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Seniority out, right fit in for Providence teachers seeking to fill openings
Posted Monday, July 26, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Goodbye, seniority. Hello, “criterion-based hiring.”
The annual city “job fair,” where teachers were ranked based on their years in the system and bid on classroom openings, is history.
Instead, teachers now create a job profile online and apply for vacancies the same way. Then they are invited to interview with a screening committee comprising a school’s principal, four teachers and a teacher leader.
What began last year as a pilot project in six schools now includes the entire Providence district of 2,100 teachers at 40-odd schools. The district has effectively abolished seniority as the primary method of filling vacancies. Instead, openings will be filled based on whether the teacher is the right fit for that particular job.
The move to do away with seniority stems from a February 2009 order by former Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, who argued that seniority hampered Providence from putting the most effective teacher in any given classroom. Under the old system, the teacher with the most years in the district bumped someone with less seniority. In a large district such as Providence, bumping sometimes resulted in widespread dislocations, with smaller schools losing up to one-third of their staffs.
The district has developed a software program that allows teachers to upload all their information — resumé, job history, certifications — online. The teacher selects search words (math, special education, high school) that indicate his or her job preference. Whenever a vacancy that fits that description becomes available, the system, called Providence Applicant Tracking System or PATS, immediately alerts the applicant by e-mail.
To avoid any hint of favoritism, the School Department, working with the Providence Teachers Union, developed a common bank of questions that rely on concrete teaching scenarios and short model lessons. During the interview, the teacher applicant must conduct a 30-minute lesson, submit a writing sample and answer a variety of questions.
Although the principal has the final say, his or her judgment should reflect the consensus of the committee.
Carlton Jones, the district’s chief operating officer, says the new application process is much more accessible and responsive than the former one, which resembled an auction because teachers bid on jobs.
There is at least a nod to seniority in the new system, however. According to Jones, the five most senior applicants are automatically invited to interview with the search committee, although there is no requirement that they be given preference.
Once a candidate is chosen, he or she is notified by e-mail and has three days to respond. The average time it takes to fill a position is 29 days, Jones said.
Of the 230 openings in May, the district has filled 165 vacancies.
Last summer, the union complained that more than 130 teachers were still waiting to be placed just two weeks before school started. (The district said the number was closer to 85).
According to Jones, “We’re six weeks ahead of where we were last year.”
The majority of teachers displaced by the recent closing of Perry Middle School and Feinstein High School has found jobs: 64 percent of Feinstein’s staff and 81 percent of Perry’s teachers, according to school spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly.
What happens to those teachers who either haven’t gotten a job or haven’t applied for one?
On July 12, the district paused in the criterion-based selection process, added up the vacancies and began matching them with the teachers who didn’t have jobs. This group of teachers is allowed to select their top school choices and, in this case, teachers with the most seniority are given priority.
There are 74 teachers who were not “matched” to existing openings, Jones said. They go into the long-term substitute teaching pool, which is required by contract and contains about 200 teachers. These teachers receive full salary and benefits but instead of having a permanent assignment, they fill vacancies created by illness, maternity leave or sabbaticals.
“We will always need a long-term sub pool,” Jones said. “But it’s better if we don’t have a large pool of regular teachers.”
The district hopes to eventually replace “regular” teachers with teachers hired specifically to be long-term subs, whose pay is capped at Step 4.
Providence students still struggling with math
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Math continues to be the Achilles heel of the city’s school system, with all but one high school posting proficiency rates in the low single digits.
Of the 31 schools that did not make adequate progress this year, 29 missed one or more math targets, which shows that math performance continues to be a challenge for the city’s students.
But school leaders say that the district’s poor showing in math is about to change. For the first time this year, Providence introduced a uniform math and science curriculum tied to the state’s math standards. With the new curriculum, Algebra 1 will look the same no matter which high school a student attends. In fact, the curriculum contains a pacing guide so that, for example, fourth-grade teachers are literally on the same page.
“This is a fundamental shift in the way we’ve done business,” Supt. Tom Brady said Monday. “It is a $22-million investment that will pay results, but that won’t happen overnight.”
The classifications, which identify which schools are making progress and which are not, were to be released Tuesday morning by the state Department of Education. Progress is measured by student performance on standardized test scores in English and math. Schools are also judged on the performance of subgroups, such as low-income students, special-education students and English-language learners.
Because urban districts like Providence are so diverse, it is much harder to make annual yearly progress because each urban school must hit an average of 37 targets, including attendance. Smaller districts have fewer academic targets to reach because they have a less diverse student population and a smaller number of schools, according to Sharon Contreras, the district’s chief academic officer.
Two of the city’s most successful elementary schools, Vartan Gregorian and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., are on the “caution” list, which means they did not reach all of their academic targets.
But Contreras said that the classifications don’t tell the full story. King missed only two targets and Gregorian missed one. Both schools, she said, have shown steady improvement for three consecutive years, especially in reading.
This year, only four middle schools made adequate progress, not five. Again, Contreras pointed out that Brigham Middle School missed only one target — attendance. And the other three middle schools, Esek Hopkins, Perry and Roger Williams, missed the same target: the math test for special-education students.
The district has a plan, however. This fall, special-education students will be co-taught by a special-education instructor and a math teacher on the premise that math teachers have the deep subject knowledge needed to instruct children who are struggling with that subject.
One criticism of the No Child Left Behind law is that it labels schools as failing, but doesn’t provide the resources to fix them. That, too, is about to change. This winter, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist identified six of the worst-performing schools in Rhode Island, five of them in Providence. Each school is eligible for at least $200,000 (and possibly $2 million) in federal monies.
The district is working this summer on developing specific interventions for four of the five schools. One of those schools, Feinstein High School, was closed due to school-facility issues; it was also one of only three high schools to make annual progress this year. (The others are Classical High School and Hope Arts.)
“This will be an entirely different conversation in five years,” Brady said. “We will see steady improvement, and we’re looking for rapid improvement for our four intervention schools.”
Rhode Island’s school financing formula becomes law
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The state’s top political and education leaders were on hand Wednesday as Governor Carcieri signed into law the state’s first school financing formula in two decades.
With one flourish of the pen, Carcieri relieved Rhode Island of its dubious distinction as the only state in the country without a formula.
The Republican governor heaped praise on Democratic lawmakers with whom he is frequently at odds.
“Sometimes when you’re outside [state government] you just think these things should get done so do it,” the governor told an audience of about 100 community, education and political leaders. “But it’s a very difficult issue, and I really want to credit the General Assembly and the leadership. … It took enormous courage.”
Because of the state’s fiscal crisis, lawmakers were unable to add much additional money to finance schools. The way the formula is designed, more than 70 percent of the state’s 148,000 students — including many low-income children — will receive more state support, while students in the remaining districts will receive less.
Supporters heralded the event as historic, saying Rhode Island’s method for distributing more than $700 million a year in direct state school aid to districts, charter and state-run schools will serve as a national model.
The formula goes into effect for fiscal year 2012, and will be phased in over 10 years.
Detractors are concerned the formula does not go far enough to meet the needs of low-income and special-needs students; other critics are distraught the formula takes state aid away from several communities.
The bill signing was held at the Rhode Island Foundation, a philanthropic organization that pushed hard for the formula, a gesture that signals stronger ties between various groups committed to improving the education system.
Speakers praised Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, under whose leadership the formula was developed, with help from Prof. Kenneth Wong and researchers from Brown University.
Also present at the ceremony were the four legislators credited with shepherding the formula through rough political waters: Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, House Speaker Gordon H. Fox, House Finance Chairman Steven M. Costantino and Sen. Hanna M. Gallo, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.
Notably absent from the ceremony was Rep. Edith H. Ajello, a Providence Democrat and longtime advocate for a financing formula whose formula proposal would have given even more state resources to urban communities. Wednesday, her colleagues thanked her for her leadership.
Fox delivered a fiery speech that conveyed some of the intensity of the legislative session. He thanked his colleagues who supported the formula, even when, in some cases, it took money away from their home districts, and he lashed out at lawmakers who “hoped I would fall on my face.”
“We are all connected,” Fox said. “Whether you come from Barrington or Bristol, Providence or Woonsocket. Nobody wants to hear that, but it’s true. We are all responsible for each other’s fates.”
Providence’s Perry Middle School already feels ghostly
Posted Monday, June 21, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — At Perry Middle School, the packing boxes outnumber the students.
Everywhere you turn, boxes of “Twilight” and “Tears of a Tiger” are stacked in vacant classrooms whose emptiness speaks to the steady decline of middle school students in a district that once couldn’t keep pace with the influx of immigrant children.
Perry, an imposing brick edifice that, for 80 years, has been the linchpin of the struggling Hartford Avenue neighborhood, is closing next week, and, although classes are still in session, it already feels like a ghost town. In one room, a skeleton is shrouded in what looks like a garment bag while microscopes are piled in a corner.
The closing is especially bittersweet for Perry’s teachers, who have seen their school reorganized, restructured and formerly placed on academic probation. In fact, the only constant at Perry has been change: the school has had more than seven principals in as many years and experimented with “Perry bucks” for positive behavior and focus rooms for chronic troublemakers.
In the library this week, several students help Pam Laurenzo pack up a collection of young adult fiction and graphic novels that she built from scratch.
“I’ve created this world that I have to dismantle,” says Laurenzo, who rebuilt the library into a place where students feel welcome. “It’s sad to see it go.”
“It makes my heart break to see all these books go away,” says Kanema Miller, a sixth grader and one of the library’s biggest fans.
Perry is being shuttered just when it seems poised to take off.
The school, which was threatened with a state takeover in 2004, has met all of its academic targets for three consecutive years. Thanks to an after-school program, more students than ever are being accepted at Classical High School, the jewel in the district’s crown. School leaders agree that Perry has made significant strides, but say the cost of renovations, estimated at $35 million, are prohibitive in an era of declining enrollments and budget deficits.
The building’s physical condition speaks for itself: The roof leaks, the bathroom pipes recently burst, the heat is unreliable and pigeons roost in the rafters. For all of the school’s lovely period detail, Perry is worn-out, like a starlet whose looks have faded.
In a neighborhood whose glory days are also behind it, Perry is monolithic — two blocks of Gothic architecture that serve as a reminder of kinder times. At one public meeting after another, supporters spoke of how the school was the only anchor in a changing neighborhood.
The closing has also stirred class resentments. One city councilor spoke bitterly of how the city spent millions renovating the then-closed Nathan Bishop Middle School on the East Side while the West End got nothing.
Six years ago, Perry was one of the worst-performing middle schools in the state, fights were not uncommon and attendance rates were dismal. In 2006, then-Supt. Donnie Evans replaced two of the school’s principals and, under new leadership, the school began to heal.
Perry joined the NASA Explorers Program and students had an opportunity to meet an astronaut, build robots and communicate with scientists from the Goddard Space Center.
College became the school’s mantra and one of the principals began taking eighth graders on college tours, including a trip to Harvard University where the students lunched with the president.
Today, students are more respectful, teachers are less divided and test scores are on the rise.
Few teachers are more passionate about Perry’s successes than Donna Perrotta, an English teacher and 14-year veteran who says that Hartford Avenue deserves a thriving neighborhood school, not a boarded-up relic.
It was Perrotta who encouraged her students to get over their fear of poetry by publishing their work on the Web. And it was Perrotta who spoke out at every public forum to protest Perry’s closing.
Wednesday, Perrotta served chocolate chip pancakes for her eighth-grade poets, part of their annual publishing party.
“These kids are really precious,” she says. “I’ve never seen such talent.”
Few principals have cared more about Perry than Frances Rotella, who was appointed in 2006 to whip it into shape. Although she retired in December, Rotella, who now consults for the school district, keeps coming back and has been asked to give the keynote address at Monday’s graduation ceremony.
On a recent visit, Rotella looked up the test scores of two girls who once were regulars in Truancy Court. They had aced their tests. Rotella gave them both a big hug and said, “Do you know how great this is?”
The girls nodded solemnly.
“How did you know, Miss?” they asked.
Rotella said, “Because I looked at every test score.”
School aid formula: Some will win, Some will lose
Posted Thursday, June 17, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
After years of failed attempts, Rhode Island finally has a statewide school-financing formula, its first in two decades.
The complex formula, which was developed by the state Department of Education and researchers at Brown University, goes into effect for the 2011-12 school year and is intended to redistribute about $705 million a year in direct aid to school districts, charter and state-operated schools — without adding a lot of new money to the system.
Critics have been quick to point out that the formula creates a new system of winners and losers, giving more state aid to districts where student enrollments have increased or that serve high numbers of low-income students, while cutting districts that have lost students or serve fewer poor students.
Most urban districts benefit from the new formula. But so do Barrington and East Greenwich, two of the state’s wealthiest communities, largely because of increases in enrollments.
Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist has dismissed complaints that the new approach unfairly penalizes some districts.
“The fact is, right now in our current approach, there are already winners and losers,” Gist said when the formula was first introduced. “Having a formula actually gives us equity, transparency and consistency in the ways our funds are distributed and the resources we give to our schools.”
Gist concedes it’s not perfect. But, supporters say it’s the first time since the mid-1990s that Rhode Island has a fair method for doling out education aid.
Since the old method was abandoned in 1995, some districts have lost hundreds of students. At the same time, the ability of various communities to pay for their schools has changed. The new formula links state aid to the current number of students enrolled and adds money for low-income students, many of whom have additional educational needs that the additional aid is intended to address.
An estimated 71 percent of the state’s 145,000 public school students will benefit as their school systems receive more state aid.
The General Assembly passed a bill on the last night of the session and Governor Carcieri is expected to sign it into law by the end of June. The effects of the new formula will roll out over 10 years.
As the new formula takes effect, the state also has agreed to assume a greater proportion of other educational spending, including sharing the cost of high-need special-education students and regional transportation, and taking over a bigger chunk of school construction costs.
The state will invest more in pre-kindergarten programs and provide some additional money to career and vocational technical programs. Because the state pays for Central Falls schools, the state will also contribute at least $530,000 a year to that district to help blunt the impact of estimated cuts.
Statewide, Rhode Island pays for an average of 37 percent of local school costs, among the lowest state contributions in the country. The formula requires the state to pay between $13 million and $15 million more a year, starting in fiscal 2012, in an effort to gradually move the average state share up to 52.5 percent over the 10-year period.
Charter schools and vocational schools will lose some state aid as the new law changes the way those schools are financed.
Regional school districts are particularly hard hit, as the new formula does away with hefty bonuses enacted years ago to encourage the merger of services among towns — bonuses that were always intended to be temporary but became frozen in place. “I don’t think we should continue to pay a bonus when the whole point of regionalization is to achieve efficiencies,” Gist said when she testified before the General Assembly this spring.
Lawmakers representing the districts on the losing end of the scale were not swayed.
“These cuts will annihilate the Bristol-Warren school district,” said Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr., D-Bristol, before he cast his “nay” vote last week. At the 11th hour, lawmakers extended a small “bonus” to regional districts to help them adjust to the cuts, which phases out over two years.
Other critics of the formula say it’s too complex and may be unfair in the way it estimates how much a community can pay for its schools.
A failed proposal from Rep. Edith H. Ajello, D-Providence, used similar factors as the state Department of Education’s formula, but calculated them differently. Ajello’s version produced bigger winners — Providence would have received close to $50 million more in state aid compared with $29 million, but also much bigger losers. Newport, for example, would have lost $11 million in aid over the 10 years instead of $1.4 million, an indication that according to Ajello’s analysis, Newport could be kicking in more local money to run its schools.
Kenneth Wong, chairman of the Education Department at Brown University and a principal in the development of the formula, said there are countless ways the numbers could have been crunched, but he thinks the new law represents “the most optimal, feasible and fair way to actually use the numbers.”
“In the end,” Wong said, “we found that [this approach] allowed us to have the most optimum number of winners and fewer losers.”
Perhaps most importantly, supporters say, the formula dedicates scarce state resources to the students who need it most.
“I really do empathize with the communities that will be seeing reductions in state aid over time as a result of this formula,” Gist said. “But I am completely confident that this formula does distribute aid equitably.”
KEY POINTSHow the formula works
It calculates the "core" costs to educate a student: $8,295 per year. This includes the salaries of all personnel — teachers, special-education teachers, principals, librarians, speech pathologists, school nurses, etc.; fringe benefits such as health care and sick days; books and instructional materials; training for teachers; some costs associated with educating English-language learners; and some career and technical costs.
It adjusts for the needs of poor and special-education students: Districts with students eligible for free and reduced lunch receive a 40-percent bonus, resulting in a cost of $11,600 per low-income student. Poverty is used as a proxy for other needs such as special education and students learning English, as studies show those students often are low-income.
It is tied to enrollment: State gives districts, state-operated and charter schools money based on the number of students they serve.
It considers a community’s ability to pay: The formula includes the equalized property value and the median family income of each city and town, as well as the poverty concentration of students, and gives greater weight to whichever factor is dominant in a particular community — municipal capacity to pay for schools or student need.
Black fathers take stand for education
Posted Monday, June 14, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — His activism began with the closing of a beloved neighborhood school on the West Side. It has morphed into a grass-roots effort to address the plight of the black child in the Providence schools.
Osiris Harrell, an outspoken activist at School Board meetings, has organized a new group of black fathers who are determined to change how their children are treated in the school system so that their stories are of success, not failure.
“Something happens between the time a black child enters the public schools and the time he leaves,” says the father of three. “Something happens that shuts out that light.”
It was Harrell’s own experience with the public schools that sparked his outrage. When his son was suspended for hitting another child, the behavior was referred to as “inappropriate touching.”
“I said, ‘What is this?’ he says. “This is how black men get labeled. Why stigmatize a young, black child?”
Although the school subsequently corrected the label, the incident was a wake-up call for Harrell, who decided it was time to address head-on the issue of black children in the schools, especially black males.
A half-dozen men have now come together under the name Project Future for 2010 and Beyond. The group includes Ray Watson (who is white), David Haller and Dewayne Boo Hackney.
Harrell has met twice with Schools Supt. Tom Brady, who, he said, has not only promised to meet regularly with the group but asked for their suggestions for a new district-wide social-studies curriculum.
“It was a very fruitful meeting,” Harrell says of the first face-to-face with Brady. “He recognizes that there is a dilemma.”
The district talks a lot about increasing parental involvement, and Brady sees Project Future as a great opportunity to involve fathers in conversations about their children’s education.
“Here we have a group of concerned parents who really care about African-American students and African-American males in particular,” Brady says, “That’s a group of adults we have to listen to and reach out to.”
Brady has already agreed to meet with the parents every three weeks to share information. At the last meeting, Brady discussed tweaking the school’s volunteer policy. Currently, prospective volunteers must undergo a criminal-background check; certain criminal offenses preclude volunteers from active involvement in their children’s schools.
Brady, who said the Washington, D.C., schools modified their volunteer regulations, says he is open to adopting a more flexible policy in Providence, one that will encourage fathers in particular to become more involved in their schools.
“You can make a judicious review of each application,” Brady says. “It seems the policy needs review.”
The fathers group says the district needs to address two fundamental issues: curriculum and teacher hiring and training. Too often, Harrell says, American history is presented as little more than the accomplishments of “great white men,” while the contributions of black politicians, artists, writers and activists are downplayed or ignored.
“There is something systemically wrong with the way black children are taught,” Harrell says. “At some point, it was decided that black children receive an inferior education. We want a robust curriculum that dispels the myth of white supremacy, which teaches black children to feel inferior.”
Highlight visionary black leaders in the social-studies curriculum, Harrell says, and it can be inspirational.
Brady agrees that the department needs to do more around the issue of “cultural competency,” a catch-phrase for sensitizing teachers to cultural bias in the classroom, among other matters. “Do we have enough professional development?” he says. “Could it be targeted more at guidance counselors?”
The test scores show that something isn’t working for minority children.
Statewide, less than a third of all black and Hispanic students have reached proficiency in math, compared with nearly two-thirds of white students. When the state released its latest test scores in February, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist said she was concerned that achievement gaps between white and minority students continued and have even widened, especially in math.
Project Future member Hackney, who has two children in the Providence public schools, says the fathers’ group is not only about holding the school system accountable for ensuring that students don’t fail, but it’s also about asking parents to take responsibility for making sure that their children are not denied the best possible education.
“This is also about educating black men about the need to get involved,” Harrell says. “We’ve been going door-to-door, talking with parents. If we can come together around this issue, we can change our community.”
Providence school superintendent meets with students, teachers over class schedule change
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — After weeks of student-fueled opposition, Supt. Tom Brady finally met privately with a small clutch of students and teachers from Hope High School Tuesday.
But, after two-and-a-half hours of discussion, nothing changed.
The school administration, which insisted on a closed meeting, didn’t budge from its original position that Hope move from four 90-minute periods, known as a block schedule, to a six-period day, bringing it in line with the other high schools in the district.
After the meeting, students and teachers said they were frustrated and said they felt that the School Department’s mind was made up before administrators entered the room.
“I feel more resigned and defeated,” said Sean Georghagan, a math teacher.
After the meeting, not one top administrator spoke with The Journal except for Kim Rose, the School Department’s spokeswoman, who called the meeting constructive and said it cleared up a number of misconceptions.
“We’re proud of the passion of the Hope students and teachers,” Rose said. When asked, she said the district is moving forward with a six-period day.
The School Department has maintained that moving to a traditional schedule would not affect the quality of instruction at Hope. Adopting a district-wide curriculum requires that every school share the same schedule.
But teacher Robin Malone said: “It’s not about the 53 minutes. It’s about quality. I’m not going to be able to inspire students in the same way. It’s taking away a big piece of who I am as a teacher.”
The six students who attended the meeting sounded relieved that Brady heard their concerns, but said they were disappointed that the administration was unwilling to compromise on the schedule.
“I wanted to tell them, ‘If you just give us a little more time, we will meet academic proficiency,’ ” said Julio Diaz, one of the student organizers of Hope United. The district says that Hope’s test scores have not improved as much as School Department leaders would like.
A couple of students, however, said they were pleased that Brady showed a willingness to consider restoring the school’s Leadership Academy. When the state intervened in the failing high school five years ago, then-Education Commissioner Peter McWalters divided the school into three smaller learning academies. The district closed the Leadership Academy after its principal left a year ago.
No one was more upset by the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting than the Brown University students who propelled the Hope students into action in March.
“We were hoping that it would be a productive conversation about how the block could be saved,” said Aaron Regunberg from Brown. “Instead, nothing changed.”
Even Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, who has adopted a more conciliatory tone with the department recently, expressed his dismay at the way in which the issue has been handled.
“It’s not just what’s being done, but how it has been done,” Smith said before the meeting. “As we move to a new labor-management model in Providence, we have to make sure that Hope doesn’t happen again.”
If teachers are asked to change what they do and how, Smith said, then the School Department has a responsibility to include them in the conversation.
