a school on a site that wasn’t deemed 100 percent safe by the state Department of Environmental Management. “That’s the mayor’s number-one priority.”
The coalition is being promoted by groups fighting lead poisoning, asthma and toxic pollution. Its supporters range from statewide groups such as the Environment Council of Rhode Island to more urban-focused groups such as the Hartford Park Residents Association and the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council.
Its goals, according to a mission statement, are to make available more information about pollution sources to neighbors and parents, to have people treated fairly and to give them equal and fair access to a “safe, healthy and sustainable environment at home, at work, at school and in public places.”
“Lots of organizations work on environmental justice, but we all operate in our own areas,” said one organizer, Liz Colon. She is a leader of CLAP, the Childhood Lead Action Project. “Now we want to bring people together collectively. And we want to get people involved who don’t know they are being affected.”
Steven Fischbach, a lawyer for Rhode Island Legal Services, said when Providence residents first came to him in 1999 because they were opposed to the city’s plans to build schools on the Springfield Street dumpsite, “we felt that environmental problems affecting poor people and people of color weren’t getting addressed.”
Fischbach said many people he represents in the city don’t know whom to call when they need help, and they are used to not getting help from the government.
“It’s not like people didn’t try, Fischbach said. “They are so used to losing, it’s like, why bother. So many people feel like they can’t fight city hall.”
Fischbach represented the Hartford Park Tenants Association and sued the state DEM, the Providence School Board and Alan Sepe, acting director of Providence’s Department of Public Property, to stop the school projects on Springfield Street, which were being constructed by the Cianci administration.
Superior Court Judge Edward C. Clifton found that the DEM properly evaluated the site and took the necessary steps to protect students from toxins in the ground. But he found the agency violated state law by not meeting “environmental equity” (to minorities and the poor) and community involvement requirements.
Clifton found the city failed to properly notify neighboring property owners and allow public participation in the siting process and violated the law by starting site work without DEM approval.
He disagreed with the plaintiff’s allegation that siting of the school was based on race.
“While plaintiff’s evidence proves that the process was rushed and even sloppily executed, there is insufficient evidence to support a finding that intent to discriminate was the driving force behind defendant’s actions,” Clifton wrote.
The judge ordered that all documents related to environmental hazards at the schools be made public, that all parents should be notified of environmental hazards in English and Spanish, and that summaries of nurses’ logs be made available each month. When future school sites are evaluated, he said, neighbors should be notified.
Several years later, similar issues arose as the city worked to build a new high school on Adelaide Avenue, using some of the 37-acre Gorham Manufacturing Co. site previously owned by Textron. This time, in 2006, the DEM sued the city.
In that case, Judge Daniel A. Procaccini ordered more work evaluating environmental hazards on the site, removal of a pile of hazardous slag and an eight-foot-high chainlink fence to keep people out of areas that remained polluted.
Last summer, the city opened the high school. But a few months later, the YMCA of Greater Providence dropped plans to build a $10-million facility next door. Delays and neighborhood concerns had driven up the costs, officials said.
Terrence Gray, DEM’s assistant director for air, water and compliance, says the DEM learned a lot in the course of the lawsuits.
With the Springfield Street schools, he said the city was moving very fast and the DEM mistakenly tried to work with the city’s timeline.
In the end, the DEM made sure the cleanup was done properly, he said, but it didn’t do a good job of involving the public.
“Our people tend to be more introverted engineers and scientists. So now we’re providing training in environmental justice and public outreach.
“A lot of people didn’t know who we were. We also learned we relied too much on the old media. We had to learn to use list serves and blogs. We now have a blog on environmental justice, though it doesn’t get a lot of viewers.”
Still, Gray is concerned about the long-term costs of maintaining the equipment to keep harmful vapors out of the schools. Will future administrations appreciate the importance of maintenance?
Textron says it is committed to resolving further environmental issues at the Gorham site with a goal of turning a large portion of the site into a public park.
That would appear to provide the open space for Adelaide’s students to get out and run and play.
For more information and detailed environmental updates on the school sites, go to the Department of Environmental Management’s environmental justice Web site at: http://www.demenvironequity.net/
Providence school fight posted online
Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — An afterschool fight that drew 50 to 60 student onlookers in front of Roger Williams Middle School was posted on the Web site YouTube, making Providence part of a growing phenomenon in which teenagers use technology to publicize acts of violence.