“At Hope,” Smith said, “you have teachers who have taken ownership of their school. We have to honor the work being done there.”
Teachers at Hope High School in Providence echo students’ objections to changes
Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The students have spoken. The politicians have spoken. Monday night, it was the teachers’ turn.
About 25 teachers, more than a quarter of the Hope High School faculty, turned out to protest proposed changes to the school’s 90-minute block schedule, which students and teachers alike say is crucial to the school’s success.
For the past four weeks, the students have led the charge, culminating in a walkout that prompted several hundred students to march to City Hall and school headquarters, where they asked to meet with Mayor David N. Cicilline and Supt. Tom Brady.
“I’ve been at Hope for 21 years, and I’ve been through 11 principals, 7 [school] restructurings and 35 assistant principals,” teacher Deb Petrarca said. “I’ve never seen Hope as good as it is now.”
The School Department says it is simply a matter of moving to a six-period schedule, which will accommodate the district’s new curriculum and ensure that students, who move around a lot, are on the same page no matter where they attend high school.
But teachers say the 90-minute classes are crucial to the school’s steady academic progress. The longer periods, they say, allow students to delve more deeply into their studies, provide teachers with ample time for common planning and enable student advisories to explore life issues that reach far beyond the classroom.
Megan Thoma, an arts teacher, said she moved to Rhode Island because of Hope’s reputation as a school with a flourishing arts program. Under the new schedule, she said, the arts electives will suffer and the Rhode Island School of Design might be less willing to work with the high school.
“You are driving out your best teachers,” she said, adding that 13 teachers have been cut already.
Another teacher contested the School Department’s claims that Hope’s test scores are worse than the district average. When you remove scores from Classical High School, which draws the best students from public and private schools in Providence, Hope’s math scores, while disturbingly low, are still a couple of points higher than the district average, said Ellen House, who heads the math department at Hope.
Teachers weren’t the only adults who spoke out last night. A couple of parents said that their children have thrived at Hope, which has restored their faith in the public schools.
“The education industry is driven by fads,” said Jean Nicolazzo, whose son attends Hope. “These schemes have more to do with career-building than the children. To finally have hit upon something that works, it seems crazy to throw it away.”
The adults described a school brimming with passion, with a shared sense of purpose. When former state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters intervened five years ago, Hope was the poster child for everything that’s broken in urban high schools, from lousy test scores to vandalism to abysmal attendance rates.
McWalters ordered the school to break into three smaller academies, required teachers to re-apply for their jobs and called for three new principals. With union support, teachers and principals crafted a new curriculum. Two years later, Hope was drawing national attention for its student advisories and its individual student-learning plans.
About a dozen students were there to back up their teachers. Angela Chea, one of the leaders of the student group, Hope United, said she found it ironic that the district had assigned community service as one of the penalties for walking out of class on May 13. Those 207 students also received a two-hour detention Friday, during which school administrators gave a PowerPoint presentation on the efficacy of the six-period day.
“We were doing community service by speaking out for our school,” she said to cheers and applause.
Students who walked out of Providence’s Hope High to be punished
Posted Wednesday, May 19, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — There will be no field day for the more than 200 Hope High School students who walked out of class Thursday to protest changes to their school schedule.
Hope’s annual field day includes a cookout, games and a tug-of-war between the school’s two academies, arts and technology. Planned this year for June 16, it is typically seen as a chance for teachers and students to bond and build school spirit. Student protestors will be required to perform school-based community service instead of participating in the field day.
In a letter addressed to parents and signed by the school’s two principals, the School Department told students that they will also receive a two-hour suspension Friday during which administrators and teachers will explain the need for a six-period day — the very issue that prompted several hundred students to walk out in the first place. Faculty members will also speak with youths about the new graduation requirements.
At least one Hope student says the punishment is unfair, adding that most students who skip class receive a 30-minute suspension or a call to their parents. “We expected consequences,” said Cynthia Jackson, a junior, “but this is too extreme.”
Julio Diaz, a sophomore and one of the organizers of the walkout, said he never received a letter, despite the prominent role he played in the protest. “Where’s my letter?” he said. “I did something like 15 interviews with the media that day.”
“I’m going to do detention,” he said. “We will all share the punishment.”
Diaz and Jackson said that many more students walked out of school than the 207 teens who received disciplinary letters. One of the Brown University organizers estimated that close to 380 students participated in the protest.
Meanwhile, the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union called the punishment “extremely harsh under the circumstances.”
“We’re quite troubled by the actions that the high school has taken,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the local ACLU. “First, these mass letters of punishment offer no formal opportunity for students to respond, and both school policy and the U.S. Constitution require that there be an opportunity to respond to these allegations.”
Brown also said that a parent of a Hope student has asked the ACLU to contest the punishment, something his organization is considering.
Last Thursday, several hundred students walked out of class at 10 a.m. and then marched to City Hall and School Department headquarters to protest changes in the school schedule that they say would undermine elective classes, limit student advisory and reduce common planning time for teachers. The walkout was the latest in a series of actions organized by about 40 Hope students and a handful of students from Brown University, who began to rally the teenagers after a visit to the high school over the college’s winter break.
School administrators say that a six-period day is essential to implement the district’s new uniform curricula in math, science, English and social studies. Supt. Tom Brady has said that a consistent schedule will ensure that the city’s highly mobile student population will be on the same page no matter where they attend high school. The rest of the city’s high schools have already adopted the six-period schedule.
Brady has also said that Hope’s current 90-minute block schedule, which includes lengthy student advisories and twice-weekly planning periods for teachers, is too costly, especially in this era of limited resources.
In its letter, the School Department said that the protest “interrupted instructional time in our school, even for those who chose not to participate.”
“School district and city resources were diverted to ensure that order was kept,” the letter said, “and loud demonstrations outside of the school prevented effective teaching and learning."
School officials wrote that students were warned on numerous occasions that their choice to participate in the walkout would have consequences. High school administrators have concluded that the youth violated three separate policies: leaving class without permission, cutting class and leaving the school grounds without permission.
Parents were informed that students’ failure to accept the discipline would result in further disciplinary action, including suspension.
In Providence, Hope High School students walk out to protest changes to scheduling
Posted Friday, May 14, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Chanting “ Tom Brady, where are you?” more than 200 students from Hope High School walked out of class, Thursday marched two miles through downtown and clustered on the steps of the school administration building in defense of their school’s unique class schedule.
But when they arrived, neither the superintendent nor any other school official came out to talk to them. When they then moved on to City Hall, there was no sign of Mayor David N. Cicilline or any other city representative.
The march began at 10 a.m. sharp, when dozens of students poured out of the sprawling brick high school on Hope Street and were greeted with cheers by a smaller band of students who had gathered minutes earlier. Homemade signs saying, “Student Power,” “Hear our Voice” and “Hope United” dotted the crowd like dandelions on a spring lawn.
Sophomore Julio Diaz, one of the student organizers, grabbed a bullhorn and, reciting the mantra of a former principal, told students, “Carry yourselves with class and dignity.”
Accompanied by a police escort, the teens marched down Hope Street, a noisy but joyful brigade that was part pep rally and part protest.
As the students entered Washington Street, which was cleared by the police, the chanting turned into a wall of sound, the sounds morphing from “Hope High School is under attack. Stand up and fight back,” to “Blue Wave, Blue Wave” — the school’s motto.
“There is this electric atmosphere,” said Chris Medina, a ninth-grader. “It’s a great feeling being part of something big, something important.”
“My dad always told me, ‘If you’re going to fight for something, do it right,’ ” said Ashley Torres, a junior.
The walkout was the culmination of weeks of organizing by Hope youth and a handful of Brown University students, who were alerted to the coming changes at Hope during a visit there this winter.
Students, who have been outspoken at two recent board meetings, say the district is imposing the uniform schedule in effect at other city high schools that flies in the face of a state order that directed the once-failing Hope to adopt longer class periods, hire new teachers and spilt into three smaller learning communities.
The School Department says switching from four 90-minute periods to a six-period day will not diminish the school’s successes, which include improved graduation rates, lower rates of suspension and recent gains in reading and writing in standardized state tests.
But students say that Hope’s unique “block” schedule lies at the heart of the school’s transformation from dark and dangerous to safe, caring and orderly.
Students have been demanding a meeting with Brady. This week, he offered to meet with them as long as they provided a list of which students and teachers would be attending the meeting. The youths turned him down because they felt there were too many strings attached to the meeting.
Thursday, when students arrived at school headquarters around 11 a.m., one of the Brown organizers yelled, “Who wants to call Tom Brady?”
The crowd roared.
Then, more than 200 teenagers took out their cell phones and called Brady. But the superintendent was at the State House attending a hearing on school financing.
Iris Gonzalez, whose daughter attends Hope, was parked in a car outside school headquarters:
“I’m here to support Hope,” she said. “My daughter, she was going to quit and then she took dance at Hope, and she’s doing great.”
When Brady failed to materialize, the protestors headed back downtown, where they gathered on the steps of City Hall. Suddenly, a cheer swept the crowd. Someone, reportedly a city council member, opened the doors and invited the students inside. As they filled the stairway and flanked the first balcony, their cheering — “What are we going to lose? Our teachers!” — was deafening.
Again, no one from City Hall spoke with the students. The mayor was attending an event elsewhere.
Cicilline issued a brief statement that said, “While I respect the students’ right to protest and voice their opinions … my number-one priority is to ensure that our students receive the highest quality of education. I have tremendous confidence in Superintendent Brady and fully support all of the great work he is leading in the Providence public schools.”
A much more subdued group plodded back up College Hill, their feet and posters dragging.
After they gathered outside of Hope, the students were told that they couldn’t return to class because of liability issues. Meanwhile, school spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly said that the School Department is weighing which punishment to impose.
“Today we made history,” Diaz yelled. “But now it’s time to go home. We have a full day of school tomorrow.”
Facing a May 14 deadline, Gist to hold 3 more Race to the Top meetings
Posted Monday, May 10, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
The support from teacher unions that Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist fervently wants for the state’s bid to win millions of dollars in federal funds for educational reform may be out of reach.
Gist and state education officials are entering the home stretch in their efforts to win up to $75 million in the second round of the federal Race to the Top competition and have been working feverishly to revise the state’s 200-plus page application after losing round one in March. Rhode Island came in eighth out of 41 applicants.
Gist intends to spend the money on training and supporting principals and teachers and hiring educators who specialize in turning around failing schools. She wants to create stronger curricula, new tests and better systems for keeping data on student, school and teacher performance.
Only two teacher union locals signed off on the first plan — Providence and Foster — despite approval from most school districts, state-operated and charter schools.
But despite a dozen public meetings and a more conciliatory tone when describing a new system for evaluating teachers and principals — perhaps the most controversial aspect of Rhode Island’s reform agenda — it is unclear how much ground has been gained with union leaders.
Gist has spent much of her time explaining to teachers that they will have to undergo rigorous evaluations and, in the case of chronically underperforming schools, reapply for their jobs even if the state does not win Race to the Top.
Tensions in two districts have also spiked during the past month, deepening a feeling of mistrust and resentment among many teachers.
Recently, union officials have told Gist they want her to intervene in union-management strife in Central Falls and East Providence. While those two disputes continue, they said, they can’t support the aggressive reforms Gist says are needed to fix failing schools. Gist and other state officials have said repeatedly that they cannot intervene. In Central Falls, the union local is fighting plans by Supt. Frances Gallo to terminate the entire teaching staff of the low-performing high school and hire back only 50 percent. In East Providence, the union is outraged the local school committee unilaterally cut teacher salaries and forced teachers to pay more into their health insurance. Both cases are currently in the state’s courts.
In addition, some superintendents have said they don’t think their union locals will sign on without the endorsement of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association of Rhode Island, even though state union leaders have told locals they should make their own decision.
Despite these tensions, Gist said she thinks some union locals will sign on by the May 14 deadline. Gist plans to hand-deliver the application to Washington, D.C., on May 28; the federal deadline is June 1.
“I’m hopeful,” Gist said Friday. Gist says she knows tensions are high in those two districts, so winning support there might not be possible. But she says she hopes other teacher union locals will consider signing on by the May 14 deadline.
Robert G. Flanders Jr., chairman of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, said Education Secretary Arne Duncan has warned states not to water down their aggressive reforms just to gain wider support.Education officials are holding two more community forums this week to gather input on the application: Monday, 6-7:30 p.m. at CCRI’s Newport campus, 1 John H. Chafee Blvd., and Thursday, 6-7:30 p.m. at the John Wickes Elementary School, 50 Child Lane, Warwick.
The Race to the Top steering committee will meet Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the Paff Auditorium, 255 Westminister St., Providence.
All meetings are open to the public.
Hundreds of RI teachers rally to protest policies of Commissioner Gist
Posted Thursday, April 29, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Fueled by teacher firings in Central Falls and slashed paychecks in East Providence, frustrations among many of the state’s 14,500 teachers with Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist boiled over Wednesday evening.
“Commissioner Gist, teachers in the state of Rhode Island have trust issues with you,” said Rhode Island Federation of Teachers President Marcia Reback.
During a packed meeting at the Providence Hilton attended by more than 300 teachers, dozens of speakers said they no longer trusted state and district education leaders. They said it would be hard, if not impossible, for them to support the state’s application for a portion of the $4-billion Race to the Top application, which rewards states that embrace radical education reforms.
Rhode Island’s application promises to make it harder to become and remain a teacher and outlines a process that would remove ineffective teachers — proposals that concern many educators.
At the start of the meeting, union leaders connected the dramatic changes Gist wants to make with two rancorous disputes. In Central Falls, the entire teaching staff at the high school has been fired. And in East Providence, the School Committee unilaterally cut teacher salaries. The speakers questioned why state education officials had not done more to prevent or address those situations.
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but we are a small state and everyone knows everyone else. When one of us is hurt, then all of us are hurt,” Reback said. “You have told me a lot that you respect teachers, and maybe on an individual level you do. But I don’t believe that collectively, particularly when we are organized as a union, you respect us very much,” Reback said, as the audience rose in a standing ovation.
Kelly Vasey, an elementary-school teacher in East Providence, said she would be unable to support the state Department of Education’s application to win up to $75 million in education aid.
“How can RIDE expect the teachers in East Providence, and I’m sure in Central Falls, to put our faith in this proposal when there is no trust between us and the superintendent and the School Committee?” Vasey asked. “We feel that RIDE needs to step up and fix this if we are all going to get on board.”
Gist scheduled a series of public meetings this month to gather input and build goodwill for the application. Her goal, she said several weeks ago, was to win support from 100 percent of the state’s teacher union locals. During the first round, only the Foster and Providence locals signed on.
Wednesday, Gist acknowledged it was an unlikely goal and she did not expect teachers in East Providence or Central Falls to endorse the application, given the tension in those communities.
But she urged teachers across the state to embrace the effort, saying “this is a tremendous opportunity to bring resources into our state.”
Officials also sought to address why the department is taking a more active role in Central Falls, including paying for a mediator, but is unable to do so in other cases.
The state and federal governments pay to operate Central Falls schools and the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education appoints the chairperson of the School Board of Trustees, which operates like a school committee. Because of the unique relationship, the department is involved, said Deputy Education Commissioner David V. Abbott.
However, the Education Department must stay out of other district disputes and let them be handled by the state Labor Relations Board or the courts, he said.
Teachers said they were troubled by the new evaluation system education officials plan to roll out over the next couple of years.
Standardized test scores and other kinds of assessments yet to be determined would make up 51 percent of a teacher’s evaluation; grades, writing samples, portfolios, classroom observation and interaction with students, parents and fellow teachers would make up the other 49 percent.
Teachers found to be ineffective two years in a row would lose their jobs. If hired elsewhere and found to be ineffective again for three additional years, teachers would lose their certification, meaning they could never again work in Rhode Island public schools.
Based on feedback that education officials have received, Gist said they will establish a committee that includes teachers, principals and superintendents to help develop definitions of teacher effectiveness and to decide which factors should be included in evaluations.
Wednesday, several teachers said they are worried they will be blamed for factors beyond their control, such as students with family problems, learning disabilities and limited English. Other teachers said they fear they will be blamed for a district’s lack of a curriculum or for budget cuts that reduce their materials.
“Poverty is an issue, and it has to be addressed,” said Debbie Scarpelli, a Pawtucket teacher. “We are there for our kids. But I have kids coming into school who had a brother shot in a drive-by. I have students who arrive from other countries whose first year of formal education is seventh grade. I don’t think it’s fair that only teachers and principals are held accountable for this.”
Adam Satchell, a teacher at West Warwick High School, said he opposes relying primarily on test scores and assessment data to determine student growth.
“It’s almost as though the state is ignoring socio-economic status and … lack of parental support,” Satchell said. “My students receive free and reduced lunch, have behavioral problems and bounce around from town to town. None of my students is on track to graduate. Am I an effective teacher? … Well, one of my fifth-year seniors told me the only reason she came back this year is because she knew I would help her.”
Hope High changes debated
Posted Tuesday, April 27, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Hope High School students on Monday once again turned out in force to keep their school intact, but this time, school leaders came armed with their own arguments for changing the school’s schedule.
The students, who have become eloquent champions of the school’s reform program, say that moving from four 90-minute periods, called a block schedule, to a six-period day will prevent them from developing the trusting relationships with teachers that have transformed Hope from a failing school to a flourishing one.
“Do you see what Hope has turned us into?” said Julio Diaz, a sophomore. “We’re talking politics. Aren’t you proud that we can talk to grownups? Please, let’s talk this out.”
According to students, the district is trying to impose a cookie-cutter schedule that flies in the face of a state order that directed the once-struggling high school to adopt a block schedule, hire new teachers and split into three smaller learning communities.
Students say they are thriving under the new Hope, pointing to lower rates of suspension, improved graduation rates and steady gains in reading and writing achievement. They described how their teachers have inspired them, how the arts curriculum has empowered them and how their principals have provided a safe, structured environment in which to learn.
But Nicole Onye, the director of high schools, painted a very different picture. Hope, she says, has lost 105 days of instructional time over four years because its classes meet every other day instead of daily. The six-period day, which has been adopted by every other high school, will allow students to take Advanced Placement classes and enroll in college classes.
But students said — and teachers have confirmed — that a block schedule allows a student to take 32 classes over four years compared with 24 under a six-period schedule. Students also said that a six-period day would limit the number of electives, especially in the arts, which make Hope special.
Although Onye praised the positive changes at Hope, she said that the school’s academic performance remained disappointing. Hope’s attendance and graduation rates continue to lag behind the district averages and the school’s SAT scores are not good enough to meet admission standards at either Rhode Island College or the University of Rhode Island.
According to Onye, only 3 percent of Hope’s Arts Academy passed the state math test.
But Hope students said that math scores are abysmal district-wide, with an average of only 11 percent of all high school students achieving proficiency.
“We’ve seen millions of dollars infused into Hope,” Onye said. “Those funds were diverted away from the other high schools. But we did not see the gains we expected.”
Students weren’t the only ones to defend Hope’s current configuration.
Harlan Rich, a member of the East Side Public Education Coalition, urged the School Board to come up with a compromise that would honor Hope’s gains. He also said that the School Department has forbidden teachers to speak publicly about their profound concerns about the changes coming to their school.
And Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith said that the district should be replicating Hope, not taking it apart.
“These schools [including Perry Middle School, which is slated to close] have empowered teachers and students,” he said. “Let’s wait and see if we get a school-funding formula. Let’s roll the dice, and go all in for Hope and Perry.”
AFT president lauds R.I.'s labor/management collaboration
Posted Thursday, April 15, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The president of the 1.4-million member American Federation of Teachers came calling Wednesday and she liked what she saw.
In her first classroom, Randi Weingarten, the union leader, quickly slipped into Weingarten, the teacher.
“If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?” she asked a room full of eighth graders at Roger Williams Middle School in Providence.
“Go to the moon,” said Jonathan.
“I’d stop war,” Marcas said.
“I want to go back in time,” said another boy.
What time, he was asked.
“Ancient times,” he said. “1887.”
“What steps do you have to take to become an astronaut or a scientist or become president?” Weingarten asked. Finish middle school, one child said. Complete high school, said another. Graduate from college, said a third child.
Weingarten, who is diminutive and soft-spoken, visited Providence Wednesday, not because labor and management are at each others’ throats, but because a superintendent and a union leader are willing to put their disagreements behind them and work together. In fact, it looks like Providence is the first district in the country to adopt this collaborative approach, according to the American Federation of Teachers.
Weingarten toured two failing schools, Roger Williams and Charlotte Woods Elementary, and broke bread with school officials and elected leaders because she heard that this was one district that was trying a fresh approach to the painful and often traumatic work of school reform.
“I’ve been president for two years,” Weingarten said. “I race around the country looking for [schools] where things are working or trying to work. I’m delighted to be in Providence because you are doing both.
“You can’t buy trust,” she said. “It’s earned, not given. If we are going to engage schools, the pivotal piece is collaboration. That’s what you are doing here, and it’s breathtaking. I thank you for having the courage to do it.”
Weingarten’s tour began at Roger Williams Middle School on Thurbers Avenue, a hulking brick edifice historically plagued by dismal test scores, leadership turnover and discipline issues. But Weingarten saw something other than failure. She observed teachers working hard to keep their students engaged and students paying attention.
“I’ve just seen two examples of extraordinary teaching in a school that is one of 5,000 schools that need to change,” said Weingarten, who was trained as a lawyer and later taught history at a Brooklyn high school. “Teachers often get labeled as bad teachers. Walking through these hallways defies that myth.”
After visiting the middle school, Weingarten joined Mayor David N. Cicilline, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, teachers and elected officials at a student-made breakfast at the Providence Career and Technical Academy, a $90-million high school full of modern technology.
It wasn’t all hearts and flowers, however. Renee Grant-Kane, a second-grade teacher at Charlotte Woods Elementary School, one of the schools singled out for intervention, said teachers are afraid of the forthcoming changes, including a new hiring method that is no longer based on the time-honored practice of seniority.
“Teachers,” Grant-Kane said, “do not get treated as professionals. How can we build morale? Change means working harder. We need teachers to buy in, and they can’t do that if they feel isolated.”
Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, said that Providence is trying to shake up the old top-down model of school leadership by inviting teachers to be part of the change.
“There is a great risk in what [Providence School Supt.] Tom [Brady] and [Providence Teachers Union president] Steve [Smith] are doing,” Reback said. “It puts the responsibility on everyone’s shoulders.”
And Weingarten pointed out that it takes more than teachers to turn around a failing school. It takes a uniform curriculum that reflects the state’s standards. It takes meaningful professional training. And it takes using test data to see which children are failing and why.
A few months ago, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist identified six of the lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island. Five were in Providence and one was in Central Falls. In Central Falls, a breakdown in communication led to a nasty dispute that pitted teachers against the superintendent and ultimately led Supt. Frances Gallo to fire all of the high school’s teachers and staff, effective this June.
Providence, which has a long history of bitter labor-management relations, chose a different path. Brady and Smith agreed to pursue the road not taken. They put aside their considerable differences (including a lawsuit over hiring practices filed by the union) and decided to hammer out a school-reform plan together, as partners.
Although the details have yet to be worked out, both parties have agreed to collaborate on how each of the four schools will be improved. A fifth school is expected to be closed.
Providence schools seek hike of 5 pct. in budget
Posted Wednesday, April 14, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — In what has become an annual spring ritual, the Providence School Department has proposed a budget where some of its biggest elements — the level of state aid and the city appropriation — are unknown.
The department is recommending a $329.4-million budget for fiscal 2011, which represents a 5-percent increase over the current budget.
According to the School Department’s chief financial officer, Matthew Clarkin, the proposed budget includes a $16.8-million deficit. That budget shortfall, however, could jump to almost $24 million if the General Assembly accepts Governor Carcieri’s budget, which calls for a $7.1-million cut in aid to the Providence schools.
Although there are no guarantees, Clarkin said that City Hall has told the School Department to assume that the city will continue to fund the schools at the same level. Mayor David N. Cicilline and other city officials are pressing Carcieri not to slash aid to cities and towns.
He also said the department’s 2011 budget does not include any savings that would be realized from the proposed closure of Perry Middle School and Feinstein High School.
“We don’t have a number yet,” Clarkin said, adding that school officials will meet on Monday to get an estimate of the savings. Coming up with an estimate is complicated because the department has to figure out how many teachers will be needed, in addition to the cost of busing students to schools outside their neighborhoods.
The School Board will decide whether to close the two schools at its April 26 meeting.
Much of the school budget is absorbed by fixed costs such as salary and benefits, which consume nearly 80 percent of this year’s budget.
According to Clarkin, the district spends $6.6 million maintaining a substitute teaching pool of 204 teachers, which is required by contract to fill vacancies from sick leave and other absences. The proposed 2011 budget sets aside an additional $2.2 million to pay for substitute teachers, a figure Clarkin says more accurately reflects the projected cost.
Clarkin said that the department was able to save almost $700,000 because the city refinanced its pension liability. But that savings doesn’t cover a $1.4-million increase in transportation costs, including a 14-percent proposed hike in the price of RIPTA bus passes, which are used by 2,500 students.
“We didn’t budget for the entire 14 percent,” Larkin said. “We budgeted for 10 percent.”
Although the contract with First Student calls for a 4-percent increase, the School Department is trying to negotiate a lower rate with the bus company. Larkin said, “We’re going back to them and saying, ‘We can’t absorb a 4-percent increase.’ ”
On a positive note, the school district was able to trim $1.3 million in out-of-district tuition, which covers students whose needs cannot be met in the classroom. The savings, Larkin said, represents the School Department’s successful efforts to educate those students within the district.
Students at Hope organize to keep improvements
Posted Monday, March 29, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — On an afternoon when they could be doing so many other things, 25 students from Hope High School gathered on the Brown University campus to strategize how to restore the innovations that led their school from failure to success.
The most passionate defenders of Hope, once considered among the state’s worst high schools, were seniors such as Julio Diaz, who said that his experience has changed the way he thinks about school.
“When I got to Hope,” Diaz said, “I expected to see graffiti, fights, but I saw something different. The kids were happy. The teachers asked, ‘What do you really want to be?’ In class, we were actually learning, not wasting time. Now, they want to do away with the things that make Hope, Hope.”
This fall, Hope will move from four 90-minute class periods, called a block schedule, to a six-period day, bringing the school in line with the district’s other high schools. Late last year, Supt. Tom Brady explained that the academic model adopted by Hope five years ago is too costly to maintain.
The new schedule will also reduce the time teachers spend on common planning. Student advisories, which the state considers a critical tool for building trusting relationships between students and adults, will be slashed from 90 minutes a week to 30 minutes.
Brady, in a December letter to the Rhode Board of Regents, said the district can no longer afford to devote so many resources to one school, adding that the Hope model requires 20 to 30 additional teachers at a cost of about $2.5 million.
But Hope’s defenders say that the elements that spurred Hope’s transformation — longer class periods, ample planning time, student advisories — are being dismantled.
Five years ago, Hope was plagued by lousy test scores, plummeting morale and low graduation rates. The school was so bad that former state education Commissioner Peter McWalters ordered it to make sweeping changes, including breaking the school into three smaller academies, organized around individual themes.
For Raul Gonzales, another senior, joining the Arts Academy was nothing short of a revelation:
“When I signed on to Arts, I found people who were just like me,” he said last week. “Now that they are taking that way, we won’t have that sense of identity.”
The campaign to organize Hope’s students is the brainchild of several Brown students, who visited the high school in January. When the Brown students spoke with some of the teachers at Hope, the conversation revolved around their frustration with the changes imposed by central administration.
For Aaron Regunberg, a Brown sophomore and political science major, the teachers’ despair was heartbreaking:
“Their perspective was, ‘Five years ago, we came to the table. We made all these commitments. We did it. We made progress. Now they are taking it all away.’ We thought we might be in a position to bring people together in a way that they couldn’t.”
Regunberg and Michael Mezera, a Brown freshman, spent the next month speaking with people such as union president Steve Smith and advocacy groups such as Young Voices. Two weeks ago, they turned up at Hope and began passing out fliers inviting students to a meeting at Brown the following week.
To their surprise, 45 students showed up for the first meeting.
At Thursday’s session, students were joined by Paul Sproll, a faculty member at the Rhode Island School of Design, one of Hope’s partners, Harlan Rich, who helped lead the successful effort to reopen Nathan Bishop Middle School, and Jill Davidson, who runs the Coalition for Essential Schools.
Students are circulating a petition that asks Brady to reconsider switching to a standard six-period day. The teenagers hope to make their case at an upcoming School Board meeting.
R.I. delegation heads to Washington to seek education funds
Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Buoyed by an unusual show of solidarity at the State House, political and educational leaders headed to Washington, D.C., Tuesday night to try to persuade federal officials that Rhode Island deserves a historic infusion of money into its public education system.
Governor Carcieri, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist and Providence Supt. Tom Brady are leading a five-member team that will present the state’s Race to the Top application to a panel of judges at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Deputy Education Commissioner David V. Abbott and Maryann Snider, head of instruction and teacher quality at the state Department of Education, will also participate in the 30-minute presentation, which is followed by a 60-minute question-and-answer period. Both portions are closed to the public.
Joining the team are a dozen supporters, ranging from mayors and teachers union representatives to Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed and House Speaker Gordon D. Fox.
A spirit of cooperation and goodwill between the Democratic-controlled House and Senate and the Republican governor dominated a rally at the State House Tuesday afternoon to see the group off. Just an hour later, lawmakers passed a bill to expand the cap on charter schools from 20 to 35, a boon to the state’s application.
“This is a huge, huge effort,” Carcieri said, thanking dozens of people for their work in developing the state’s 200-page application. The money would help the state move forward “more quickly and more deeply” with improvements to schools, Carcieri said.
Rhode Island has asked for $126.6 million to implement a range of far-reaching changes that would alter the way teachers are trained, paid and evaluated; revamp the way grades and test scores are used to analyze student and teacher performance; and expand innovative approaches such as public charter schools and alternative teacher-training programs.
Carcieri commended Brady, Providence Teachers Union president Steve Smith and Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline as particularly helpful in the state’s effort to win the unprecedented federal funds. Shortly before the January deadline to submit the application, Brady and Cicilline encouraged Smith to sign on to the plan — a signal to federal officials that the state’s biggest teachers union was willing to embrace profound reforms. The Foster teachers union was the only other local to endorse the plan.
Rhode Island’s application was strong enough to win one of 16 finalist spots — out of 41 applicants that entered the $4-billion competition. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has warned that only a few states will be selected in the first round on April 1. States that are not selected can reapply June 1.
Gist tried to temper expectations that Rhode Island would win the first round even as she exuded enthusiasm. Rhode Island was one of just three states to receive praise this week from a nonprofit organization, the National Council on Teacher Quality, for its “bold plan.”
“We are going to make these changes whether or not we get the funding,” Gist said. “We are going to change from the system we have today to the system we envision. Rhode Island is going to be a leader in education reform.”
Perry, Feinstein schools to close in Providence
Posted Tuesday, March 9, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — About 300 Perry Middle School teachers and parents turned out Monday night to beg Supt. Tom Brady to save their school, saying that the heart of any school lies in its faculty, not its physical plant.
The Providence School Board, however, voted to move forward with Brady’s recommendation to close Perry, a sprawling 80-year-old brick edifice in the North End whose bricks and mortar are crumbling.
During the meeting, teacher Steve Kilsey called the school “a perfect brilliant diamond” where teachers and students functioned as a family.
Another teacher, D. Wolf Fulton, said that Perry has “a caring faculty who put in extra time above and beyond the classroom duties.”
Staff members also said that Perry has made tremendous gains, making yearly progress the past three years.
Brady thanked everyone who turned out for their dedication and their concern, and acknowledged that school closings are always emotionally painful.
Faced with declining student enrollments and spiraling maintenance costs, Brady hired a team of consultants last year to visit all of the district’s 40-plus schools and decide which ones to close, based on their poor condition and the quality of their educational equipment.
In what is largely a procedural matter, the School Board will not formally vote to close Perry and Feinstein High School, a small alternative high school on the South Side, until public hearings are held this spring. The board is expected to follow Brady’s recommendations.
These closings have nothing to do with the schools’ academic performance, which is the driving force behind state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist’s decision to single out six of the state’s lowest-performing schools. Five of them are in Providence and the other is Central Falls High School.
During a meeting brimming with emotion, the school board also voted to:
•Delay closing Windmill Elementary School and Feinstein Elementary School at Sackett Street until the School Department studies whether to revive neighborhood schools at the elementary level.
•Reopen and renovate the former West Broadway Elementary School on Bainbridge Street. The popular West End school was closed three years ago after then-Supt. Donnie Evans argued that the school’s fire code violations would be too costly to fix.
•Postpone the creation of three K-8 schools until the school administration analyzes the pros and cons of this model. The district currently has middle schools with grades 6 through 8.
School administrators have said that they are confident that few, if any, teachers from the closed schools will lose their jobs. The teachers affected by the school closures will receive letters saying that they have been “displaced,” not fired, which means they can apply for vacancies elsewhere. Providence typically has dozens of job openings every year.
Providence proposing school changes that include teacher participation
Posted Tuesday, March 9, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The city is poised to embark on an unorthodox method of transforming four of its lowest-performing schools, asking the teachers union, long an adversary of management, to help in an overhaul.
Monday night, Supt. Tom Brady presented his plans to the School Board before sending a letter of intent to state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who has 10 days to approve or deny them. The School Board is not required to vote on the proposal.
The wide-ranging reforms are the result of an order from Gist who, in January, identified the six lowest-performing schools in the state and ordered them to shape up or else.
Five of them are in Providence. The other is Central Falls High School, which has been torn apart ever since Supt. Frances Gallo fired all 93 teachers and staff after they refused to agree to a series of far-reaching changes. What Brady is proposing, however, is revolutionary in a district where labor-management relationships have often been acrimonious. A lawsuit over the district’s new hiring practices is pending, although the union and the school administration are reportedly close to a resolution.
But Brady and union president Steve Smith have since reconciled, prompted in part by Smith’s decision to sign on to the federal Race to the Top application, which could usher in millions of dollars for the cash-strapped district.
“We wouldn’t be here without the union’s leadership,” Brady said in an earlier interview. “It’s clear, if you have everyone at the table, your probability of success is greatly enhanced.”
Although the details have yet to be worked out, Brady envisions a team of union leaders and school administrators, including himself and Smith, sitting down to craft substantial changes at each of four schools. They are Charlotte Woods Elementary School, Lillian Feinstein Elementary School at Sackett Street, Roger Williams Middle School and the Cooley Health, Science and Technology High School.
Feinstein High School is also on the list, but Brady has recommended closing the small, alternative school under a separate plan that looked at the condition of school buildings as well as enrollment patterns. All together, more than 2,200 students will be affected.
Once a plan for each school has been developed, a teacher from each would work closely with the principal to implement and tweak the proposal. The superintendent, however, would retain the ultimate authority over such matters as curriculum, but individual schools could reorganize or extend the school day.
After extensive public meetings with parents, teachers and community leaders, Brady chose the “restart” model because it afforded much more flexibility than the other three options provided by the U.S. Department of Education.
Although a majority of parents and teachers said they preferred the “transformation” model, Brady said that it was too restrictive. The transformation model calls for replacing the principal, a rigorous teacher evaluation, some form of merit pay for teachers and more time set aside for instruction.
“With the transformation model, we must follow every one of the [requirements],” Brady said. “There may be some — like merit pay — that don’t fit our schools.”
The restart option is more open-ended, he said. The only thing it calls for is creating a new management structure, like a charter school, to run the school. In this case, however, the management team would be a union-district partnership.
Although no one would be fired, Brady said teachers at the affected schools would have to re-apply for their jobs. Those teachers who chose not to commit to the new reforms could apply for openings at other Providence schools.
Some of the changes that Brady is considering under the restart option are a longer school day, more common planning time for teachers, a more flexible budget and professional training targeted toward the needs of each school.
Providence parents, educators discuss plans for failing schools
Posted Wednesday, March 3, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A diverse group of parents, teachers and community leaders were very clear Tuesday night: We want to reorganize our schools without taking the dramatic steps that led to acrimony in Central Falls.
The committee, comprising representatives from each of the district’s five lowest-performing schools, said that they want change in the form of longer school days, smarter professional training and more parent involvement. But they do not want to dismantle schools or fire the staff, nor do they want an outside management company, like a charter school, to tell them what to do.
Last night, parents and teachers had to choose one of four options to overhaul their failing schools, identified in January by state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist as among the worst-performing schools in Rhode Island. The sixth school is Central Falls High School, whose teachers received termination letters last week after failing to accept a less punitive overhaul.
Here’s what the representatives from each of the five schools recommended to Providence Supt. Tom Brady, who will announce his decision on March 8.
•Feinstein High School chose the transformation model, which calls for replacing the principal, extending learning time, reaching out to the community and increasing teacher effectiveness.
Feinstein, however, is in a peculiar position because a separate school facilities study has recommended that the school be closed because of its poor physical condition. With closure a distinct possibility, parents and teachers urged Brady to keep the staff together if they are moved to another school.
•Feinstein Elementary School at Sackett Street favors the restart model, which, among other options, calls for reopening the school under a labor-management team. Tuesday night, school officials said that the restart option offers the most flexibility because you can pick and choose elements from the transformation model without being limited to those reforms.
Brady also cautioned the committee about the cost of implementing certain provisions, such as an extended school day. Although Providence will receive additional federal money, once the district commits to a particular model, it can’t say, “We don’t have enough money.”
•Roger Williams Middle School chose the transformation option, but said it could also accept the restart model.
•Health, Science and Technology High School selected the transformation option because committee members said they didn’t want to “change the school entirely.”
•Charlotte Woods Elementary School also favored the transformation model.
Whereas the debate in Central Falls has been acrimonious, the discussion in Providence has been civil, and last night was no exception.
“This is the first time that the district has allowed the community to voice its opinion,” said Rosa DeCastillo, who was speaking as a member of the Latino community.
Although each school is different, several common themes emerged from last night’s conversations. Parents want a greater role in their children’s education. Teachers want more say over their training, which they said is often irrelevant to what is happening in their classrooms. Students said they wanted a longer school day, and one teenager called for additional help after school.
Chris Pride, a teacher at Roger Williams, called for a complete change in school culture, but said he hoped that it could be accomplished without getting rid of the staff.
“These students have had enough change,” he said. “Teachers are often their only constant.”
Several participants, however, said it was important for teachers to “re-commit” to their schools, which might involve teachers re-applying for their jobs, as they did at Hope High School five years ago.
Afterward, Brady thanked the group for its commitment and said, “If we don’t work on this together, we’re wasting our time.”
Parents, school administrator to meet
Posted Tuesday, March 2, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — West End parents and community leaders are meeting Tuesday night with one of the School Department’s top administrators to begin a conversation about how to improve the neighborhood schools.
At a recent school board meeting, Supt. Tom Brady announced that he was creating a task force to study the possibility of returning to neighborhood schools and said he would actively engage parents in the process. Several groups, including the West Broadway Neighborhood Association and the newly formed West Side Public Education Coalition, took up Brady’s call to action.
“This forum is the first of what we hope to be a series of ongoing conversations about the future of our neighborhood schools,” said Kari Lang, director of the neighborhood association. “Previously, we didn’t have a seat at the table. Now we do.”
For three years, West End community leaders have pleaded with the School Department to reopen West Broadway Elementary School on Bainbridge Avenue, which former Supt. Donnie Evans closed in 2007 over the vehement objections of parents and teachers. At the time, Evans shut down the school because of fire code violations.
Brady recently announced that he planned to reopen the Bainbridge Avenue school, although it remains to be seen whether West Broadway students return to that location. A team of consultants recommended moving students from the nearby Asa Messer Elementary School to Bainbridge, but many West Broadway parents would like to see their children return to the Bainbridge location.
“The School Department is on the right track,” said Brian Principe, a parent and leader of the West Side Public Education Coalition, which is modeled after a similar organization on the East Side. “I hope that we can start to make progress on bringing back the [Bainbridge] elementary school. But we’re not just about West Broadway.”
Principe said his group is interested in creating high-performing schools throughout the West End, including quality middle schools. Although the consultants called for the school’s closure, Brady has recommended that the Bridgham Middle School on Westminster Street remain open.
Tuesday’s forum will be held at 7 p.m. at the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, 1560 Westminster St., Providence. Carleton Jones, the School Department’s chief operating officer, will attend the meeting on behalf of the School Department.
More collaboration than conflict in Providence over education
Posted Monday, March 1, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — In January, after five city schools were named among the worst in Rhode Island, Providence Supt. Tom Brady had a choice: he could reorganize the schools with — or without — the union’s support.
Brady approached Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, who was currently suing the district over hiring practices, and asked if he would join him in speaking with teachers at the affected schools.
As they toured the schools, Brady would ask teachers with 20 years in the system to stand up, then those with 10 years and so forth. Each time, Brady said, “You all deserve a round of applause.”
Call it a tale of two cities.
While the superintendent and union president have been going at it in Central Falls, Brady and Smith have worked together on a plan to radically reshape five of the state’s lowest-performing schools.
On Friday, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist said that she hopes the partnership between management and labor in Providence is the wave of the future.
“I think that we have to acknowledge that change can be difficult,” she said. “I’m really encouraged to see them working together. Providence teachers are fortunate to have leadership that represents teachers while collaborating on what’s best for students.”
The latest collaboration was no small breakthrough. Last fall, the union sued Brady after then-state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters ordered Providence to abolish seniority, the time-honored way in which teachers are assigned to fill openings.
When Brady arrived in Providence in summer 2008, he inherited a protracted labor dispute and the staff’s deep distrust of school administration, a legacy of former Supt. Donnie Evans. Both parties were close to reaching a contract agreement when Mayor David N. Cicilline announced a change in health-care providers, which infuriated teachers and blew a hole in negotiations.
Then McWalters stepped in and gave the district three months to do away with seniority.
So what brought about a rapprochement?
In a joint interview Thursday, they said their arguments were never personal.
“I like him personally,” Brady said. “That was never the issue.”
The two leaders decided to sit down while the city was preparing its part of the state’s application for federal Race to The Top funds — expected to reap millions of dollars for cash-strapped Providence schools if the state is one of a few chosen nationwide for the money. Under federal guidelines, union participation in the application is an important asset in the competition. With all those dollars at stake, Smith said he couldn’t afford to be an obstacle in getting valuable resources that would benefit his 2,000 members.
In a series of weekend-long negotiations involving Brady, Smith and Gist, Gist offered several concessions that made her plan palatable to Smith.
Risking his own political future as leader of the state’s largest teachers’ union, Smith endorsed the commissioner’s school-reform plan because it was “the right thing to do for kids.” He was the only teachers union leader to do so.
According to Smith, this is the future of labor-management relationships — more collaboration than conflict. Smith remembers Brady saying, “OK. This has to be a partnership. We can’t say this is a collaboration if we’re at each others’ throats.”
The partnership is playing out in other ways, too. Last year, when the School Department was developing its annual layoff list, the union waited until the names were completed, then pointed out every mistake, what Smith calls a game of “gotcha.” This winter, the union and administration worked on the layoff list together, even over school vacation. Last week, Brady announced that only 99 teachers would receive pink slips, a dramatic decline from the previous two years, when 650 and 584 staff received notices.
“Marcia Reback congratulated us,” Smith said of the former president of his union who is now president of the union statewide. “Not since 1973 has Providence had less than 100 layoffs.”
On March 11, Brady hopes to submit his plans for the five schools to Gist and Smith fully expects that the superintendent’s recommendations will honor what teachers want.
“Do I think he is in favor of closing schools? No.” Smith said. “My sense is that the superintendent will run his recommendations by me. This isn’t about agreeing on everything. It’s about doing what’s right for kids and teachers.”
Parents are scarce at meeting to improve education system
Posted Tuesday, February 23, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Stephanie Jones wanted an answer: Where are all the parents?
Jones was one of only seven parents who showed up at her child’s high school one evening recently to hear what officials have in mind for dramatically improving — or perhaps shutting down — five of the city’s worst schools.
“There is something very, very wrong here,” Jones told the administrators running the meeting at the Health, Science and Technology Academy, a South Side high school. “We’re missing the parents. We’re not going to have a successful school if we don’t get parent engagement.”
On orders from the state education commissioner, Supt. Tom Brady must decide which of four approaches he thinks is best for each school. He can close down one or more of them; turn them over to a charter company, transform them by making substantial changes from within, or follow a “turnaround” model that calls for firing the entire staff and rehiring no more than half.
As part of the state-ordered decision-making process, Providence must gather the opinions of parents and other community representatives on what they think would be the best approach or approaches to radically changing the five schools. Two weeks ago, teachers from each of the five schools met privately to discuss which of the reform models they preferred.
The School Department faced the challenge of getting parents to weigh in on an inherently complicated process and to do so under a tight deadline. Brady has until March 17 to tell the commissioner, Deborah A. Gist, what he proposes for each of the five schools.
The Central Falls School Department, under similar orders to overhaul its high school, already has completed the initial process and has proposed the turnaround model, which requires clearing out the school’s entire staff at the end of the current school year.
With so much at stake, why did only a handful of parents show up for the informational meetings, which were held at each of the five schools on weeknights and Saturday last week. Annetti Perrea, a parent of two children, says that parents feel overburdened by the demands of their own lives.