When the police arrived Wednesday around 3 p.m., they saw three to five girls punching and kicking someone in front of a large crowd of students from Roger Williams as well as a nearby high school, Cooley Health & Science Technology Academy on Thurbers Avenue.
Rhakiyyah Lovett, 28, of Providence, was also involved in the brawl. According to the police, Lovett initially denied involvement in the fight but was seen punching the victim on the video, which has since been taken down from YouTube.
The victim suffered a bloody lip, bloodshot eye and bruises to her upper arms. The police would not release the names of the suspects or the victim because they are minors.
The four teenage suspects turned themselves in after the police, who watched the video online, announced that they were about to be arrested. The students have been charged with disorderly conduct and referred to Family Court. Lovett, who turned herself in, was charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct and referred to District Court.
The police said that the girls were fighting because a couple of them had a beef with one another. And several middle schools students said that two of the girls had insulted each other online.
This isn’t the first time that a Providence school fight has been captured on a cell phone camera and transmitted to the Web. This winter, an afterschool brawl involving students who were leaving Bridgham Middle School wound up on YouTube.
Providence is hardly alone. In Florida, a video showing teenage girls beating another girl unconscious made national headlines. As teens beat the girl, they talked about making the video “good.”
And in Baltimore, a student assaulted an art teacher while another teenager taped the beating with a cell phone and posted in online.
In fact, scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have actually begun to study the phenomena of students using technology to harass and bully other teenagers. From 2000 to 2005, the CDC says there has been a 50-percent increase in teens claiming to be victims of some type of Internet aggression.
One expert says that teenagers view the Web as a way of becoming famous. The more hits on YouTube or MySpace, the more popular you are, according to Parry Aftab, executive director of Wired Safety, an online group that fights cyber-bullying.
“Kids live in cyberspace where popularity is based on page views,” she said yesterday. “We’re creating a generation of kids who live in virtuality, not reality. They see themselves as the producers of their own hit shows.”
The act of videotaping allows teenagers to distance themselves from violence, turning them into passive observers rather than participants who feel the victim’s pain, she said.
Aftab says schools and police departments must take a hard line against bullies and she wants additional penalties imposed on teens who post the fighting online for posterity. Her organization is also hoping to create a “cyber army” of volunteers who will help Web sites track down violent videos and get them off the Internet. File-sharing sites, she said, don’t have the capacity to police themselves because of the volume of material uploaded every day.
Pamela Riley, executive director of Students Against Violence Everywhere, says that she is particularly disturbed by the lack of remorse exhibited by the perpetrators as well as the chroniclers of student brawls. One of the suspects in the Florida fight asked if she would still make cheerleading practice.
“We’re seeing a loss of civility in our society,” she said. “Teenagers are reflecting what they see among adults. Kids need to know that there are consequences for their actions and those consequences have to be swift and fair.”
It isn’t clear what actions, if any, the School Department will take against the Providence suspects.
R.I. education commissioner leaving in 2009
Posted Friday, April 11, 2008
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Peter McWalters, one of the nation’s longest-serving state education commissioners, will step down next year — a decision that follows a month of closed-door discussions among Governor Carcieri, McWalters and the state board that oversees public education about whether to extend his contract.
Yesterday, Robert G. Flanders Jr., chairman of the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, announced the Regents had agreed to extend McWalters’ contract by six months, expiring June 30, 2009. Last month, McWalters had informed the board that he would not seek a two-year extension of his contract, which would have expired this Dec. 31, according to a news release from the state Department of Education.
By the time he leaves next year, McWalters will have been the state education commissioner for 17½ years, overseeing numerous changes, including a new high school diploma system, the implementation of statewide testing under the federal education law No Child Left Behind, and initiatives to boost middle school performance.
Flanders thanked McWalters, 61, for his service and his leadership, but Flanders also acknowledged a growing frustration that Rhode Island’s education system continues to trail national averages on standardized tests.
Flanders said he plans to assemble a search committee “immediately” to find a new commissioner “who is prepared to take the state to the next level of reform and change and get us to where we need to be.”