“Parents are overwhelmed trying to pay the bills and put food on the table,” she said. “If I have two jobs, I can’t tell my employer I’m taking time out for a meeting.”
Glen Perdereaux, a parent of two elementary school children, doesn’t buy the excuse that parents are too busy to make time for their children’s education.
“I don’t buy this nonsense,” he said. “This is your child’s future. What can be more important than that?”
Although Perrea commended the School Department for providing Spanish-language translation at each meeting, she said Spanish-speaking parents are sometimes afraid to speak out publicly, especially if the event is being filmed.
The department, she says, should hold meetings in places where parents already congregate, such as churches and Boys & Girls Clubs. The School Department should also ask local community groups to get out the word about important meetings or major changes to the school system.
“We certainly believe that our parents have a great interest in what happens to their children,” said school spokeswoman Kim Rose. “Our goal is to disseminate the information as widely as possible.”
According to Rose, Providence has gone above and beyond what Gist called for in terms of community engagement. Parents were given two opportunities to hear about the intervention models: during the week and again on Saturday morning. The district also invited teachers and staff to participate in a separate set of meetings held at each of the five schools.
The school district tried to get the message out, in English and Spanish, through the mail, notifying parents of the meetings. It also sent out two phone messages, also in both languages. The first call was made a week before the meetings and a reminder was sent the day before.
On a separate front, Providence is also considering closing six schools because of their poor physical condition. The School Department recently held a series of well-attended public meetings on the plan, which went before the School Board on Monday night.
Meanwhile, parents and children are anxious about what these changes will mean for them. Some Providence parents mistakenly think that their schools are closing right away, while others believe that Providence will follow Central Falls, where the superintendent plans to fire its high school staff.
“People are afraid,” Perrea said. “There are so many things happening at once.”
On Tuesday night, all of the stakeholders — teachers, parents, principals and community leaders — will share their recommendations for fixing each school at a public meeting beginning at 5:30 p.m. at School Department headquarters.
Perdereaux applauded the department for trying to reach out to parents, but says he felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information presented at the meeting he attended. “I hope something good can come out of this,” he said.
Brady to delay closing of two elementary schools
Posted Tuesday, February 23, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Tom Brady earned high praise from parents and elected officials Monday night for listening to his constituents and deciding to keep two elementary schools open.
After listening to hours of public debate on the proposed school closings, Brady made the following recommendations:
•Delay closing Windmill Elementary School and Feinstein Elementary School at Sackett Street until a task force studies how to restore neighborhood schools at the elementary level.
•Postpone the creation of three K-8 schools until the School Department is able to thoroughly explore the pros and cons of this approach. The district currently has middle schools with grades six through eight.
•Close Feinstein High School and Perry Middle School, but keep Bridgham Middle School open. Brady decided to keep Bridgham open because the building is in much better condition and has superior educational facilities.
Feinstein High School teachers and parents, however, said that it would be a shame to close a school that has made amazing gains in reading and writing recently, beating the state average. They described Feinstein as a family, and said that the small high school has had great success in not only sending graduates to college, but keeping them there.
“When our grades went up, we never heard from anyone,” said Melissa Parkerson, a Feinstein teacher. “Our students have been torn apart. Please let them know they matter.”
•Re-open and renovate the former West Broadway Elementary School on Bainbridge Street.
Brady’s proposal represents a significant departure from the consultants’ original recommendations, which called for closing both elementary schools together with Perry, Bridgham and Feinstein High School.
Last night, several city councilors who had been highly critical of the consultants’ original proposal applauded Brady for changing his mind. And Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith said Brady and the union have “turned a corner,” adding that both sides are really focused on “doing what’s right for kids.”
In an interview Monday, Brady said he took to heart the concerns of parents, teachers and elected officials, who called for a return to neighborhood elementary schools, in spite of their poor physical condition. In fact, parents and politicians described these schools as “anchors” in their community and argued that they should be spared.
According to School Department policy, 80 percent of elementary school seats are reserved for students who can walk to school. In many cases, however, only a fraction of neighborhood children attend the nearest elementary school. At Windmill Elementary School, for example, only 21 percent of the students come from the neighborhood.
In any event, Brady wants to appoint a task force to study what can be done to correct the shift away from neighborhood schools.
During the latest round of community meetings, parents and politicians also questioned why the district was spending so much money busing students across town when that money could be better spent elsewhere. An inordinate sum of money — between $7.7 and $8.5 million — is spent busing elementary and middle school students.
“It would be disingenuous to close elementary schools when we have this larger issue,” Brady said, adding that he wants the task force to study the entire $16-million transportation budget, which includes money to bus private and parochial school students.
Brady said he also heard loud and clear that parents are not ready for a K-8 school model. Although some research says that, K-8 schools provide students with more stability, parents repeatedly said that they were afraid of putting their children in the same building with larger and more socially advanced adolescents.
“I think it’s a great model,” Brady said. “But you can’t impose that on people.”
Meanwhile, school officials said they are confident that few, if any, teachers from Feinstein or Perry will lose their jobs. If Feinstein and Perry are closed, those teachers will receive letters that say they are “displaced,” not fired, which means they can apply for vacancies elsewhere. Carlton Jones, the department’s chief operating officer, said it appears likely that most of those teachers will be rehired because the district typically has to fill dozens of vacancies.
The task force will begin to study the twin issues of neighborhood schools and busing costs in April with final recommendations expected in 10 months. The school board will vote on the proposed school closings March 8.
Budget plan would deeply cut aid to schools
Posted Wednesday, February 3, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Governor Carcieri’s spending plan for fiscal year 2011 would reduce state aid to schools by at least $27 million — the deepest cut to education aid in nearly two decades, since the height of Rhode Island’s banking crisis. If approved by the General Assembly, the state’s 36 school districts and 10 of the state’s 13 charter schools would receive an across-the-board cut of 3.8 percent, compared with this year. (Three charter schools are operated by the Providence and Cranston school districts and would sustain cuts through those districts.) The four state-operated schools — Davies Career and Tech, Rhode Island School for the Deaf, the MET, and the Training School — would also sustain significant cuts.
Carcieri has laid out a plan that would reduce school aid by as much as $38.2 million. That includes the $26.7 million across-the-board reduction, and additional cuts equal to the amount that, he says, each community would save on teacher retirement costs if the legislature revokes the promise of guaranteed annual pension increases for future retirees.
The impact on communities would be severe. Providence, the state’s largest school district, would lose $7.1 million if the across-the-board education cuts are approved. Schools Supt. Tom Brady called the potential reductions “grave” and said they threatened his district’s ability to serve its 24,000 students. Providence schools have already lost $5.8 million in state funding over the past two years.
“Continued cuts in state aid to local school districts will further compromise our school district’s ability to deliver crucial educational services to our students,” Brady said in a statement.
Central Falls, which is financed almost entirely by the state, would lose $1.7 million. Other large districts, including Warwick and Woonsocket would take a big hit — $1.3 million and $1.7 million, respectively. Pawtucket would lose about $2.5 million.
Some districts have been bracing for the potential cuts. Cranston, for example, assumed it would lose about $750,000 next year and planned accordingly. But the governor’s proposal would slash far more from Cranston schools — $1.26 million.
Though the state’s charter schools would lose $1.3 million, teacher union officials have expressed dismay that the governor’s budget also includes $6 million extra for the expansion of five existing charter schools and the addition of two new charters this fall.
Four charter schools are adding grades, as their charters allow: Paul Cuffee, Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley, Learning Community and Segue Institute. And International Charter School is expanding by 25 students.
Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist has defended the additional money for charters, which are publicly financed schools that are free from many of the rules and restrictions that govern regular public schools. Gist says that many charter schools are showing positive results for students and says they are centers for innovation that other schools can learn from.
On Tuesday, Gist said she was concerned about the proposed cuts to schools. Gist is overseeing an ambitious array of reforms, many of which will require additional resources.
Carcieri’s budget also expands a tax-credit scholarship program from $1 million to $2 million. Businesses can donate up to $100,000 a year into the scholarship program, receiving a tax credit of up to 90 percent for their donation. The scholarships go to low-income students who attend parochial or private school. The program, which began in 2007, serves between 300 and 500 students a year.
“There continues to be a growing unmet need of families who want to choose the right educational environment for their children but are unable to do so due to financial constraints,” said Dan Corley, board president of the Rhode Island Scholarship Alliance. “Raising the cap will help meet the needs of more eligible families.”
Parents oppose proposed closure of 7 Providence schools
Posted Friday, January 29, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Our schools are much more than brick and mortar. They are the centers of our community, the repository of our hopes and dreams.
That was the message that parents, teachers and politicians shared with school leaders at the first of six public hearings on a proposal to close seven public schools and turn three schools into kindergarten-through-grade-eight buildings.
The consultants, Fanning Howey, have recommended closing three elementary schools, including Windmill Elementary in the city’s North End. The proposed closures are driven by declining student enrollment in Providence, the condition of the school buildings, many of which are at least 60 years old, and an increasingly grim financial picture.
Last night, the public was especially upset with the proposed closing of Windmill. The plan calls for sending Windmill students to the nearby Hopkins Middle School. Parents, however, questioned why a popular elementary school was being closed.
“You have a $360-million school budget and you want to close a school that has been the center of the community for years?” said state Rep. John D. Simone to loud applause. “How much would it save? $471,000? No way I’m going to let you close a school for $470,000.”
Parents also questioned the wisdom of placing small children in a building with much bigger and more emotionally advanced students.
Teachers also defended Windmill, saying that it was a school on the rise.
“Our test scores are up,” said teacher Traci Bowen. “Why are we being punished?”
Edward Schmidt, a Fanning Howey consultant, said that it was the building, not the academic program at Windmill, that was being dismantled, but that didn’t assuage the concerns of teachers, who wondered what would happen to them at Hopkins.
Harlan Rich, a parent and member of the East Side Public Education Coalition, asked whether closing two middle schools, Perry and Bridgham, would result in overcrowding at the other middle schools. He said that research has shown that 600 students is the ideal capacity of a high-performing middle school.
Schmidt said that the plan does not call for exceeding the 600-student threshold at any of the middle schools. (Fanning Howey recommends that the following schools be transformed into K-8 schools: Vartan Gregorian Elementary School on the East Side, Carl Lauro Elementary School and Hopkins Middle School, which currently has grades 6 through 8.)
Gregorian parents worry that turning it into a K-8 school would undermine the school’s success. With a waiting list of 100 students, Gregorian is the most popular elementary school in the city and a growing number of East Side parents are returning to the public schools because of Gregorian and Nathan Bishop Middle School, which just underwent a $35-million renovation.
“Why would you build two new middle schools in one neighborhood, when other neighborhoods don’t have anything?” said Kira Greene, a Gregorian parent.
According to Greene, this proposal would “sabotage” Nathan Bishop by funneling students into the K-8 school at Gregorian. Gregorian is one of the primary “feeder” elementary schools for Bishop.
Schmidt said that the district would need to build an addition to Gregorian so that students wouldn’t have to be moved during extensive renovation. Once the work was finished, the district would need to find a use for that extra classroom space.
But several parents noted that the school is boxed in by a highway and a park and said that there is no place to build an addition.
Feinstein High getting $1,000,000 from anonymous donor
Posted Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein has announced that an anonymous donor has given $1 million to keep Feinstein High School from closing.
Feinstein, whose name adorns numerous buildings in Rhode Island, including at least four public schools, said he was disheartened when he heard that the high school was one of six schools that may be closed due to its shoddy physical condition and declining enrollments throughout the district.
“I was very unhappy to hear that Feinstein was closing,” Feinstein said. “It has a high college-acceptance rate. Only Classical High School beats it.”
Feinstein donated $500,000 to the school when it opened in 1994 amid much fanfare. At the time, it was one of several iconoclastic new high schools that were trying to create lively learning environments for disaffected youth. Teachers worked in teams and written evaluations replaced letter grades. The school itself was built around a two-story atrium, with tons of natural light. Exposed ductwork gave the building the look of an urban loft.
Today, however, Principal K.C. Perry said the two science labs are woefully inadequate; they lack sinks, Bunsen burners and adequate technology. Classrooms are cramped and there is no gymnasium. Perry acknowledges that the building has outlasted its mission and agrees that students would be better served in a modern facility such as the nearby Adelaide High School.
But he disagrees with news reports that say that the school is failing. Although its scores are still low, in 2007, Feinstein High was one of two Providence high schools to make double-digit gains in writing and math.
“We created a place where students were successful,” Perry said Monday. “Teachers and kids worked in teams. The persistence that students have learned here has followed them into college.”
At 59 percent, Feinstein has the second-highest rate of college enrollment, after Classical High School, the district’s jewel in the crown. And 40 percent of its graduates remain in college four years later, a rate only exceeded by Classical. The high school also performs well when you look at five-year graduation rates. Nearly 70 percent earn their diploma when given an extra year, Perry said.
But state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist identified Feinstein High School as one of Rhode Island’s lowest-achieving schools. Using a complex federal formula that takes into account test scores, graduation rates and student improvement over time, Gist singled out Feinstein as one of five Providence schools (six statewide) that must be fixed or face closure.
Yesterday, a School Department spokeswoman said that Supt. Tom Brady will meet with Feinstein officials to discuss the challenges facing the high school and the school district.
“The generosity of his offer is much appreciated,” said spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly.
That said, O’Reilly said that there are “significant challenges” facing Feinstein beyond the purely physical limitations. It would cost several million dollars to upgrade the science labs alone.
Union chief wants a say in school reforms
Posted Wednesday, January 20, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Risking his own place in the labor hierarchy, the president of the state’s largest teachers union said he supports the education commissioner’s controversial school-reform plan because it is “the right thing to do for kids.”
The 2,000-member Providence Teachers Union was the only urban union local in Rhode Island to sign the state’s Race to the Top application, which could bring as much as $125 million in federal money to school districts in Rhode Island. As the largest school system, Providence stands to gain the most from the reform proposal. The union’s support is considered critical to the plan’s success in the competition for the money.
“For the first time,” PTU president Steve Smith said, “we have been guaranteed not only a seat at the table, but a partnership. This doesn’t mean that I’ve conceded anything. It means we will be part of the discussions.”
Smith’s decision puts him at odds with other urban teachers unions and, he says, it could threaten his reelection this spring. Smith’s decision to approve the plan triggered the endorsement of Marcia Reback, president of the PTU’s state umbrella organization, the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Care Professionals.
While none of the other Rhode Island urban unions joined Smith, the leaders of several big-city teachers unions elsewhere, including Boston and Philadelphia, supported their states’ bids for the federal money.
With millions of dollars at stake for the cash-strapped district, Smith said he couldn’t afford to turn down valuable resources that would directly benefit his 2,000 members. Besides, he said, Deborah A. Gist, education commissioner, has already said she intends to intervene in Providence by ordering the district to dramatically change, perhaps close, five of its lowest-performing schools.
But, Smith said, in feverish negotiations over the weekend, Gist offered several concessions that made her plan more palatable. Most importantly, she agreed to include other measures of student performance, not just test scores, when evaluating a teacher’s effectiveness.
According to Smith, Gist also agreed to ensure that any issues involving wages, benefits and working conditions must be subject to collective bargaining. Gist’s plan includes a memorandum that says that any contract violations would be submitted to binding arbitration.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity to receive funding that the district desperately needs,” Smith said in a letter to his membership. “In uncertain economic times, our union must have a voice at the table.
“The alternative — to obstruct the application — is unacceptable. Should we face the same issues without an assurance of negotiation and arbitration and without a chance for funding? Should we further jeopardize our public support and our support in General Assembly?”
Mostly though, Smith said that this was the right thing to do for students, who will ultimately benefit from teachers who are better trained and have access to the latest technology.
“Steve was shrewd,” said Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees. “He took a look at the landscape and decided that it was better to be involved in the process early on than left sitting on the sidelines.”
Meanwhile, Smith earned high praise Tuesday from both Mayor David N. Cicilline and Supt. Tom Brady who called Smith’s leadership “courageous and bold.“
Smith’s approval signals at least a temporary thaw in the contentious relationship between Brady and the union. The union filed a federal lawsuit against Brady last year after the district, under orders from the state, decided to eliminate seniority as the method of assigning teachers to vacancies. The suit is in mediation.
Providence union signs on to ‘Race to the Top’ school reform
Posted Tuesday, January 19, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist flies to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to hand-deliver her $125-million school-reform proposal bolstered by the long-sought approval of the Providence Teachers Union — a key endorsement that improves the state’s chances to win the federal education aid.
The 2,000-member Providence local was the only affiliate of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals to support the reform plan, and it did so in the 11th hour. Gist also received the endorsement, with reservations, of the RIFTHP, Marcia Reback.
The National Education Association of Rhode Island, which represents most of the suburban and rural districts, withheld its support of the state’s Race to the Top application in the competition to win a portion of a $4-billion federal pot.
Tuesday is the deadline for states to apply to the U.S. Department of Education.
RIFTHP’s 10 other teacher locals, including Central Falls, Cranston, Pawtucket, Warwick and Woonsocket, declined to sign off on the application, which has received support from virtually all superintendents and school committees in the state. Of the state’s 50 school districts, charter schools and state-operated schools, 47 have embraced all the reforms outlined in the application. Coventry agreed to some of the reforms; only Little Compton and Chariho school officials balked at participating.
The 370-page proposal calls for ambitious reforms that would change every aspect of public education in Rhode Island. It demands improvements in teacher quality and student achievement, especially in the state’s worst schools.
Education officials expressed their appreciation for the RIFTHP’s endorsement.
“I think we are thrilled to have received the widespread support that we have, and through good faith negotiations on everyone’s part we’ve been able to receive the support of the state’s largest teachers union, notwithstanding the concerns I know they had,” said Robert G. Flanders Jr., chairman of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education. “We are very happy to have their support.”
Gist, architect of the plan, described the endorsement of the Providence Teachers Union as “incredibly important” to the success of the proposal.
“It shows they are willing to sit down with us and work through changes that will benefit every teacher and student across the state,” she said.
Despite serious disagreements with Gist over teacher evaluations, Reback said she realized union support was critical.
“I said from the beginning that if any of my locals wanted to sign on, I would send a letter of support,” Reback said. “I believe that with the support of the RIFTHP and Providence, the application stands a good chance of being funded, and without it, the application would not be funded.”
NEARI declined to endorse the plan, although one of its locals, Foster, did sign on.
“At this time, we see no reason to send a letter and don’t think a letter would be helpful to the cause,” said Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of NEARI. “Our list of objections is quite extensive and has not been adequately addressed.” The application includes several reforms that vex union officials, including the expansion of charter schools and opening Rhode Island’s classrooms to teachers not trained in the traditional way.
In recent days, the main sticking points involved the degree to which standardized test scores should be used to evaluate teachers and Gist’s proposal to link teacher evaluations to certification.
Gist wants 51 percent of a teacher’s evaluation to be based on whether his or her students’ improve on tests. The unions say that other indicators of student performance, including grades, portfolios and writing samples, should carry more weight when assessing student growth and educator effectiveness.
After several days of intense discussions, Gist compromised on a few details. For example, she agreed to gradually phase in the 51-percent requirement over three years: 40 percent the first year and 45 percent the second year. In addition, a plan to revoke the certification of an ineffective teacher within three years was extended to five years to give struggling teachers time to switch schools and receive additional training.
Teachers, R.I. education chief still at loggerheads over reform
Posted Thursday, January 14, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Responding to complaints from teachers’ unions, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist and her staff are making changes to the state’s application for millions of dollars in federal money awarded to states that embrace education reform.
Gist said Wednesday she is willing to compromise, but is unwilling to water down changes she considers crucial to boosting student achievement.
“We are working around the clock to make the changes,” Gist said. “We are adjusting language.”
Unions were given until Wednesday to decide if they would sign on to the state’s effort to get as much as $100 million under the competitive Race to the Top program. That deadline has been extended, Gist said. Now, education officials will fine-tune the document over the next several days and she will hand-deliver it to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19.
Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of National Education Association of Rhode Island, said he is unsure the two sides can reach an agreement.
“We spent five hours with her today and several issues were discussed, but some of the major issues remain unresolved,” Walsh said Wednesday. “I don’t know. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. I got the impression there was some rigidity on the other side that might not be resolvable.”
Walsh declined to specify what aspects of the application troubled union leaders.
The dense document touches upon many areas of reform that the unions oppose, such as expanding publicly financed charter schools, inviting in alternative teacher-training programs and requiring all educators to be evaluated yearly –– based, in large measure, on student performance.
“I am unwavering in my commitment to ensuring the plans we move forward with — whether we get Race to the Top money or not — result in better achievement for our children,” Gist said. “But I am more than willing to work to come together and find a way of doing that in a way everyone can support.”
The public had the chance to read the 120-page plan for the first time on Monday and Tuesday. While some response has been positive, teachers’ unions and some other groups have objected to parts of the application, Gist acknowledged.
Widespread public support — including from the unions — is crucial to Rhode Island’s ability to win the federal funds. Gist hopes to secure at least $100 million to make dramatic improvements in Rhode Island schools.
Among the changes that Gist’s staff has already made to the application is removing a section stating that if a student is taught by a teacher deemed to be “ineffective” two years in a row, a letter would be sent home to the parents.
That provision also worried school superintendents, who questioned how that situation would be handled, said John L. Pini, executive director of the Rhode Island School Superintendents’ Association.
“A child shouldn’t have a bad teacher one year, let alone two years in a row,” Pini said. “But we were puzzled about how that would be implemented.”
Another section that promised the state would move to merit pay for teachers was broadened to say the state will consider multiple methods to reward excellent teachers, including school-wide bonuses that would benefit the entire school community. Gist said she is still holding out hope the unions will come on board. Across the nation, some teachers’ unions are supporting state applications, while others are encouraging locals not to sign on. The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals and NEARI have not yet decided what they will do.
“My greatest hope would be we can come together as a state — every single one of us, parents, students, teachers and local and state leaders — to support an ambitious agenda that stops at nothing short of excellence for every child,” Gist said.
Education officials asked school districts to let the state Department of Education know by Jan. 8 if they intend to participate in the reforms. More than 30 of the state’s 50 districts, charter schools and state-run schools signed memoranda to that effect, said Elliot Krieger, department spokesman.
Chariho Regional District declined to sign on, said Supt. Barry Ricci.
“I think the School Committee was concerned about increasing oversight from the state Department of Education,” Ricci said. Some committee members also balked at some of the reforms promoted by the federal guidelines, particularly the emphasis on charter schools, he said.
Chariho spent $875,000 last year to send more than 70 students to charter schools, Ricci said.
“In the research, charter schools are no better than regular public schools,” he said. “There are good and bad charters, just like there are good and bad regular schools. To say that charter schools are going to save the system is absurd.”
R.I. education chief targets 6 schools for overhaul
Posted Tuesday, January 12, 2010
PROVIDENCE — Six of Rhode Island’s persistently lowest-achieving schools have been singled out by state officials with unprecedented orders to get better fast.
The schools, which serve more than 3,000 of the state’s poorest and most ethnically diverse students, have had dismal test scores for years. They are among the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide, officials say.
The move by state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist signals the biggest, most ambitious state effort to fix failing schools. The six schools will be given four choices for their future, from closure to complete overhaul.
The schools are: Central Falls High School and five Providence schools: Charlotte Woods Elementary, Feinstein High School, Lillian Feinstein Elementary, Roger Williams Middle School and William B. Cooley, Sr. Health, Science and Technology High School.
“While there are great teachers in every school in Rhode Island, these schools have struggled to provide a high-quality education,” Gist said. “The time has come to act more decisively and comprehensively. Our students and their families deserve access to the very best education system, and the economic well-being of our state depends on it.”
“This just isn’t targeting five or six schools,” said Providence School Supt. Tom Brady. “This is the beginning of the transformation of the system.”
The designated schools have failed to serve students in multiple ways, officials say.
These are highlighted by extremely low test scores in reading, writing, math and science, a failure to help students improve over time and low graduation rates in the high schools. Their students are among the state’s must vulnerable — those receiving special-education services, newcomers learning English, low-income students and black and Hispanic students who achieve at lower levels than their white peers.
But Rhode Island has dozens of schools that struggle with extremely low test scores and graduation rates. And in 2008-2009, the Rhode Island Department of Education named 56 schools that had failed to show progress among various student groups.
“As a practical matter, do we have more than six schools that need something? You bet; no doubt about it,” Deputy Education Commissioner David V. Abbott told the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education on Thursday.
But Rhode Island used a specific set of criteria required by the federal government to determine the bottom 5 percent of elementary, middle and high schools, Abbott said. Of the state’s 311 public, charter and state-operated schools, about 120 receive a significant amount of Title I money, federal aid for high-poverty schools. The bottom 5 percent was selected from this smaller group, Abbott said.
Rhode Island has about $11 million in federal funds to fix low-performing schools, and is in line to receive $4 million more over the next couple of years, Abbott said.
In Central Falls, Supt. Frances Gallo said she already has a plan she hopes to put in place this fall.
“It comes as no surprise,” she said Monday. “We’ve been a failing district for a number of years and the high school has been failing for seven years. We will embrace it and make it work for us.”
Gallo, who was hired in Central Falls four years ago, has already chosen an “intervention model” for the high school. It calls for replacing the principal, implementing schoolwide reforms, involving the community more and offering more flexibility around school schedules and the length of the school day.
Gallo said she chose this particular approach because “it honors our dedicated teachers and their expertise.” Moreover, she said that the three other models — closing the school, firing half the staff and asking a charter organization to take over — had significant drawbacks.
Gallo said she began meeting with teachers and the public several months ago, knowing her district might be selected for intervention.
She also convened a think tank composed of social-service agencies and higher-education partners such as the University of Rhode Island, that will provide public input on how the high school should be reorganized.
Brady met with the principals of the five schools Monday to explain that these interventions are not meant as a judgment of their leadership skills.
“I have the greatest respect for our teachers,” he said. “This didn’t happen overnight. This is the culmination of at least eight years of data.”
Brady also said that he hasn’t decided how to reform these schools: “There is no plan. There is no secret plan. We will ask for public input and make our recommendations to the state, and the school board will make the final decision.”
Warren Simmons, who chaired Governor Carcieri’s Urban Education Task Force, said Gist’s action “increases the level of urgency and focus.” Simmons is the executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.
Gist estimates each school will need $750,000 to $1 million in start-up money to make real changes in the first year. She said she hopes to similarly intervene in other struggling schools once these six are on the road to improvement. She says it take three to five years to successfully turn around a failing school.
Central Falls and Providence will be given 30 days to gather public input from students, parents, teachers, school leaders, unions, school committees and business and community leaders; the districts have 15 days after that to tell Gist which of the four options they want to use for each school.
Within 10 days, Gist must approve the district’s approach or work with them to find another solution. Then, the superintendents will be given 120 days to draft a comprehensive school-reform plan.
That means by the end of June, both Central Falls and Providence should have clear plans in place to transform these troubled schools.
Gist said she hopes some changes can move forward quickly, perhaps in Central Falls by next fall, while plans to fix Providence’s schools might not be in place until the 2011-2012 school year.
“I absolutely feel a sense of urgency, but I also have a sense of commitment that this is done correctly,” Gist said. “We don’t want to run into it without a plan.”
KEY POINTSFour options for school intervention
Turnaround model: Replace the principal, rehire no more than 50 percent of the staff, and reorganize the school day.
Restart model: Bring in a charter-school operator or other education-management organization to run the school.
School closure.
Transformation model: Replace the principal, institute schoolwide instructional reform, increase learning time and improve the school’s connections to the community.
New commissioner opens a conversation with R.I.’s best teachers
Posted Thursday, January 7, 2010
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — On a recent visit to North Providence High School, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist noticed a lanky student with a scruffy haircut slouched in a chair, looking adrift.
Gist said she made a beeline over to him and asked what he was working on.
“He said he was working on his senior project, and he just lit up,” Gist told a gathering of 35 of the state’s best teachers, principals and superintendents on Wednesday. “He told me he was a drummer and his project was on drums, and he started talking about it … I was totally blown away.”
Since September, Gist estimates, she has visited 300 classrooms as she traveled to every school district, charter school and state-run school.
“The quality I have seen lets me know we have much to be proud of,” she told the group of award-winning educators she invited to meet with her every few months, giving her feedback and advice. “I know how hard you work and what an amazing job you do every day, how important it is and the challenges that come with the job.”
At the same time, Gist has made improving teacher quality the cornerstone of her seven-month tenure and has pushed hard for Rhode Island to make profound changes. These include making it harder to become and continue to work as a teacher, tying student test scores to new yearly educator evaluations, and supporting the expansion of publicly financed charter schools — reforms that have made some teachers uneasy.
“The challenge we have is to figure out, from a system perspective, how we can provide a quality education to every single child every single year,” Gist said, “and to support our educators so they can continue to improve every year and continue to make a difference in the lives of children.”
The audience included about three dozen of the state’s most distinguished educators, all of whom have received either the Teacher of the Year award or the Milken Award, which recognizes educator excellence. The event was open to the media.
“I’m here because I want to listen and learn what concerns you have, what we need to change and what you are proud of,” Gist told the group.
Gist shared details about the state’s application to capture federal funds through the $4.3-billion Race to the Top competition. Applications are due Jan. 19 and, if Rhode Island wins, the state could receive tens of millions of dollars to improve schools.
Gist wants districts to offer more high-quality professional development to teachers and to create induction programs for new teachers. She also wants the state to intensively intervene in schools that have struggled with low test scores for several years.
Several educators jumped in with questions.
“There’s a lot of anxiety about the teacher performance piece around teacher evaluations,” said Janine Napolitano, chairwoman of the English department at North Providence High School and a 2006 Teacher of the Year recipient. “That’s just one piece of the pie. There’s concern if you link it strictly to NECAP [standardized state tests] and don’t look at the other wonderful things going on.”
Gist said that test scores would only be one factor in examining a teacher’s effectiveness, along with samples of student work and how much students in the classroom have improved over time. In addition, test scores from multiple years will be reviewed, not just one year in which a teacher could have had a particularly challenging class, Gist said.
“We want to have educators at the table when we develop [the new evaluation system],” Gist said.
George Goodfellow, who received a 2008 Teacher of the Year award when he was a science teacher at Scituate High School, said he is concerned that the new standards and regulations do not consider “multiple intelligences” and the different ways students learn.
Gist said she agreed that looking at just standardized tests is too narrow and that other measures, such as senior projects and portfolios, should also be considered.
“I think it’s really important that my friend the drummer I spoke about, that he be excited about what he’s doing,” Gist said. “But I also want to make sure that when he leaves high school, he can read and write and compute and have the knowledge he needs to be successful.”
Linda Bello, Cranston’s district math coach, asked about another aspect of the Race to the Top application, one that would require districts struggling with low test scores to work with outside consultants for guidance and training.
Gist said the federal funds would provide the resources to work with groups such as the Dana Center at the University of Texas in Austin, which is helping Providence and a handful of districts develop high-quality math and science programs.
“We need the support, but we also need to learn to do it ourselves,” Gist said. The Dana Center trains teachers in Rhode Island, so the expertise remains in the state and can be shared with other teachers, she said.
Jennifer Theroux, a fifth-grade teacher in Barrington and winner of the Milken Award in 2008, said the meeting left her energized.
“This is just the beginning, a glimmer of who we can be, in this little state,” she said. “You can see the enthusiasm in the room.”
McWalters’ plea: Sustain the reforms that revived Hope High School
Posted Tuesday, January 5, 2010
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Changes to the nationally recognized reform program at Hope High School — prompted in part by city financial pressures — will be a tragedy, former state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters said Monday.
The problem is: “We know what works and we can’t afford it,” McWalters said.
One of the architects of the transformation of the once-failing high school, McWalters was asked to comment on Supt. Tom Brady’s decision to make changes at Hope.
When McWalters intervened at Hope five years ago, he said, all of the parties recognized that turning around a large urban high school would require a serious financial investment. Over the next several years, the state invested $1.3 million to help Hope restructure the school day, create student advisories and carve out weekly planning time for teachers.
Since then, the school has earned national recognition for building a nurturing environment and creating individual learning plans for each student. And teachers and students agree that the school has moved from a building marred by violence and low morale to one with a shared sense of purpose. Test scores are improving.
Brady has said Hope will shift from the longer periods to the same six-period day in place at other city high schools. That change, according to teachers and students, will reduce the time devoted to common planning and student advisories.
Although he doesn’t blame Brady, McWalters said the superintendent is dismantling the very things that led to Hope’s success: 90-minute classes, extensive common planning time for teachers, additional staff and lengthy class advisories.
“Providence has every right to be doing this,” McWalters said. “We know there are no resources, but don’t take apart the whole school.”
But state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist said McWalters was well aware of the schedule changes when he returned Hope to the control of city school officials in February. And Gist made it clear that Brady, not the commissioner or the Board of Regents, is responsible for Hope’s future.
“The only thing that’s changing is the schedule,” Gist said Monday. “It’s not that there won’t be common planning time or student advisories,” Gist said. “My responsibility, and that of the regents, is to set standards for the state and to enforce those standards. Our responsibility at the state level is to make sure that the gains this community has worked so hard to achieve are sustained.”
While agreeing that Hope has made dramatic improvement, Brady, in a recent letter to state education officials, said that the school’s academic model is too costly to maintain. But Brady also said that the changes, which will take effect at Hope next fall, are not meant to diminish the school’s academic structures, but rather build on the school’s successes by bringing it into conformance with the district’s new curriculum.
“At the time the order was put in place,” Brady wrote, “the school was operating under a much different educational climate than it is today.”
Since Brady became superintendent about 18 months ago, the district has adopted uniform math and science curriculums, improved teacher training and imposed a more rigorous set of graduation standards.
According to Brady, the new curriculums have been written to be delivered in 50-minute segments. The six-period day will also allow more students to take college courses and Advanced Placement courses because the schedule will be the same at every school. And, in a district where students frequently switch schools, a uniform schedule will ensure that every teacher is on the same page.
In the end, McWalters said, the real tragedy is that the state doesn’t have the political and moral will to make the necessary investment in school reform, especially in the urban districts.
“We knew Hope was a joint responsibility,” McWalters said. “And we knew that it would have to come back to a state funding formula, or something like it, because we couldn’t hand this over to the city alone. When Tom [Brady] says he can’t afford it, he’s right. It’s a no-win situation, and that’s the tragedy here.”
Superintendent to regents: Providence can’t afford Hope High School reforms
Posted Wednesday, December 30, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — While acknowledging that Hope High School has made dramatic gains, Schools Supt. Tom Brady says the district can no longer afford to devote so many resources to one of the city’s many high schools.
In a letter to the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, Brady recognized that Hope’s teachers and leaders have made significant strides in improving the school’s climate and culture but said that the academic model adopted five years ago is too costly to maintain.
The regents asked for an update on Hope after more than 50 teachers, students and staff implored them to prevent the high school’s academic model from being dismantled.
Beginning in September, Hope will move to a six-period day like all of the other high schools in the city. The high school currently has a so-called “block” schedule composed of four 90-minute periods a day, a schedule that teachers say allows them enough time to delve more deeply into subjects.
The new schedule will also reduce or eliminate Hope’s various common planning periods that teachers say are vital to revamping the school’s academics, creating individual learning plans and developing student advisories.
But Brady, in his letter, said that his changes “are in no way an attempt to dismantle the academic structures at the school,” rather they are meant to build on the school’s successes while bringing the school into conformance with the district’s new core curriculum and graduation policy.
Brady pointed out that Hope operated under the authority of former education Commissioner Peter McWalters for five years, starting in 2005. During that period, the high school received more than $1.2 million in additional support from the governor. Hope was allowed to hire and assign its own staff, have smaller class sizes, offer students weekly advisories and provide frequent teacher planning time.
According to Brady, this model requires 20 to 30 additional teachers at a cost of roughly $2.5 million a year.
“At the time the order was put in place,” Brady wrote, “the school district was operating under a much different educational climate than it is today.”
Since then, the district has adopted a uniform curriculum, improved teacher training and imposed a more robust set of graduation standards.
When McWalters returned control of Hope to the district in February, he acknowledged the need to provide the same level of human and financial resources to all schools. Hope High School was told that it would move to a six-period day beginning in the 2010-11 school year.
Brady provided a rationale for imposing the same schedule across all high schools:
•The new curriculum has been written to be delivered daily in segments of approximately 50 minutes.
•Students will have more opportunity to take college courses with a fixed schedule.
•Students will be able to take Advanced Placement courses offered at other high schools since the schedule will be the same at every school.
•Students will see their teachers every day as opposed to every other day.
After listening to the laments of Hope students and staff, the regents agreed to discuss the issue at a subsequent meeting. At a recent workshop, the central question was, “How can we preserve the significant gains made by Hope High School, once considered one of the state’s worst performing high schools, without interfering with the school district’s authority to decide how its high schools are staffed and scheduled?”
“We were having a difficult time figuring out what balance to strike,” said Anna Cano-Morales, a regent. “They do have a school board and an able superintendent. We are a policy and regulatory board, not a school board.
“Speaking for myself,” she added, “I don’t understand the one-size-fits-all model. It was a historical moment when Peter McWalters reconstituted Hope High School. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to learn” from those changes.
Another regent, Karin Forbes, said she likes the way that Hope has transformed itself from a large, impersonal high school — the old factory model of high school — into one where students feel known and respected.
“At the same time,” she said, “we can’t replicate that in every school. It’s a dilemma.”
During the past five years, Hope has gone from a school marred by violence, vandalism and abysmally low test scores to a school that is safe, organized and full of a shared mission, teachers say. Last year, reading scores increased dramatically.
“We have to recognize that the teachers who stepped up to the plate are to be highly commended for their additional effort and commitment,” said Patrick Guida, another regent. “But we have to weigh the reality of what the superintendent has to deal with with respect to fiscal realities. We just want to make sure that whatever happens next year, it’s in the best interest of the students.”
In the end, the regents decided to put the issue on a future agenda for further discussion.
Blue Cross lands deal to manage benefits
Posted Tuesday, December 22, 2009
By Philip Marcelo
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Mayor David N. Cicilline has reached a new three-year contract with the city’s long-time benefits administrator Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island that will save $2.8 million and reverse an unpopular agreement he made last year with United Healthcare of New England.
The Blue Cross deal, along with an agreement reached earlier this year with CVS/Caremark, is expected to save the city $11 million over three years.
Neither United Healthcare, nor the city’s six unions, which had been opposed to the deal with United, have said they will challenge the new contract.
“While we believe that the contract was rightfully awarded to us last year, we are pleased that our bid produced additional savings for the city and taxpayers,” Stephen J. Farrell, CEO of United Healthcare, said in a statement. “When the three-year contract is up in 2011, we’ll be back.”
Donald Iannazzi, business manager of Local 1033 of the Laborer’s International Union of North America, said that his union of 1,900 city workers is not opposed to any deal that preserves the benefits that the union had negotiated in its contract.
“We’re ecstatic,” said Paul Doughty, president of the 450-member firefighters union. “Under the current language, Blue Cross is the best solution.”
Last October, in an effort to rein in health-care costs, the city awarded United Healthcare the contract for the city’s medical benefits administration (the city is self-insured), and CVS/Caremark, its drug-benefit management.
Cicilline’s administration wanted to impose the change on Jan. 1, but the city’s six labor unions objected and filed a lawsuit that went to state Supreme Court.
Then-Chief Justice Frank Williams allowed the CVS/Caremark deal to go through, but ordered the United Healthcare deal to binding arbitration, where it was for the greater part of this year.
In August, arbitrator Girard Visconti ordered the city to award the medical-benefits administrator contract to the firm that matched the city’s existing network of doctors and medical specialists. According to city Director of Administration Richard I. Kerbel, that ruling essentially ordered the city to rescind United Healthcare’s contract.
Since the ruling, the city has been negotiating with Blue Cross and United Healthcare for a contract. According to Cicilline, Blue Cross significantly improved its offer.
The new deal, he says, provides the exact physician and facility network currently in place as well as a “reduction of the administrative fees associated with the self-funded plans, increased performance and discount guarantees, and added programs that previously had been available only for an additional fee.”
Under the agreement, Blue Cross agrees to charge the city $37.67 (per employee per month) in year one of the contract, $38.68 in year two, and $38.20 in year three, which is less than what the company had initially proposed ($41.45/ $43.17/ $45.28, respectively).
The deal, which is effective July 1, 2009, affects approximately 9,000 current and retired city workers.
Combined with $5 million in savings from the CVS/Caremark deal and another $3 million in savings from a program audit, the Blue Cross deal ensures the city reaches its targeted $11 million in savings over three years.
The savings are already reflected in the current budget, which means that it won’t factor into the city’s current fiscal problem: Governor Carcieri, in an effort to close a $219-million state budget gap, has proposed slashing state aid to cities and towns, including $17 million for Providence. Carcieri’s proposal is under review by the Assembly.
R.I.’s education leader takes dead aim at reform
Posted Monday, December 21, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Despite the threat of cuts to funding for public schools, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist says the state’s schools need wholesale transformation and she has issued an aggressive agenda to make that happen.
Among her goals, she says the state must aggressively recruit and train effective teachers and principals, link teacher certification to student achievement and toughen academic standards.
Her plan also calls for intensive intervention in the state’s chronically underperforming urban schools.
At the same time, she is asking local school districts if they want to participate in a fast-track agenda and dangling the possibility of millions of dollars in federal aid if they do.
The money would come from her ambitious bid to secure at least $100 million in federal “Race to the Top” funds. In the urban districts, she wants to invite charter management corporations like KIPP and Achievement First to run schools ranked among the bottom 5 percent.
She also wants to establish a leadership program that would train master teachers and principals who would “turn around” the lowest-performing schools.
These struggling schools would also have to agree to publicly release information on teacher performance, something never before done.
Gist has said she intends to pursue these reforms whether or not the state receives the competitive Race to the Top grant, and she has already redesigned the Rhode Island Department of Education to meet her goals. For example, she created the Office of Transformation, which will work closely with underperforming schools.
But given the department’s reduced budget and staffing, an infusion of federal funds would be vital to fast-tracking many of the changes.
In a work session Thursday with the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, Gist released a draft of initiatives she would require districts to agree to in order to receive the federal money, should Rhode Island be among the handful of selected states.
Districts that want to participate would receive millions of dollars, but would have to commit to rigorous training programs for master teachers and principals; provide intensive professional development for teachers, and learn how to use student data more effectively.
Urban districts that receive funds would have to commit to other reforms, including inviting in charter school operators, teaching coaches and technical assistance experts to help them improve.
Gist addressed concerns that Governor Carcieri’s recent announcement that he wants to cut about $40 million from public schools would imperil the state’s application.
“We have absolute confidence we are not in jeopardy of making ourselves ineligible because of [the proposed cuts],” Gist told the Regents. “But there is an aspect of our competitiveness that relates to the state’s commitment to education that could be affected. However, because the state overall is supportive of education, we are hopeful [the cuts] won’t be a problem.”
The Obama administration established the $4.35-billion Race to the Top fund to prod states into embracing substantial reforms, including expanding charter schools, improving teacher quality and using data systems to boost student performance.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said only a few states will be selected for the first round of competitive grants, although rejected states will have an opportunity to reapply later in 2010. The first applications are due Jan. 19.
Although Rhode Island has some strikes against its application, including a statewide cap on the number of charter schools and the lack of an education financing formula, Gist says the state also has many strengths.
These include new regulations that require rigorous, yearly evaluations of teachers and principals; a new educator code of ethics; tougher requirements to become a teacher in Rhode Island, and high academic standards that show students are improving in English and math on annual tests.
Duncan said small states such as Rhode Island could receive between $20 million and $75 million, but Gist says she plans to ask for more when the state applies next month.
“We think we need at least $100 million,” Gist told educators and community members who met in Warwick in November to discuss the Race to the Top application. If Rhode Island were to be selected, half the money would flow directly to participating districts and the other half would be doled out by her department, she said.
Districts have been asked to let the state Department of Education know if they intend to participate in the Race to the Top program by Jan. 8. Gist asked school committees and teacher unions to also weigh in on the decision.
“We think there will only be a handful of districts that participate,” Gist said. Another set of districts may choose to be “involved,” which means they would agree to some of the reforms and receive some money from the department to help them.
“But even for the districts that do not participate or are not involved will benefit,” she said. “We want to create models other districts can replicate.”
Plan to raise standards for new teachers proceeds
Posted Monday, December 7, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
Starting next fall, it will be harder to become a teacher in Rhode Island.
As promised, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who has made improving teacher quality the cornerstone of her five-month-old administration, is moving forward with her plan to raise the standards for prospective teachers.
But in a compromise, Gist said she will phase in the tougher requirements over a two-year period instead of one, as she originally proposed.
Over the objection of several of the state’s teacher training programs — including the largest at Rhode Island College — Gist is significantly increasing the scores people who want to become teachers must achieve to be accepted into the teacher training programs. She says the change is part of a larger effort to revamp the entire career track of educators, starting with who is allowed to become a teacher.
“We know that while there are many factors that contribute to student success, teachers’ own academic achievement is an important factor,” Gist said. “This change is just a tiny step in an entire strategy we have to raise expectations for our educators and for ourselves, in supporting educators at every point in their careers.”
Gist informed local colleges and universities that they have to increase the “cut scores” students must achieve on a basic skills test required by all of the state’s teacher training programs starting next fall, and raise it even higher in the fall of 2011.