“We are far from getting into the Promised Land in terms of where K-12 education is concerned and we need a new leader who will get us there,” Flanders said in a phone interview. “None of us are satisfied with where we are now. So all the good things we are doing are fine, but it’s not enough. We need to get to an even better place, and our new commissioner will be the person to lead the way.”
Discussions about McWalters’ contract began when the Regents met in executive session after their regularly scheduled March 13 meeting, which Flanders missed due to illness. Since then, Flanders, McWalters and Carcieri have met, and the Regents have privately discussed how much longer McWalters should stay on, all agreeing to the six-month extension, Flanders said.
Supporters call McWalters a nationally recognized visionary who has called for greater accountability from schools and teachers and has led the state through a series of major education reforms, despite limitations on his powers and diminishing state resources. Critics say that despite some gains, he has not done enough to raise the test scores of Rhode Island students and the time is ripe for change.
McWalters assumed the state’s top education job in January 1992, and ranks among the top five longest-serving commissioners currently serving around the country. He earns about $149,000 a year, and the state pays another $22,500 a year into his retirement account, as he is not part of the state pension system.
McWalters’ fifth three-year contract, which was set to expire Dec. 31, 2007, came up for review last spring by the Regents. But when former Chairman James A. DiPrete was replaced by Flanders, McWalters’ contract renewal was put on hold until this year, McWalters said. His old contract rolled over another year and would have run out Dec. 31, 2008.
The Regents will vote on the matter at an April 23 meeting held at 4 p.m. at the state Department of Education, 255 Westminster St.
McWalters said that he is satisfied he will have another 14 months to further several initiatives. He said he was not being forced out of his job earlier than he wanted to leave.
“The system has cycles, and this keeps me here through the next school year and the next legislative session,” McWalters said in an interview in his office. Discussions about his contract “really were about how much longer do I want to stay and what do I want to get done,” he said.
McWalters said his priorities include: revising middle and high school regulations to further the state’s new diploma system; updating the state’s basic education plan; dealing with teaching issues such as implementing a more rigorous evaluation process; and more intensely intervening in struggling school districts — Providence and Central Falls.
Standardized test scores for elementary and middle school students — particularly low-income students in urban districts — have steadily risen over the past three years, after the state, along with Vermont and New Hampshire, developed grade-level expectations and tests aligned with the new expectations. The results of new high school tests, which rolled out last October, were sobering, with just 22 percent of 11th graders proficient in math and 61 percent proficient in reading, although education officials say they expect to see those scores rise in the coming years.
Supporters of McWalters, including several regents, charter school leaders, union officials and an organization representing principals, said the state is losing a tested leader at a time of enormous change and strain.
“We are making progress in a number of areas, and I’m concerned about a change with so many irons in the fire,” said Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Education Association. “He’s been leading reforms and fighting larger battles with fewer resources, and when you weigh that all together, he’s done a remarkable job.”
Valerie Forti, president of the Education Partnership, a business-backed nonprofit advocacy organization, says McWalters should not be “the fall guy” for failures in education, “because the problem is much bigger than one person.” Forti said the Regents and lawmakers need to do more to push key education reforms, including redesigning teacher contracts. Forti also warned that McWalters’ replacement will face the same obstacles and finance battles.
At the same time, Forti said, a new person will bring new energy and vision.
“We’re not going to have one person come in and be a white knight and have the perfect thing happen,” Forti said. “On the other hand, could Peter have moved more forcefully on some things? Perhaps. He was able to get some things accomplished. But he was not moving as fast as the governor and now this Board of Regents wanted him to.”
Small donations making a big difference in schools
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A middle school teacher bought eight Scrabble Junior games for her classroom. A librarian purchased $400 worth of Japanese graphic novels. And an elementary school teacher has used her grant to launch a family reading program.
None of these projects would have been possible without DonorsChoose.org, a national Web-based giving program that matches individual donors, called citizen philanthropists, with teachers. Charles Best, the organization’s founder, launched the program in Rhode Island at October at Fortes Elementary School.
The mission of DonorsChoose is to connect small donors to worthy public school projects.