Currently, Rhode Island ranks among the lowest in the nation, alongside Mississippi and Guam, with cut scores in math, reading and writing set at 170 in each subject. At that score, about 30 percent of test-takers in Rhode Island fail the test, called Praxis I or the PPST, pre-professional skills test.
Gist says she wants to raise the scores to the highest in the country. She was willing to phase in the changes over two years, she said, to give the eight colleges and universities and one nonprofit program time to adjust and to avoid a dramatic drop in the number of new teaching students in a single year.
In addition to RIC, the University of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University, Providence College, Salve Regina University, Johnson & Wales University, Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the New Teachers Project train new teachers.
“We worked closely with higher education and we know this is a pretty significant change for them, to go from worst to first,” Gist said. Next fall, Gist will require teacher training programs to increase scores to 175 in math and reading and 173 in writing. By 2011, they must raise the scores to 179 in math and reading and 177 in writing, a level that 54 percent of test takers would be expected to fail, according to RIC’s Dean of Education, Roger G. Eldridge, Jr.
Eldridge opposes raising the scores that high, saying the change could have a dramatic impact on the size of teacher training programs next year, particularly at RIC, which trains about 375 new teachers a year.
“I was always in favor of raising them, but not as high as 179,” Eldridge said. “I can live with 175. That’s fine.”
Eldridge estimates his program could shrink by as much as 40 percent next year, but says the college is taking steps to mitigate a steep drop in the number of teaching students.
RIC is planning to require that students take the Praxis I exam in their freshman rather than sophomore year, he said. Students at risk for failing will be given additional tutoring and will take the test again.
“We are hoping the scores will go up,” he said. “So I am not as worried as I was about losing a huge number of students. We may lose 10 to 15 percent.”
Increasing scores to 179 in a single year “would have decimated us,” he said. David Byrd, director of URI’s School of Education, said he is comfortable with boosting the cut score requirement. URI already requires higher scores than the state. But Byrd said he is not convinced that it is necessary to make the scores the highest in the nation.
“Being in the range of 173 to 176, I think gives you confidence in the overall skill level of the teacher, but above that level, it no longer predicts the quality of the teacher,” Byrd said. “These are tests that evaluate your ability to do math, not to teach math.”
Good teachers also need to develop skills such as classroom management, diverse teaching strategies and analyzing data to improve student performance, he said.
Teacher training programs are also concerned that raising the cut scores will disenfranchise minority candidates, even as the state Department of Education wants to encourage more diversity among the mostly white, female teaching ranks, said acting Higher Education Commissioner Steven J. Maurano.
Students who receive strong scores on SAT, ACT or GRE exams are exempt from taking the basic-skills test. Gist wants those scores to increase as well. For example, starting in the fall of 2010, prospective teachers must score 1,100 combined verbal and math on the SAT and 1,150 starting in 2011 to avoid taking the Praxis I.
“We have an opportunity in Rhode Island right now,” Gist said. “We don’t have a shortage of teachers. We have a surplus of teachers. This is the time to do this, when the system can afford to be more selective.”
Annual teacher evaluations get go-ahead by state Regents
Posted Friday, December 4, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
LINCOLN — The Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously approved two initiatives Thursday designed to improve teacher quality: requiring yearly evaluations of all educators and establishing an educator Code of Professional Responsibility for all teachers, principals and superintendents.
Both take effect immediately as state regulations, but education officials say they will work out ways school districts can implement the changes over the next several months, and will offer more details in March.
Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist has made teacher quality the cornerstone of her five-month-old administration, although these two initiatives –– annual evaluations and an educator code of ethics –– started under her predecessor, Peter McWalters, who stepped down June 30.
Public input, gathered at a series of forums held this fall, helped shape the final drafts of the evaluations and ethics code.
A student group, Young Voices, pushed for tougher consequences for ineffective teachers and a meaningful voice for students in evaluating their teachers.
“We want to know that recertification won’t happen [without taking into consideration] what happens in the classroom on a day-to-day-basis,” said Amanda Pereira, an 11th grader at Classical High School. “It is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to get rid of ineffective teachers.”
About 100 people packed the Lincoln High School library where the Regents held their monthly meeting as part of its effort to meet in communities throughout the state. Many were there to voice their displeasure over plans to switch Providence’s Hope High School’s schedule from four longer classes a day to six shorter classes.
The Regents postponed adopting an ambitious strategic plan laying out Gist’s blueprint for improving the public school system. Instead, the Department of Education will continue to gather input and refine the plan before submitting a final draft to the board, Gist said.
The Regents also approved a spending plan for the 2010-2011 school year that offers communities roughly the same level of financing as the current year. The state relied on an infusion of federal stimulus money to prop up public schools last year and this year, and will rely on another $30.9 million in stimulus money next year.
Regent Colleen Callahan cast the lone dissenting vote, saying she could not support a budget plan that supplies additional money for public charter schools — $7.3 million — while level-funding local school districts.
The Regents’ next work session will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 17 at 255 Westminster St., Providence.
Teachers, students ask Regents to save Hope High
Posted Friday, December 4, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
LINCOLN — In an unprecedented move, more than 50 teachers, students and alumni implored state education leaders to save Hope High School, once one of the state’s worst high schools, from being dismantled piece by piece.
Providence School Supt. Tom Brady is imposing a six-period day on all of the city’s high schools because, in a district where students move from school to school, a uniform curriculum means that all students will be on the same page whether they attend Hope or Central High School.
But Hope’s teachers say that replacing the school’s “block” schedule of four 90-minute periods a day with six 48-minute classes will effectively undermine five years of hard-won reforms, changes that have earned the school national recognition as well as praise from Governor Carcieri.
“We will no longer have weekly advisory periods, weekly [schoolwide] planning time and our every-other-day team planning will be eliminated completely,” said Marianne Davidson, a faculty member, at Thursday’s board of regents’ meeting.
Student advisories, considered a critical tool for building trusting relationships between students and adults, would be slashed from nearly 90 minutes a week to 30 minutes, maybe less.
“The district is dismantling Hope piece by piece,” said Laura Maxwell, a 10th-grade English teacher. “We need more time on instruction, not less. We should be structuring more schools to look like Hope High School.”
In February 2005, then-Education Commissioner Peter McWalters ordered Hope High School to reorganize or face a state takeover. At the time, the school was beset by violence, vandalism and staggeringly low test scores. Under McWalters’ order, Hope broke into three smaller theme-based academies, hired three new principals and told teachers that they had to re-apply for their old jobs.
Five years later, teachers and students agree that Hope is a safe, orderly environment imbued with a spirit of trust and cooperation. Reading scores in the Leadership and Arts Academies nearly tripled and the Arts Academy’s score of 65-percent proficiency was one of the highest of any urban high schools in the state.
Thanks to Hope’s progress, the state returned the school to the district’s control about a year ago. Since then, one of the academies has been closed, two administrative positions have been cut and the school is slated to lose about one-third of its faculty next year, according to Davidson.
In February, McWalters described his vision for Hope: “We wanted adults watching over each kid. To do that, you have to respect teachers by giving them time for student advisory meetings, time for planning, time for professional development. And they need stability.”
That’s precisely what will be lost if the changes take place, teachers and students said.
Regents Chairman Robert G. Flanders promised that the board would follow up on their concerns.
R.I. education commissioner unveils sweeping reform plan
Posted Monday, November 23, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — State education officials have unveiled an ambitious plan to increase student proficiency, revamp failing schools, improve teacher quality and shrink gaps between low-income and middle-income students, even as the state struggles to dedicate enough resources to public education.
State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist shared a draft of her strategic plan with the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education on Thursday. The 20-page plan is the result of more than four months of work by Gist, who became the state’s top schools chief July 1, and her staff at the state Department of Education.
The document is Gist’s blueprint for how she wants to improve the school system over the next three to five years. The regents are expected to endorse the final draft at a Dec. 3 meeting.
“I want the plan to be ambitious,” Gist told the regents. “I also want it to be doable.”
Gist said the plan is “a living document” and will be updated or modified along the way, as education officials gather more information.
“We need to keep our eyes wide open and be flexible,” she said. “In many ways, it represents not just the work that’s happened since I’ve been here, but also the work that’s gone on for several years. We are getting a little more ambitious and emphasizing … the sense of urgency we have about this work.”
The plan calls for several significant changes, including:
• Increase the state’s high school graduation rate to 80 percent by 2012 and to 85 percent by 2015, up from 70 percent.
• Make it harder to become and continue to work as a teacher in Rhode Island.
• Pay the best teachers more, based on data that shows they have improved student performance.
• Reduce achievement gaps by 50 percent among low-income and minority students.
• Expand online courses and develop a statewide virtual high school.
• Transform failing schools, particularly in low-performing urban districts.
• Develop data systems that help teachers improve their instruction.
The document also lays out an aggressive timeline for boosting student proficiency in English, math and science.
For example, just 27 percent of 11th graders score proficient in math on standardized tests. Gist wants 37 percent proficient by 2012, and 52 percent proficient by 2015.
Similarly, just 40 percent of fifth graders score proficient in science; Gist wants that percentage to jump to 50 percent in 2012 and to 65 percent by 2015.
She also wants middle school English scores to climb from 68 percent proficient to 73 percent by 2012 and to 80.5 percent by 2015.
Gist said her staff is still fine-tuning this portion of the plan, as they struggle to balance the need to significantly improve student performance with realistic goals.
A couple of the Regents questioned how districts could achieve these higher standards during a period when most schools are making deep cuts in programs and personnel, and the state is unable to increase its investment in education. In fact, Rhode Island currently relies on tens of millions of dollars in federal stimulus money to prop up school budgets — extra money that runs out after next year.
“This is our plan, regardless of whether additional resources come into play,” she said. “We are confident we are organizing our staff and redirecting the resources we already have to these priorities.”
Gist said she hopes the state will receive some additional federal aid in the form of Race to the Top funds, competitive grants designed to make states embrace far-reaching education reforms. Rhode Island will apply for a portion of the $4.35 billion in January, she said.
She also hopes, she said, that the state will adopt a fair and equitable school financing formula in 2010 that could help districts achieve these goals.
Since she arrived in Rhode Island, Gist has forcefully criticized the state’s low test scores and troubling achievement gaps between the state’s most vulnerable students — low-income, minority and special-education — and their more advantaged peers, calling such discrepancies “shameful.” Gist has also made teacher quality a cornerstone of her tenure, raising the bar for future teachers and promoting two other changes: an educator ethics code and rigorous yearly evaluations for teachers and principals.
More substantial changes are coming. Gist said the state Education Department will also move aggressively to help the state’s lowest-performing schools.
“We absolutely have a commitment to intervening comprehensively in our most struggling schools and districts,” she said. “What we are working on right now is developing our strategy to do that successfully.”
School superintendents told to abolish teacher seniority
Posted Monday, October 26, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Dropping a bombshell on the teachers’ unions, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist ordered school superintendents to abolish the practice of assigning teachers based on how many years they have in the school system.
Gist, who sent a letter to superintendents on Tuesday, is upending tradition and taking on two powerful unions, the National Education Association Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals (RIFT), who together represent 12,000 public school teachers.
On Friday, the unions said they were blindsided by Gist’s announcement, adding that the commissioner made no attempt to confer with labor before going public with the decision.
“We’re going to court,” said Marcia Reback, president of the Federation of Teachers. “I’m startled that there was no conversation with the unions about this. I’m startled there were no public hearings, and I’m startled at the content. This narrows the scope of collective bargaining.”
Gist says she has the authority to do away with seniority under the new Basic Education Plan, which the Rhode Island Board of Regents approved in June and which takes effect July 1.
“Our response is that we have authority to set educational policy and to establish rules and regulations that are in the best interest of students,” said Regents Chairman Robert G. Flanders Jr. “To the extent that there are contract provisions that are at odds with the Basic Education Plan, it’s our view that those provisions would be unlawful. If a challenge were to be brought, we would expect to prevail.”
According to the new regulations, districts must select and train only the most highly effective staff, and teacher assignments must be based on student need. The Basic Education Plan requires that each district “shall maintain control of its ability to recruit, hire, manage, evaluate and assign its personnel.”
Districts have until July 1 to negotiate the new policy, and Gist told superintendents that “any contract law that conflicts with existing state law may be unenforceable.” However, Elliot Krieger, a spokesman for the Education Department, said that there is nothing in Gist’s letter that says that school committees must re-open contracts to deal with the issue of seniority.
Gist’s shot across the bow at labor comes just four days after the RIFT announced that it had secured a $200,000 grant to create a rigorous new-teacher evaluation system. The union will partner with four urban districts to develop the evaluation system.
Asked about the timing of her announcement, Gist said, “I’ve been very clear that every decision I make will be made in the best interest of children. And there is nothing more important than the placement of a highly qualified teacher in every classroom.”
Reback contends that teacher assignments rest squarely within the purview of collective bargaining and said that the commissioner doesn’t have the authority to intervene.
“There is nothing in state statute that gives her the right to dictate what will be in school committee contracts,” Reback said Friday.
She also said that there is nothing in the new regulations that mentions abolishing seniority, and said that state education officials promised that public hearings would be held on the details of the Basic Education Plan.
“The commissioner has taken very broad language,” Reback said, “narrowed it significantly and ordered school committees to negotiate [with] her interpretation.”
While the unions were seething on Friday, school committees were quietly applauding Gist’s dramatic move.
“It’s a big deal,” said Tim Duffy, the executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees. “We’ve been crying out for this sort of management prerogative for a long time. What Gist is saying is, ‘We’re putting you on notice that you can’t lock in a system based on seniority.’ ”
Duffy said that Gist’s decision reflects a national sea change that is giving superintendents and principals more authority to put the most-qualified teachers in classrooms with the greatest needs.
The first nibble at seniority was actually made by former Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, who ordered Providence to abolish seniority as a way of filling teacher vacancies. The district began the new “criterion-based” hiring system in six pilot schools this fall and will adopt it districtwide in September.
McWalters argued that he had the authority to intervene under state law, because Providence is classified as an “intervention” district, and under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which gives states broad latitude to intervene in failing school districts. The Providence Teachers Union, however, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the commissioner’s authority.
From the moment she arrived in July, Gist made it clear that she would not shrink from making unpopular decisions. At a Regents’ meeting last month, she publicly criticized three school districts that she said were not putting the needs of students first.
Two weeks ago, she took aim at teacher training, saying that Rhode Island’s “cut” score (the score that aspiring teachers must reach on a basic skills test) is among the lowest in the nation. And she successfully urged the Regents to take over the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, which has suffered from years of leadership turmoil and low test scores.
“I will use every tool available to put a system in place that is child-centered,” Gist said Friday. “We have a lot of systems that focus on the grown-ups. Change is always hard. It’s always going to mean that people feel uncomfortable.”
Students state case for input on R.I. teacher evaluations
Posted Friday, October 23, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — We stand before you as part of a movement, 16-year-old Amanda Pereira said: A movement to demand effective teachers, to make sure that student voices are heard and to hold teachers accountable for their actions.
Wearing purple polo shirts and buttons, more than 40 students from a student activist organization called Young Voices politely told the adults in the room that public education needs to be much more responsive to the needs of the consumer — the students.
“This movement has been inspired by a community that is no longer willing to sit still and watch students, in this state, fail day after day,” Pereira said. “We are no longer satisfied with seeing teachers who do not provide the bare minimum for a student’s education — the task they are being paid to perform — go unpunished and even worse, ignored.”
For nearly three hours, one student after another stood up and eloquently expressed his or her desire to be part of a major shift in the way that teachers are evaluated. The Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Reform has developed a new set of standards that, for the first time in Rhode Island, would require that all teachers undergo an annual evaluation, along with principals and other support staff.
The regents held their third public hearing on these standards at the Met School in Providence Thursday night, a meeting attended by a standing-room-only crowd of teenagers and a sprinkling of adults.
The students, reading from note cards and crumpled sheets of paper, said they were not here to beat up on teachers or challenge the system. They were there to participate, to be part of the solution.
“We are not using this as an opportunity to conspire against our teachers,” Amber Johnson, a member of Young Voices, said. “We are the customer, the product of this educational system. And we all value our education.”
Students not only endorsed the regents’ plan to toughen teacher evaluation standards, which are almost nonexistent in some school districts, they asked that they be made stronger.
If a teacher fails to meet the school’s expectations for more than three years, that teacher should not be recertified, students from Young Voices said. Allow high school students to evaluate teachers using an objective assessment tool that safeguards against possible sources of bias. Results of the student evaluation will not affect the teacher’s tenure, however. Include teachers and parents on the district evaluation committee.
Students also urged the regents to reward teachers who go beyond what is expected.
Some of the adults were just as passionate about creating fair but rigorous evaluation standards. Ed Lee, a veteran teacher in Providence, applauded the regents — and the Providence schools — for taking on this contentious subject, adding that he wouldn’t be where he is today without the support of a couple of great teachers.
“The union,” he said, “can be an excuse for mediocrity.”
Not everyone thought the proposed standards were commendable, however.
David Sheehan, a social studies teacher from Warwick, said that parents should be held accountable for sending their children to school tired and hungry.
“I can’t be there at night and make sure they get a proper dinner,” he said. “I can’t ensure that my students go to school at the proper time. The students who are not succeeding? Those are the parents I never see. We need to find a way for parents to do their job.”
Darlene Netcoh, a high school English teacher in Warwick, said she’s offended when the news media brands all teachers with the same black mark. She also wondered how the regents could sit in judgment of teachers when only one, Colleen Callahan, has ever been in a classroom.
But it was the students’ voices that were the most powerful.
“How can one or two evaluators enter a classroom for five minutes and tell how effective a teacher is — a teacher who happened to know ahead of time of their visit?” said Faidat Olamuyiwa, a high school student from Providence. “Only students who are in each class for 45 minutes every day know more about their teacher and therefore know their weak points and strong points.”
Rather than bash teachers, several students singled out individual teachers for praise, describing the teacher who stayed after school to provide additional help, the teacher who was tough but fair, the teacher who shared how difficult his or her own childhood was.
Ricky Rodriguez, a senior at a Providence high school, said that Ed Lee “set my mind to work hard and work toward a goal.”
“He helped me change my life by inspiring me to work,” Rodriguez said, “I believe that every student should have a teacher like Mr. Lee and with the proper evaluation system, I believe that it is possible to have teachers like that.”
R.I. teachers’ union wins $200,000 grant to improve evaluations
Posted Tuesday, October 20, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals has received a $200,000 national grant to develop a much more demanding method of evaluating and mentoring new teachers. The union will work closely with four urban school districts: Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket.
“The union is tired of being portrayed as a protector of bad teachers,” said union president Marcia Reback. “We have no interest in having incompetent teachers in our classrooms. We want to have good, rigorous, substantial evaluations.”
The union’s effort comes at a time when the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education is beefing up its own teacher-evaluation standards, which have been put out for public comment at a series of hearings this fall.
At a news conference Monday, state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist congratulated the union for winning the competitive grant. It was one of 17 locals nationwide to receive an Innovation Fund grant from the American Federation of Teachers.
“To ensure that every student in Rhode Island has highly effective teachers, we need to implement rigorous annual evaluations that emphasize student performance,” Gist said. “I look forward to working with the [union] on this vital initiative.”
The union is proposing that new teachers undergo routine observations throughout their first year in the classroom. Those observations would be performed by a consulting teacher, an experienced professional who would meet regularly with the first-year teacher to review and discuss performance.
The union will work from a nationally recognized evaluation model developed by the Toledo school district almost 30 years ago. Since then, the model has been adopted by districts across the country.
Providence Schools Supt. Tom Brady, who visited Toledo with his colleagues in January, said that this collaboration between urban districts and union leaders is unprecedented in Rhode Island. Calling the partnership a great opportunity and a great challenge, Brady said, “We owe it to the kids to do the right thing.”
The peer-evaluation system would work as follows: a consulting teacher would observe, evaluate and mentor between 8 and 10 novice teachers over the course of a year. In the spring, the consulting teacher would recommend whether the new teacher should be awarded an additional contract. A board comprising administrators and union representatives would make its recommendation to the superintendent, who, in turn, would offer advice to the local school committee.
For years, educators have bemoaned the sorry state of teacher evaluations in Rhode Island, a process that is cursory at best. Principals typically based their evaluations on a onetime visit to the classroom, and it isn’t unusual for the teacher to be told in advance when the principal is coming.
“School administrators are overburdened,” Reback said Monday. “They don’t have the0 time to do the kind of evaluations that are necessary. Non-tenured teachers should be evaluated several times before they are given tenure, and tenured teachers should go into a cycle of review.”
According to Reback, the most daunting challenge will be to persuade four school superintendents and four union leaders to agree on which measurements should be used to evaluate teacher performance. A design team composed of 26 educators from the four districts will spend the year creating an evaluation system based on the existing Rhode Island teaching standards and the regents’ new standards.
“Teachers need to know what to look for when they walk into a classroom,” Reback said. “Is the student engaged? What are good examples of student learning? Are you limited to student test scores, or do you look at student progress over the school year?”
The union will train consulting teachers, who will complete an application, submit a writing sample and letters of recommendation, and then undergo an interview process before they are chosen. Consulting teachers will be paid overtime for any work that they do after regular school hours.
The new teacher will be part of a constant cycle of evaluation and feedback. After a weekly observation, the consulting teacher will provide constructive criticism and offer whatever additional support the teacher needs.
The design team will review the four districts’ existing evaluations and bring in experts from around the country to help the team develop new standards. During the second year of the three-year grant, the four districts will implement the new evaluation and peer-mentoring program. In the final year, the design team will evaluate how well the new system was accepted by teachers, administrators and the public.
Although it will take time to determine whether this new model actually improves student performance, the union hopes that in three years, there will have been a noticeable improvement in teacher quality.
R.I. teachers express concern over proposed evaluations
Posted Wednesday, October 14, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
WARWICK — A smaller number of teachers than expected turned out Tuesday evening to discuss proposals that would beef up educator evaluations and require all teachers to sign a code of conduct to be certified, two changes state education officials say are critical to improving teacher quality.
The Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education approved a proposed set of standards in August that would require that all educators — new and tenured teachers, principals, assistant principals and support staff — be evaluated annually, and that the evaluations be rigorous and linked to student performance.
The Regents also approved a draft version of a Code of Professional Responsibility that all educators would have to sign, promising to “act upon the belief that all students can learn;” continuously try to improve as teachers; communicate with parents and families; and refrain from using their position “for personal advantage.”
“….the Code … shall serve as a basis for decisions on issues pertaining to certification, licensure and employment,” the document states.
Several other states require teachers to sign similar codes, say officials at the Rhode Island Department of Education.
Just 35 educators attended a 5 p.m. public hearing held at the Community College of Rhode Island’s Warwick campus, and nearly all of them came from Coventry, a district often singled out for having one of the most rigorous and effective teacher evaluations in the state.
Teachers said they respect the intent of the proposals, but had concerns about several details, including the frequency of teacher evaluations and how much influence students and parents should have.
“I’m worried if we do it every year, it becomes a checklist,” said Joseph Fargnoli, a teacher at Coventry High School. “When I first came to Coventry 25 years ago, it was just a checklist.”
But over the past decade, Coventry has fine-tuned an elaborate evaluation process that teachers say helps them identify weak areas and become better teachers. In addition, ineffective teachers are weeded out, with three to eight new teachers fired each year, said Kelly Erinakes, a Coventry High School social studies teacher and president of the teachers’ union.
New teachers are evaluated annually for the first three years. Once they receive tenure, they are evaluated every few years, based on their performance.
Teachers who earn “unsatisfactory” are evaluated every year. Teachers who earn “basic” are evaluated every two years; “proficient” teachers are evaluated every three years and “distinguished” teachers are evaluated every four years.
A typical evaluation takes 20 hours and includes observation and input from administrators and department heads, Erinakes said.
“We have 180 teachers and 4 administrators,” Erinakes said. “We don’t have the capacity to do in-depth evaluations every year.”
Several teachers said they were nervous about a requirement that student and parent perspectives be included in teacher evaluations.
“I’m in the throes of NECAP [state testing] this week, and I had two parents who wanted to pull their kids out for flu shots,” said Michaela Wells, a fifth grade teacher at Black Rock Elementary School in Coventry. “I said no. I would have concerns about those parents participating in my evaluation.”
The five Regents who listened to the teachers’ testimony said they will be considered as education officials revise the final drafts later this year.
Another public hearing is scheduled for Oct. 22 at 5 p.m. at the MET School in Providence.
Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist says teacher quality is her top priority and the first step to improving the education system in Rhode Island. Yet teacher evaluations in the state are often meaningless, occurring infrequently and carrying no real consequences, Gist says.
Requiring in-depth yearly evaluations of all educators — new and tenured teachers — will enable schools to offer support to teachers, remove ineffective teachers and reward the best teachers, she said.
“We want to make sure that the process is a quality review that takes enough into account,” Gist said after the hearing. “We want to be confident that the evaluations are reliable.”
To see a copy of the proposed code and educator evaluation standards, visit:
http://www.ride.ri.gov/Regents/Regentsregulations.aspx
Union sues Providence school district, claiming violation over class-size issues
Posted Wednesday, September 30, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Providence Teachers Union says the school district should be held in contempt of court, claiming that it violated a court order involving class size.
The suit, filed Tuesday in Providence County Superior Court, says that the district has failed to appoint someone to monitor class sizes. The union referred to a 1996 ruling by Superior Court Judge Richard Israel, who told the district to create a team made up of one representative from the union and one from the administration to resolve issues around over-enrolled classes.
On Friday, PTU President Steve Smith said that the School Department has not responded to the union’s requests to appoint someone to the position. The first letter, which informed the department of the union’s representative, was mailed on Sept. 4, but union leaders said there was no response.
A week later, PTU executive director Paul Vorro said that he contacted Brady’s office to find out the district’s class-size representative and again, he said, there was no response.
“This has never been an issue before,” Smith said Friday. “The ball is in their court. How much more do we have to do?”
The School Department could not be reached for comment.
This is just the latest example of the deteriorating relationship between the 2,000-member teachers union and Supt. Tom Brady. In August, the union filed a suit in federal court that seeks to prevent the district from abolishing seniority as the primary method by which teacher vacancies are filled.
In February, former state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters ordered the district to establish a new set of standards to determine whether an individual teacher is a good match for the job. McWalters’ corrective order effectively cleared the way for Brady to replace seniority with an extensive application and interview process led by the school principal.
The new hiring system began this fall at six pilot schools, including the new Career and Technical Academy and the renovated Nathan Bishop Middle School on the city’s East Side.
In its suit, the union claims that the state education commissioner doesn’t have the authority to overrule collective bargaining agreements. But McWalters, in his order, said that he can assert his authority in a failing school system under both the federal No Child Left Behind act and a state law called progressive support and intervention.
Providence revamps graduation requirements
Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — For the first time, the city’s 10 public high schools will share the same graduation requirements, the same core curriculum and the same textbooks, part of a larger effort to boost student achievement and make college more of a reality than a dream.
School leaders in Providence have developed a new set of graduation requirements that will do away with the district’s fragmented curriculum, a system in which two-thirds of the 300-plus high school courses lack a curriculum guide, a system in which students can take math courses that don’t prepare them for college, a system where students — during their senior year — discover that they don’t have enough credits to graduate.
“The biggest change,” said Nkoli Onye, the district’s executive director of high schools, “is that we have one graduation policy for all high school students. This policy shows we’re serious about preparing students for college.”
Providence is one of three districts, along with Cranston and Burrillville, facing mounting pressure from the state Department of Education to adopt more rigorous high school graduation standards. Districts have until 2012 before they face penalties, but state education officials said they hope high schools will be on board by 2010.
“This is a fantastic move,” said state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. “Too often, people think we need to focus on remediation. Providence is doing the opposite. They are raising the bar. The next step is to watch for results. At the end of the day, the only measure that matters is student achievement.”
Starting with the Class of 2012, students in Providence will have to take four years of math; three years of science, including a lab science; and two years of a foreign language. There is no foreign language requirement now, which hurts students who apply to four-year colleges. Students will have to accumulate a minimum of 21 credits to graduate (the district currently requires 20).
“The number of credits doesn’t matter,” Onye said. “What matters are the courses students take and the sequence in which they take them.”
What’s more significant is that the district has written a new math and science curriculum for the entire system. In high school, students will take the same sequence of math courses in every high school. In the sciences, students will take biology, followed by chemistry and then physics. In math, students will take Algebra I, geometry and Algebra II.
The School Department will adopt a new English and social studies curriculum across all grade levels next fall.
For years, Providence teachers followed something called scope and sequence that outlined which skills students should learn at certain points in time. But scope and sequence was vague and left too much up to the individual teacher, school officials said.
Providence high schools will now offer at least two Advanced Placement courses at each school. Currently, AP offerings are scant at most city high schools, a deficit that can affect admission into an elite college. Starting this year, Providence plans to offer some combination of the following AP courses: biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science, calculus, statistics and Spanish.
The new graduation policy also establishes guidelines that will make it easier for high school students to earn college credit, permit students to earn credit on-line and require schools to provide additional academic help for students who have fallen behind. In addition, middle school students will be allowed to earn high school credits.
Although every student will receive the same diploma, there will be two distinct paths: a traditional academic one and a technical one. Students who follow the technical track will not be offered a watered-down curriculum, as was common in the past. Instead, they will be allowed to substitute traditional math and science courses for technical ones that are directly connected to a trade.
But this is just the first step. In response to the state’s new skills-based graduation policy, Providence is in the process of creating student advisories at each high school. Advisories, which pair a teacher with a small group of students, are designed to make high schools more personal.
The state now requires high school students to demonstrate that they have specific skills to graduate: students must achieve partial mastery on the state exam, the New England Common Assessment; complete a senior research project or compile portfolio of their best work; earn 21 credits and finish their district-approved course work.
Providence Union claims 103 teachers unassigned
Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — In what is fast becoming a war of words, the Providence Teachers Union says that 103 teachers are waiting for permanent placements, while school officials say that 97 percent of the faculty have assignments.
Part of the disagreement stems from the union’s assertion that the district — and the state Department of Education — had no legal authority to impose a new hiring practice that abolishes seniority. Starting this week, six schools implemented the new hiring practice, which allows principals to choose their own staff after extensive interviews. All 40-plus schools will move to this new system in the fall of 2010.
The 2,000-member union has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, claiming that the new practice violates the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the U.S. Constitution.
On Wednesday, the first day of school, PTU President Steve Smith expressed frustration that 103 teachers were still waiting to be placed in permanent positions. Union leaders say that more than 30 jobs have been posted two or three times, which they blame on the bureaucracy created by the new hiring process, which calls for candidates to submit detailed applications and then submit to interviews with a team of educators.
Paul Vorro, one of the union leaders, says that the district kept pushing back the application and hiring deadlines for the six so-called “criterion-based” schools, which include the refurbished Nathan Bishop Middle School on the East Side and the new Career and Technical Academy off Cranston Street.
But school spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly said that classes began with 97 percent of its teachers in permanent assignments, a rate that she said was similar to last year.
Still, she acknowledged that 70 teachers are functioning as long-term substitutes, which means that they are filling in for colleagues who are out on maternity leave, sick leave or sabbatical. These teachers, she said, will remain in the same classrooms for an extended period of time, possibly for the entire year.
Approximately 15 teachers, however, are in the day-to-day substitute-teaching pool, which means that they are assigned to fill short-term vacancies and do not report to the same classrooms every day. Both categories of teachers receive full salaries and benefits.
Under the old system, vacancies were filled based on seniority and most were filled by teachers within the district. This summer, however, 83 positions at the six pilot schools were filled using the new method, which is a much more labor-intensive process.
Further complicating matters, the district began hiring applicants from outside the Providence schools, pushing more Providence teachers into the reserve pool.
School officials said that approximately 20 positions remain vacant at the six pilot schools, but some of those are in hard-to-fill subjects such as bilingual social studies.
According to Rose, the first day of school went smoothly: buses ran on time, high school students were fully scheduled and the buildings were in “great shape.”
But Smith says that repairs to the front steps and the girls’ gymnasium at Perry Middle School have not been finished.
“This is a tale of two cities,” he said. “There are glaring differences between some of the schools in Providence, depending on where you go to school.”
A second life for Nathan Bishop Middle School
Posted Wednesday, September 2, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Cameron Wessel is just the sort of student that the refurbished Nathan Bishop Middle School is hoping to attract. Bright, inquisitive and tech-savvy, the sixth-grader chose to leave the highly regarded St. Mary Academy-Bay View to attend a public school that is still very much a work in progress.
The new middle school is nothing short of a grand experiment. Envisioned as a model middle school that will lure East Side families back to the public schools, Nathan Bishop reopens Wednesday amid high expectations from every quarter: students, parents, teachers and school leaders.
Of the entering class of 250 sixth-graders, approximately 40 come from private or parochial schools, including Moses Brown, Providence Country Day and Bay View. Nathan Bishop is split between students who live on the East Side, including Camp Street, and those who come from other neighborhoods.
Less than three years ago, the decaying Nathan Bishop represented everything that was wrong with the city’s struggling middle schools. Student performance was in the tank. Built during the 1920s, the school’s physical layout was ill-suited to support team-teaching, which is considered the gold standard today.
Like so many of the city’s sprawling middle schools, Nathan Bishop was dirty, dark and uninviting. It looked — even smelled — like the past.
After a $35-million renovation that left no surface untouched, Nathan Bishop is truly a Cinderella story. Closed nearly three years ago, the school today welcomes its first class of sixth-graders and a new cadre of teachers handpicked by Michael Lazzareschi, an award-winning former elementary school principal who is determined to dispel the myth that middle schools are the district’s weakest link.
On Monday night, Lazzareschi and his entire staff invited families to tour the school even as crews were putting the finishing touches on the four-story brick building on Elmgrove Avenue.
During that open house, the School Department gave students a “practice school day,” a compressed version of their schedule, from opening lockers to running through a six-period day. Some of the children, who are moving from the one-teacher, one-room realm of elementary school, had that deer-in-the-headlights look.
Lazzareschi tried to calm their fears.
“Don’t worry,” he told them. “It’s new to all of us, even me.”
To one child’s mother, he said, “If you have any problem, feel free to call me.”
Cameron Wessel, the sixth-grader from Bay View, sounded fearless. She chose Nathan Bishop because of its extensive technology and because she was ready for something new:
“When Bishop opened,” she said, “I thought I should take a chance. I like thinking outside the box.”
Students were clearly impressed with the school’s shining new spaces, from the cafeteria with its bouncy chairs and ribbons of pale blue material floating beneath the ceiling, to the two-story media center, with its hand-carved oak trim and Palladian windows to the 350-seat auditorium, with its restored glass ceiling, oak stage and new sound and lighting systems.
The middle school is divided into teams, with two teams of sixth-graders on the first floor, seventh-graders on the second and eighth-graders on the third. Students stay with their team for each of their academic subjects and mix with other students during lunch, art and music.
The notion here is that middle school should feel and operate more like elementary school, with its nurturing atmosphere. In an ideal middle school, teachers build close relationships with their students and collaborate on lesson plans.
In fact, the school’s theme, developed by the principal and faculty, is “I’ll take care of you.”
Because Nathan Bishop is starting fresh, Supt. Tom Brady authorized the principal to hire the school’s teachers. Typically, seniority plays a major role in teacher assignments; not so in Bishop, where teachers had to apply and submit to an extensive interview process.
“I feel like I won the lottery,” said Kerri Krawczyk, a sixth-grade science teacher who taught at Times{+2}, a popular Providence charter school. “The facilities here are unbeatable.”
Krawczyk pointed to her science lab, which has an incubator, water-distiller, refrigerator, even a dishwasher. Each classroom also has a Smart board, a digital blackboard that allows teachers to display multimedia lessons from the Web. Noticeably absent in the new Nathan Bishop are televisions. Once a staple of 20th-century technology, they have been rendered obsolete by the Internet.
During Monday’s open house, Krawczyk welcomed each new wave of visitors and explained what they would need to bring to class: a clean two-liter plastic bottle and a loose-leaf binder with dividers.
“We’ll be looking at weather, storms and climate change,” she said. “You should feel really good about coming to science class. Any questions?”
For parents, one of the biggest draws is that their children can walk to school, a fondly remembered ritual from their own childhoods. Anna Aloshine, a sixth-grader and former Moses Brown student, wanted to go to middle school with her friends and helped organize an e-mail campaign to get them to attend Nathan Bishop. Ten of her buddies are now going to the school.
“I’ve been to a lot of schools,” Anna said. “This is my first public school.”
A new beginning for Providence’s Nathan Bishop Middle School
Posted Monday, August 31, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Three years ago, a model middle school on the city’s East Side seemed like a pipe dream. Then-Supt. Donnie Evans had announced that he was closing the low-performing Nathan Bishop Middle School and turning it into a temporary location for high school students displaced by a school construction project.
Today, after a $35-million renovation, Nathan Bishop Middle School is new in every sense of the word: a new look, new technology, new principal, new teachers, and, parents hope, a completely fresh way of doing business.
That the East Side has a middle school at all is largely due to the perseverance of a determined group of parents, who formed the East Side Public Education Coalition in the spring of 2006 to demand that school officials not only keep Bishop open but create a school where they would be proud to send their children.
The coalition’s hard work seems to have paid off. About 40 of Bishop’s 250 sixth graders come from private schools, including Moses Brown, Providence Country Day and St. Mary Academy-Bay View.
“You had this strong desire in the neighborhood to re-engage in the public schools,” said Sam Zurier, one of the coalition’s founders. “But it took the closing of Bishop to get those people energized. You had this event that put everyone’s backs to the wall. If they closed Bishop, it would have been all over.”
Evans was forced to reconsider the school closing after hundreds of East Side parents launched a massive e-mail campaign protesting his decision. One city councilor referred to the groundswell as “awakening the sleeping giant.” Evans not only listened, he invited parents to participate in fashioning a new middle school.
Middle schools have long been the Achilles’ heel in the district’s struggle to improve student achievement. The refashioned Nathan Bishop is designed to be one of the jewels in the district’s crown, offering Advanced Placement courses, teaching in teams and student advisories, considered the building blocks of a successful middle school.
The new principal, Michael Lazzareschi, is highly regarded: he comes from the district’s high-performing Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary School on Camp Street and was named Rhode Island’s 2008 elementary school principal of the year. Another big plus is that Lazzareschi has been given the authority to hire his own staff, which means he can select teachers who believe in the school’s mission to create a rigorous academic climate.
Meanwhile, parents have poured their enthusiasm into the new middle school, forming a Parent-Teacher-Organization while the building was an empty shell.
“I never thought that we would be grateful that they decided to close Bishop,” Zurier said. “Looking back, it was fortunate.”
Bishop will reopen this fall with sixth graders only, adding grades 7 and 8 over the next two years, for a total enrollment of 600 students, the majority of whom will come from the neighborhood, including Camp Street and Mount Hope.
A school for the future in Providence
Posted Monday, August 31, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE –– The enormous structure of burnished corrugated metal and glass looks like a spaceship landed next to Central High School. And that’s the kind of startling image the architects were hoping to achieve.
“We want people to stop and say, ‘What’s different about this building? What’s going on inside?’ ” said Cathie Ellithorpe, an architect involved in the design.
The space-age design is also meant to provide an answer. “We really wanted the outside of the building to say that there’s this very high-tech program going on inside.”
The Providence Career and Technical High School, which, at a cost of $90 million, is one of the most expensive schools ever built in Rhode Island, is not only designed to give students top-notch training in nine separate technical careers but to ensure that they have a rigorous academic education.
Even the building itself, which includes a 65,000-square-foot field house, a restaurant, a full-service hair salon, a television studio and a 4,300-square-foot auditorium, is designed to function as one big classroom.
Some of the electrical and mechanical systems are exposed so future electricians and plumbers can study the way the facility works. The boiler room is larger than necessary so students can observe how the heating, cooling and ventilation system operates. Solar panels on the roof allow students to study energy usage in a classroom equipped with a demonstration photo-voltaic system.
Because so many jobs of the future are expected to involve green technology, a Web site called Education for Sustainability will enable students to track how energy is used throughout the building at various times of day.
As one engineer said, “The entire building is designed to be very interactive.”
“In every program,” said Brian Zigmond, an engineer with StudioJAED, one of the architect firms, “we made a big effort, through studying state-of-the-art programs in both secondary and higher education, to see how we could give students live, hands-on experiences. That’s the major difference between a 1970s-era career and technical school, where everything was done on a workbench, and a modern one.”
On one side of the school sits a 3,000-square-foot outdoor area where students can replicate work in the field, whether it’s digging a trench or well or pouring concrete. Imagine a construction site in microcosm; that’s what you have here.
The career and tech school also has its own restaurant, complete with a kitchen, bake shop and a hostess area. Once the school is fully functional, students will be able to serve meals to the public in a setting that will train teenagers in every aspect of the industry, from marketing to customer service.
The same holds true for cosmetology. The high school has a stylish, full-service salon that includes more than a dozen hair-cutting stations, a pedicure station and a nail salon. The front section of the salon includes a reception area, where bookings are made. One day soon, the salon will be open to the public, providing an invaluable learning experience.
The automotive lab looks like a small service station with bays for three automobiles, plus a service manager reception area. And a television studio contains all of the equipment needed to produce a daily television show. Students in each of the trades will also be able to use the television equipment to make videos that they can share with students from other fields.
“Vocational education used to be kind of a dumping ground,” said Stephen DeWitt, senior director of the National Association for Career and Technical Education. “That has really changed over the past 10 to 20 years. And that’s because the jobs have changed. Today, you need a solid understanding of math and science to be a technician.”
The new philosophy, one that the Providence technical school embraces, is that students must be just as well versed in calculus and chemistry as they are in carpentry or cosmetology.
Career and tech schools are no longer an end in themselves. Graduates should be prepared to attend college or a technical institute, according to Nkoli Onye, the district’s executive director of high schools.
“Students are now expected to complete the same college-prep curriculum as everyone else,” she said. “What they will also get is a deep knowledge in a technical area.”
Onye made it clear that this program is not for low-achievers. The school day will run from 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., the longest high school day in the state, she said. Ninth- and tenth-graders will receive double periods of math and English every day to boost their basic skills. Upperclassmen will take double blocks in their chosen technical area.
Although it is still a work in progress, the school is committed to collaborating with local industry to place upperclassmen in internships. The school is also serious about offering dual enrollment programs that would allow students to earn college credits while they are still in high school.
Students will be able to graduate with industry certification, which means that they should be prepared to pass an examination and get jobs in their fields. Industry certification also gives students a leg up if they want to pursue a college degree in something like engineering or architecture.
The new career and tech school is really about developing the whole student, not someone with just a narrow set of skills. A cosmetology student will learn about marketing and managing a salon. A graphic arts student will be able to study communications and Web design. A heating, ventilation and air conditioning student will be able to study how a green building works.
“In the previous design, the student was the robot repeating tasks on an assembly line,” said Supt. Michael F. Fitzpatrick, the director of the Blackstone Valley Regional School District in Massachusetts and a consultant on this project. “With the new model, the student builds the robot. The goal is to create a student who is a critical thinker, a student who is entrepreneurial.”
The new facility is an extension of the old Hanley Career and Technical Center, built in 1976, which has undergone a complete overhaul. Dark, dingy and cramped, the old Hanley featured a cosmetology area that had hair driers that looked like something out of I Love Lucy. The equipment was outdated, the classroom spaces had little or no technology, and there was nothing “green” but the building.
Compare that to the new high school, where there are Smart boards in every classroom that allow teachers to project multi-media lesson plans on large screens. The entire building is wireless and each classroom has four computers while each technical lab has at least six.
The Hanley part of the building will open when school begins on Wednesday. The new wing will be open the following month. Although students from Johnston are eligible to attend the new school, the facility is opening with Providence students only.
Instead of shelves filled with texts, which quickly become dated, the new media center has row after row of laptops that, at a touch, can pull up the latest manual on HVAC technology or boiler repair.
Even the school’s layout is designed to promote a new type of collaborative learning. The second and third floors have common areas similar to what you would see in a college setting, with orange and teal couches where students can talk about their work.
Each vocational lab has an adjacent classroom, which will allow instructors to move seamlessly from theory to practice. If students are struggling to implement a particular skill in the lab, the instructor can move everyone back into the classroom and explain the concept more fully.
The building is also designed to maximize the learning experience. In every classroom, a sound enhancement system wirelessly transmits the teacher’s voice into speakers, so students can hear no matter where they are sitting.
The school also meets the highest energy-efficient standards for school buildings in New England. A solar hot-water system will generate over 35 percent of the hot water used in the building, and students will have access to a log that tracks how much energy has been saved. The roof is white to reflect the sun’s rays and minimize the heat produced by the large dark roofs common to urban areas.
And the building’s numerous windows are placed in such a way as to make the best use of sunlight, thus reducing the electric bill.
The school is also designed to be welcoming to the public. Two kiosks, located at the main entrances to the building, provide information on the facility’s many “green” features by simply using a touch screen.
The field house, the largest secondary school facility of its kind in Rhode Island, has three basketball courts, an indoor soccer field and a 200-meter track, and stadium seating. It will be used by high school athletes from throughout Providence and beyond.