By early this month, Providence teachers had received almost $30,000 for school projects and Rhode Island had received almost $50,000. The schools don’t actually get the money. Donors-Choose buys the material and ships it to the teachers. In return, students write a thank-you note, take a snapshot of their project and mail the letter to Donors-Choose, which sends it to the donors.
Donors don’t have to be a big spender to make a difference. Donors can fill the entire request, which is posted online, or a small portion. No gift is too small and teachers can apply for as many grants as they wish.
For cash-strapped school districts like Providence, these grants pay for some of the little extras that might otherwise come out of teachers’ own pockets.
At Carnevale Elementary School, Ann DePedro spent $500 buying costumes so her third graders could perform small plays based on the books they are reading in class. The costumes ran the gamut from kings and wizards to dragons and angel wings.
“I used to make things out of paper plates,” DePedro said. “It took a lot of time and it wasn’t nearly as fun. I had five students who weren’t making it before. Now they are.”
At Charles Fortes Elementary School, Allyssa Taylor applied for $700 to launch a backpack program in which students bring home books they can read with their parents. Students will be given journals and materials with which to illustrate characters or scenes from the narratives.
“I’m really trying to make a connection with home,” Taylor said. “I want my children sharing literature and talking about it. Without DonorsChoose, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.”
Teachers at Fortes have successfully applied for a total of $4,072 for a number of projects, from printer ink to a special reading table. Taylor said that her colleagues are “on fire,” adding that this program is making a “huge difference.”
Joy Cervoni bought Scrabble Junior games for her eighth graders, most of whom are struggling readers. In just a few weeks, her students’ vocabulary has noticeably increased, she said.
“These kids are beaten down,” she said. “Now it’s amazing. They are seeing things on the Scrabble board that I don’t see.”
Like Cervoni, who spent $750 of her money on education materials this year, many teachers dig into their own wallets to pay for supplies.
Last month, DonorsChoose, taking advantage of a Rhode Island Foundation grant, offered an incentive to encourage more grant applications: the first 50 Providence teachers who submitted a proposal between March 12 and March 19 automatically received $100 toward their project.
Parents float plan to renovate West Broadway school
Posted Friday, April 4, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — When West Broadway Elementary School closed last summer, it felt like a death in the family to many neighbors, parents and students who attended or lived near the turn-of-the-century building in Federal Hill.
After evaluating several design proposals and taking into account the value of preservation, community schools and cost-effectiveness, a committee of parents and neighborhood activists is recommending an $18.1-million renovation.
The moderate-scale renovation, developed by David R. Finney, president of Design Partnership of Cambridge, Mass., would include a separate exit for younger children, which addresses the fire code violation that forced Supt. Donnie Evans to close the school. That renovation alone would cost about $90,000.
“A huge part is that we think this is the most affordable option,” said Kari Lang, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association and a member of the school task force. “We saw the value of having a neighborhood school and saw how much parents and teachers did, as well. If we can renovate the school so it’s a 21st-century learning environment, that’s a plus.”
The saga of the West Broadway School began in February 2007, when Evans announced that the school building had to be closed because it violated the state fire code, adding that the fire marshal had refused to grant any more variances. Outraged parents and neighbors packed School Board meetings in protest, claiming the neighborhood school was a treasured landmark, an island of stability in a rapidly changing neighborhood. Families described the school as a warm and welcoming place that made their children feel special.
A handful of parents took the district to court, filing an appeal with Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education. Although their efforts to keep West Broadway open failed, the community did persuade Evans to move the entire staff to the school’s new location in the Del Sesto Middle School building on Springfield Street. The elementary school now shares space with students from Springfield Middle School.
In response to criticism that he kept parents in the dark, Evans formed a task force composed of parents, teachers and neighbors, who have spent the past four months studying whether to reopen the West Broadway building and, if so, what kind of school it should be.
Last winter, Finney was hired by the Providence Preservation Society, which concluded that renovation would cost less than new construction, estimated at $196 million. According to Finney, there is inherent value in the preservation of sound and architecturally significant buildings. The question, he said, is whether a historic building can be renovated in such a way that it offers the same education value as a new building.
The Finney design would keep the school’s original footprint and its original mission as a K-5 building with room for 450 children. Lang said that the beauty of this plan is that it can be expanded to include an addition with room for three pre-kindergarten classrooms. It is also flexible, with the possibility of expanding to a K-8 school.
“Overwhelmingly, in meeting after meeting, the community has said it wants its children returned to its neighborhood school,” the task force said. “Parents, teachers and neighbors value a school with a past, with historic detail that comforts, as well as a community school that is within walking distance from all parts of the neighborhood.”
Dual-language program pays big dividends at Lima Elementary
Posted Friday, April 4, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — More than two thirds of the third graders at Alfred Lima Elementary School passed the statewide reading test, one of the strongest scores for that grade in the district.
What makes this score particularly significant is that out of the 34 third graders who took the New England Common Assessment, 13 are primarily Spanish-language speakers, and 8 of those students tested at or above proficiency in reading. Across the district, only 21 percent of English-language learners scored proficient on the third-grade reading test and 41 percent of all third-graders did so.
The school’s principal and staff say that the scores confirm that the dual-language program at Lima is working. According to Principal Jose Valerio, research has shown that a child who is literate in one language is more capable of mastering a second language.
The dual-language model works like this: all students in kindergarten through third grade spend half of the year learning in Spanish, which, for many students, is their native language, and the other half learning in English. Students switch from one language to another on a weekly basis. Next year, Lima will expand the program to include grade 4 and will continue to add a grade until the program is offered school-wide, kindergarten through grade 6.
“One language supports the other,” said Rebecca Box, of Dorcas Place, which runs after-school programs at Lima. “As children get stronger in Spanish, they begin to transfer that learning to the other language.”
Although Lima introduced a dual-language program 10 years ago, it existed in name only. In 2004, the school invited experts from Johns Hopkins University to help staff rethink the program, and the researchers suggested that the school adopt the so-called “50-50” model that Lima uses today.
The beauty of this approach is that it allows students to retain fluency in their native language while mastering English. It also honors the child’s native language and culture at a time when the United States faces a shortage of adults with proficiency in languages other than English. Box said that immigrant parents are delighted that their children will remain conversant in their native tongue.
Language preservation is important to a family’s identity, especially as immigrant families struggle to adapt to an unfamiliar culture. And because the family’s native language is valued, parents are more comfortable coming to school and asking about their child’s education.
Children in a dual-immersion program also pick up a second language much faster than those in a traditional bilingual education classroom.
“The kids are using language to learn language,” teacher Robert Prignano said. “In a typical bilingual classroom, it takes five years to exit to an all-English classroom. Here, by the end of kindergarten, students have had more than twice as much instruction in English.”
As Valerio put it, “We like to think that our kids are ahead of the game.”
Prignano said that students who enter the program after first grade have to pass a test to show that they are capable of working in both languages: “We don’t want children to come into classes where other children are more advanced than they are.”
Because students aren’t learning English from the radio or television, they are learning academic or grammatically correct English, according to first-grade teacher Laurie McKenna-Therrien.
For dual-language teachers, the program presents a unique opportunity to collaborate with colleagues on classroom instruction. At Lima, teachers not only meet across the language divide, they meet across grade levels. The goal is to create a seamless flow between English and Spanish classrooms so students don’t repeat material as they move from English to Spanish instruction.
Teachers say that the dual-immersion experience is deeply satisfying, according to Tracy Carcamo, who teaches kindergarten at Lima Annex, which is part of the Lima complex.
“One day, the light goes on and the child says, ‘Wow. I can do this,’ ” Carcamo said. “The NECAP scores show that a child who is learning two languages can outperform the child who is learning one language.”
“This gives children a feeling of confidence,” said McKenna-Therrien. “It really makes them feel more successful at school.”
Even the assistant principal of Lima Annex, Roseclaire Bulgin, is learning Spanish as part of her ongoing professional development.
“It gives children such a great foundation in both languages,” she said. “I wish my son could have had dual language.”
Because the program requires much more one-on-one instruction than the average classroom, teachers have asked the school administration to reduce class size in earlier grades from 26 to 20 students — a request that will be hard to satisfy during these fiscally troubled times.
Although dual-language instructors are able to meet during weekly common planning periods, they als |