No matter how fancy the facility, the real challenge remains: training teachers to think about vocational education in fresh ways that embrace both technical and academic rigor, collaboration between academic and technical faculty, and the belief that these students will continue their education after graduation.
“My concern is getting the right people in place,” Fitzpatrick, the consultant, said. “It’s about the teachers, the curriculum, the collaboration with industry and higher education. The design has created a platform. If it’s not seized, it will be an opportunity missed.”SCHOOL FACTS
The new Providence Career and Technical High School will open in October.
Location: Intersection of Cranston and Westminster streets.
Cost: $90 million, includes a 65,000-square-foot athletic complex, furniture, books, technology and phones.
Size: 296,000 square feet
Enrollment: Opening with 385 students in grades 9-12; school can accommodate 800 students.
Career offerings: Carpentry; automotive; electrical; graphic communication; culinary arts; plumbing; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; general construction trades; and cosmetology.
Special features: An auditorium with video teleconferencing capability, wireless library and media center, Smart boards in every classroom.
Green aspects: Solar/thermal water heaters; waterless and low-flow fixtures; high-efficiency boilers; extensive use of daylight; mechanical and electrical systems designed to reduce energy consumption by 40 percent.
Arbitrator backs Providence municipal unions on health-care administrator
Posted Wednesday, August 19, 2009
By Gregory Smith
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — An arbitrator has blocked for the foreseeable future Mayor David N. Cicilline’s disputed attempt to switch the health-care benefits administrator for city employees who are represented by labor unions.
Arbitrator Girard R. Visconti declared in effect that by making the switch, Cicilline would have violated labor contracts by diluting employee health-care benefits. Cicilline had insisted repeatedly that there would have been no significant change in benefits.
The decision by the court-appointed arbitrator, which was distributed to the mayor and the unions Monday, is a sharp setback in Cicilline’s campaign to better reconcile employee costs with the city’s ability to pay. Cicilline had claimed that switching from Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island to UnitedHealthcare of New England would save the city nearly $6 million over three years.
“We’re very happy” with the decision, said Clarence W. Gough, vice president of Lodge No. 3, Fraternal Order of Police. “If they want to change [administrators], then it’s something that they’re going to have to negotiate” rather than impose.
Members of the FOP as well as members of unions representing teachers, other school personnel, nonschool employees and certain retirees are protected by the ruling.
Cicilline spokesmen Tuesday afternoon did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Visconti’s ruling is part two of a two-part decision; in part one, he said in effect that the mayor could not tamper with the health-care benefits administrator for members of Local 799, International Association of Fire Fighters, and certain retirees.
The city is self-insured for health-care costs but hires a company to administer the coverage. In that hiring decision, the Cicilline administration accepts networks of physicians and hospitals and other provisions that vary between companies. The key concept is whether those networks and other provisions incorporate benefits that are “equivalent” or “equal,” in the words of the labor contracts, to what the employees and retirees have currently.
Visconti said in his latest ruling that there are “obvious and substantial differences” in the benefits package that would be administered by UnitedHealthcare compared with the package offered by Blue Cross. For example, some employees would have to pay more if they used a physician who was in the Blue Cross network but not in the UnitedHealthcare network.
He ordered that the city maintain the benefits that it provided as of Dec. 31, 2008, but said that the city may switch administrators if equivalent benefits can be preserved.
While the decision may stymie the switch only for the foreseeable future, it raises the question of whether Cicilline could modify the contested benefits in compliance with the arbitrator’s edict and still realize his claimed savings.
Gough said it would be impossible to accomplish that because UnitedHealthcare’s price quote is inextricably tied to the benefits. Paul A. Doughty, president of the firefighters union, reiterated his contention that the savings always were illusory and were merely a public relations stunt by the mayor.
The decision “stands for two ideas, that some parts of the contract are sacred … [and] that you get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar,” Doughty said. “The city should rethink its [bargaining] process.”
The city provides health-care benefits for about 9,800 people, according to the latest available figure, of which about 5,500 are active employees and about 4,300 are retired.
Cicilline announced last year that he would switch administrators effective Jan. 1 and he contended that the language in the labor contracts left him free to do so. The move provoked howls of protest from the unions, which staged a rambunctious rally against him at one of his political fundraisers and then sued in court to block him.
The fight moved up to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, where then-Chief Justice Frank J. Williams ruled that the mayor could change the city’s administrator of prescription drug benefits from Blue Cross to CVS/Caremark for an estimated savings of about $5 million over three years. The unions said that was only a mildly contested issue.
But the chief justice ordered that the dispute over the bulk of the health-care benefits be settled by special arbitration. Williams appointed Visconti, one of Cicilline’s nominees as arbitrator, to hear the case.
Dozens of Providence teachers still unassigned as school nears
Posted Friday, August 14, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Providence Teachers Union says that more than 130 public school teachers are still waiting for their assignments in Providence, just two weeks before the start of school.
The school district, however, says that the number is closer to 85.
In any event, union leaders say the situation could create considerable turmoil during the opening of school, a problem that former education Commissioner Peter McWalters was hoping to avoid when he ordered the district to adopt a new method of teacher hiring, which will be used in six pilot schools this fall.
If these teachers don’t receive an assignment before the first day of class, they will be placed in the day-to-day substitute teachers’ pool, according to union leaders. This category of substitute teacher will move from classroom to classroom, wherever a need arises.
The teachers union blames the large number of unfilled spots squarely on a new system of filling vacancies that no longer relies on seniority. Under McWalters’ order, issued in February, teachers must now submit a lengthy application for vacant positions at six schools. And, for the first time, a team of educators interviews candidates and the principal makes the final selection.
The new hiring system will expand to include all of the district’s 40-plus schools next fall.
According to union President Steve Smith, the new “criterion-based” hiring process has derailed the entire teacher assignment system, leaving dozens of teachers unsure of where they will be teaching this fall.
“Why are there 136 teachers awaiting jobs?” Smith said. “Because of the School Department’s inability to implement criterion-based hiring in a timely manner.
“This has been devastating for morale,” he said. “Show me any other community where classrooms aren’t filled by now. Providence should have said [to McWalters], ‘Give us more time.’ ”
But Carleton W. Jones, the district’s chief operating officer, promised on Thursday that the vast majority of these positions will be filled by Sept. 2. In fact, the district estimates that only 10 positions will remain open by the first day of class.
According to Jones, it isn’t unusual for Providence, which has 2,000 teachers, to have a large number of unfilled positions in August. Last year, the school system had 118 vacancies on the first day of school.
“There is always room for improvement,” Jones said Thursday. “Considering the Herculean task we took on and what we did in a short time frame, it went as smoothly as I could have hoped.”
Under the old system, vacancies were filled based on seniority and most were filled by teachers within the district. This summer, however, about 70 positions were filled using the new method, a much more labor-intensive process for both the applicant and the School Department’s human resources office.
For the first time, the district had to process — and, in some cases, interview — more than 500 candidates. The district also had to train interview teams for each of the six schools as well as develop a set of criteria by which to evaluate teachers.
The union, however, says the district should have realized that it couldn’t implement the new hiring system in a timely manner. The interviews were supposed to take place by the end of June, but that deadline was extended and 17 positions remain unfilled at the six schools.
The union also says that the district has yet to fill 84 teacher-leader positions, which were created in response to McWalters’ order. But Jones said that more than 60 have been hired, and that all but three of the positions at the new Career and Technical Academy have been filled, contrary to a union claim.
Finally, Smith says that the human resources office was left out of the hiring process, which he says was handled by the district’s three level directors for elementary, middle and high school.
Again, Jones disputed that claim.
“Human resources,” he said, “has been working at 100 percent of their capacity. They have been totally involved in this process.”
City teachers union sues district
Posted Thursday, August 13, 2009
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Providence Teachers Union has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court that seeks to prevent the local school district from abolishing seniority as the primary way in which teacher vacancies are filled.
The 2,000-member teachers union is challenging the authority of the state education commissioner to impose a new hiring practice in Providence, a move that the union says should be handled within collective bargaining. The union filed its complaint in federal court on Thursday because it claims that the practice violates the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the U.S. Constitution.
“We’re asking for an injunction that prevents the commissioner’s office from interfering in collective bargaining,” said the union’s lawyer, Marc B. Gursky.
The suit names Schools Supt. Thomas Brady, School Board President Robert Wise and Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who began the job two months ago. Former Commissioner Peter McWalters issued the corrective-action order in February. In his directive, McWalters ordered Brady to establish a set of standards that determine whether the teacher is a good fit for the job.
Until now, vacancies have been filled based on seniority — a practice that has created a lot of churning. Under the old system, whenever there was a vacancy, the teacher with the most seniority bumped or dislocated someone with less. In a district as large as Providence, bumping can produce a lot of instability.
The new hiring system will begin in six pilot schools this fall, including the new Career and Technical Academy and the renovated Nathan Bishop Middle School on the city’s East Side. Under the Brady plan, candidates are required to submit an extensive application, including a resumé, examples of student work and evidence of professional training.
For the first time, applicants are being interviewed by a team that includes, among others, the principal and two teachers. The principal, however, makes the final decision.
Gursky said that the union is not trying to interrupt or block the new hiring practice being implemented this summer. Rather, the union hopes that the court will spend time listening to arguments from both parties and that the judge will make a ruling later this year.
The union claims that Brady’s hiring practice “eliminates in its entirety impartial and objective decision-making” because it requires the district to offer only an “adequate explanation” for teacher assignments.
Although she hasn’t read the lawsuit yet, Commissioner Gist said that she looks forward to “vigorously exercising my authority to do what’s best for students.”
“This order requires that decisions about hiring, assigning and retaining teachers be based on teacher qualifications and student need,” she said. “Nothing could be more important than this principle. Teacher assignment must be based on the best interest of students.”
McWalters, in his order, said that he has the ability to assert his authority in a failing school system under both federal law, No Child Left Behind, and state law, which empowers the commissioner to intervene in a district that repeatedly fails to make adequate progress.
But the suit claims that the No Child law must respect the rights of school district employees, including those protected under collective bargaining. And, according to the union, the U.S. Constitution trumps any state laws that are contrary to federal law.
The case is before U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith.
R.I. Regents to bolster teacher evaluations
Posted Thursday, August 6, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Teacher evaluations in most Rhode Island school districts are a meaningless formality. They aren’t done routinely and when they are done, they have little impact.
Veteran teachers can go 5 or more years without even receiving an evaluation.
It is unclear whether bad evaluations ever result in the dismissal of ineffective teachers, as the state Department of Education does not even collect such data from districts.
Yet studies say that one of the biggest predictors of students’ success is the quality of their classroom teacher. Without a fair and rigorous evaluation process, how can schools know if their teachers are good, help teachers improve and remove unsuccessful teachers?
The Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees K-12 public education, wants to beef up evaluation standards and their frequency.
Nationally, states that take teacher quality seriously stand a better chance of receiving tens of millions of dollars in federal aid through the $4.35-billion Race to the Top fund, which rewards states for innovation.
Thursday afternoon, the Regents are scheduled to approve standards that require, for the first time, that all districts develop high-quality evaluations linked to how well students are learning.
The new standards would also require that all teachers — new and veteran — undergo evaluation annually, along with principals, assistant principals and support staff.“One of the purposes of the standards is to ensure that all districts are evaluating their teachers annually,” said Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist. “Right now, the majority of our districts, I would say, are not evaluating teachers regularly.”
In-depth evaluations that include observing teachers in the classroom and looking closely at the achievement results of their students — including grades, test scores and improvements in literacy — serve a deeper purpose, Gist said.
“Evaluations identify excellent teachers, so we can take their work and expand it,” Gist said. “They identify some weaknesses and help teachers grow and improve. And if we have teachers with significant challenges who need to move on, then we are able to make those decisions and make sure we have only the best teachers in front of students.”
The proposed standards give districts significant leeway in their approach to the evaluations, allowing them to decide if they want to use a peer-evaluator or teams, for example.
But all districts must develop evaluations that assess a teacher’s subject knowledge and quality of instruction.
Outside contributions — such as student and parent surveys — are required.
All evaluations must collect data and feedback that will improve the teacher’s performance and will recognize the most exemplary teachers in the district — possibly even rewarding them for their effectiveness.
Each district must develop a system to provide support to struggling teachers and remove ineffective teachers. The evaluations must include observation of the teacher.
The standards, as well as an Educator Code of Professional Responsibility, will go out for public hearing this fall.
The Regents hope to approve both documents by the end of the year. Districts could use the new standards as early as the fall of 2010, although some districts may chose to wait until their teacher contract expires over the next two to three years before developing new evaluations.
The issue has caught the attention of Young Voices, a youth group that has developed its own set of recommendations for teacher evaluations and plans to deliver them to the Regents at the meeting.
Heiry Borrell, 15, is concerned enough about the quality of her teachers that she intends to speak out Thursday. She says she is worried the proposed standards do not go far enough in rewarding the best teachers, removing the worst and ensuring that all students get access to challenging curriculum.
“It’s important because not all teachers are great teachers,” said Heiry, who enters the 11th grade this fall. “And we should have a way to hold them accountable and to reward the ones that are good.”
The Regents will meet at 4 p.m. at the Juanita Sanchez Complex, 182 Thurbers Ave.
Providence schools implement new approach to hiring
Posted Monday, July 13, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The School Department is embarking on a grand experiment that could have wide-ranging implications for other school districts in the state.
Under orders from the state education commissioner, the district this fall will begin filling vacancies in six schools based not on seniority, but on whether that teacher is a good match for the job — and the school.
“I’ve been a principal for 11 years,” said Michael Lazzareschi, who heads the new Nathan Bishop Middle School, “and I’ve never had the ability to pick my own candidates. There’s nothing more exciting than seeing the lines of teachers waiting to be interviewed.”
Although the Providence Teachers Union is threatening to sue, claiming the state education commissioner doesn’t have the authority to overrule a union contract, Schools Supt. Tom Brady says the rank-and-file have shown real enthusiasm for the new system.
“Five hundred and twenty four teachers applied for 75 positions,” Brady said. “That far exceeded our expectations.”
Even more surprising, Brady says, is that so many of the applicants — 325 — were teaching in suburban districts, even private schools.
Maybe, Brady says, it’s the economy. But school officials also say that there’s a new excitement stirring in the city’s schools, driven by the opening of an $80-million career and technical high school and a completely redesigned middle school on the city’s East Side (Nathan Bishop).
“These are teachers who live in Providence and teach elsewhere,” Lazzareschi says. “They love the city and have always wanted to be part of public education here. Now they want to give something back.”
Whatever the reason, Brady says the new hiring policy, which has been constantly revised over the past three months, represents an enormous sea change in the way the Providence schools do business.
Under the old system, vacancies were filled based on seniority. When there was a vacancy, the most senior teacher systemwide bumped someone with less seniority. In a district with more than 2,000 teachers, however, bumping could produce wholesale dislocations. In recent years, when there have been large numbers of layoffs, smaller schools have lost up to one-third of their staffs.
“The old system was dehumanizing,” Lazzareschi said. “It created tremendous upheaval in teachers’ lives. You were treated as little more than a number.”
For the first time, a teacher from a suburban school district has just as much likelihood of landing a job in Providence as someone from within the system, all things being equal. In the past, vacancies were typically filled from someone within the Providence schools.
In his February order, then-Education Commissioner Peter McWalters ordered Providence to abolish seniority because he felt it stood in the way of improving student achievement. The bumping process often results in a school system where large numbers of teachers are constantly in flux, a system where someone with a lot of seniority winds up teaching a class because of the number of years he or she has logged in the district, not because he or she is the best match for that class.
This fall, hiring for vacancies in four schools — Hope High School, Veazie Street Elementary School, Carl G. Lauro Elementary School and Perry Middle School — will be based on whether the applicants have the skills needed to serve students in those particular schools. The same process will apply to Nathan Bishop and the Providence Career & Technical Academy, a modernist structure being built next to Central High School.
The entire school district will move to the new hiring system in the 2010-11 school year.
“It’s a huge change,” said Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees. “It allows management to put the needs of students as their top priority.”
This spring, each candidate for the 75 vacancies submitted an application, including a resumé, cover letter, three pieces of student work and evidence of their professional training to the six pilot schools. Because many teachers hadn’t written a resumé or cover letter in years, the School Department held workshops in early June to coach teachers.
For the first time, candidates are being interviewed by a team that includes the principal, two teachers selected by the principal, two chosen by the School Improvement Team and a department head (now called a “teacher leader”) at the high school level.
Although the principal makes the final decision, his judgment should reflect the consensus of the committee. Because this is an unfamiliar role and a huge responsibility for members of the committee, teachers received extensive training from the New Teachers Project, a nonprofit group that trains mid-career professionals to enter the classroom.
One of the reasons teacher unions formed in the first place was to prevent principals from hiring friends or firing teachers they didn’t like.
To avoid any hint of favoritism, the School Department, working with the union, developed an interview process that relies on questions from a common bank of questions that use concrete teaching scenarios and short model lessons.
The interview is designed to measure specific skills: Does the teacher know his subject? Can she demonstrate knowledge of recent research in his discipline? Is he able to demonstrate his knowledge within an actual model lesson?
The other important piece of the new hiring system is mutual consent. Teacher and principal must agree that the school is a good match. There will be no “on-the-spot” hiring.
The whole notion behind “criterion-based” hiring is that it empowers principals to put the right teacher in the right classroom. It also allows the superintendent to hold principals accountable for improving student achievement in their own buildings because they finally have the authority to hire their own staff.
The new hiring process upends the past churning of school staffs.
“We are matching teachers to schools based on the teacher’s qualifications and the needs of students,” said the new state education commissioner, Deborah Gist. “It’s how we all got our jobs. We demonstrated our abilities.”
The Providence Teachers Union, however, says that the state had no right to intervene in a contract. Union president Steve Smith said any changes in hiring practices should be negotiated, so “you don’t make it up as you go along.”
Smith says the School Department is making arbitrary decisions. Elementary school teachers with a middle school “endorsement” are no longer allowed to apply for middle school openings, despite the fact that they have taught in middle schools for years.
Starting with the six pilot schools, only teachers with secondary school certifications will fill middle school vacancies because these teachers are formally certified to teach specific content areas such as math and science.
(A middle school endorsement allows elementary school teachers to teach sixth grade, which, in some schools, is part of elementary school while in others is part of middle school).
Meanwhile, Smith’s biggest objection is that the new hiring plan takes a crucial piece of a teacher’s terms of employment out of collective bargaining.
“We want very specific job criteria and we want experience to count for something,” Smith said. “This is all about control. We want a partnership.”
Brady agreed that the new hiring policy should be included in the next collective bargaining agreement. (A new three-year contract, retroactive to 2007, was ratified by the school board last week).
“That’s progress,” Smith said of the superintendent’s comment. “It’s a move in the right direction.”
Providence teachers gain contract
Posted Wednesday, July 1, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Providence School Board voted 5 to 3 Tuesday to approve a new three-year contract that requires teachers to pay a larger share of their health-care coverage and includes pay raises totaling 3 percent over the life of the agreement.
Teachers overwhelmingly approved the contract last week. The contract calls for raises of 1.5 percent in each of the first two years and no raise in the third year.
Board members Melissa Malone, Maila Touray and Ronnie Young voted against the contract and Robert Wise, Philip Gould, Brian Lalli, Katherine McKenzie and Grace Gonzalez voted for it. The discussion, which took place in closed session, lasted almost 90 minutes.
Young said he couldn’t support the contract, which calls for raises totaling 3 percent and is retroactive to Sept. 1, 2007, because it does not represent a complete break from the previous contract. Malone said that teachers deserve a raise but said she can’t justify salary hikes during these difficult financial times.
Even some of those board members who approved the contract did so grudgingly.
“I’m conflicted,” McKenzie said. “I believe that teachers should be paid for the work they do. But then I see children in buildings with lead paint, children without the most up-to-date textbooks. It grieves me. It’s a hard choice.”
Wise, the School Board president, said he hopes that the next contract will establish a more effective way to evaluate teachers and include a new way of hiring teachers that isn’t based on seniority, something that the state has already ordered the district to do, beginning on a limited basis this fall.
Providence Teachers’ Union President Steve Smith said he was stunned by some of the board’s comments, adding that no one raises an eyebrow when school administrators are hired for five-and six-digit salaries.
“I’ve been insulted in a lot less time than this,” Smith said after Tuesday night’s vote. “They’re saying, ‘We love our teachers but we don’t want to pay them.’ ”
The majority of the 2,100-member union — those who are at step 10 or above on the wage scale — will also receive a one-time retroactive payment equal to 1.5 percent of their salary. That payment will be made no later than September. About 75 percent of the teachers qualify for this payment.
In addition, most teachers will pay a greater share of their health-care premiums, moving from 10 percent to 15 percent. A small percentage of teachers, those hired after Sept. 1, 2004, already pay more than 15 percent of their health care and they won’t pay more under the new agreement.
Under the new contract, most teachers will pay $867 for individual health-care coverage and $2,316 for family coverage.
Last week, teachers expressed relief that, after two years of sporadic negotiations, they finally had a contract they could live with.
Teachers union would overhaul peer evaluations
Posted Tuesday, June 16, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — As in most years, about 400 teachers around the state will enter their own classroom for the first time this September. For many, it will prove a very difficult first year.
Isolated and alone, some new teachers struggle to balance the demands of running a classroom, teaching content and disciplining students. Nearly 10 percent of all teachers — according to national studies — will find they are in the wrong profession.
State educators want to lessen those problems, advocating more supports for teachers during that critical first year.
But without a comprehensive mentor program and evaluation process, it is difficult for schools to give new teachers guidance and, if necessary, steer them out of teaching.
Friday, the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, which represents teachers in 11 districts including the state’s largest, Providence, announced plans to launch a more rigorous teacher-evaluation and mentoring program that has proved successful elsewhere.
The state requires that teachers be evaluated every few years. But the standards and rigor of evaluations are left up to districts, with uneven results.
Union leaders said they would begin a yearlong planning process to modify the Peer Assistance Review for Teaching Excellence, a widely respected peer-evaluation process started 28 years ago in Toledo, Ohio. Similar programs have spread to Chicago, Minneapolis and Rochester, N.Y.
Marcia B. Reback, union president, says she wants to roll out the program in Rhode Island’s four urban districts in September 2010. Reback said the superintendents of Pawtucket, Providence and Woonsocket have said they want to participate in the program, and that union officials are also talking with Central Falls Superintendent Fran Gallo.
“The core of this program is providing support to new teachers,” Reback said. “The model we have now is new teachers go into classrooms and it’s sink or swim. We need to be giving these teachers every kind of support.”
The Toledo evaluation program has removed 400 ineffective teachers over the past three decades, said Dal Lawrence, former head of the Toledo teachers union and the founder of the peer-assistance review program.
In Toledo, there is a “consulting” teacher — a veteran instructor — for every 10 new teachers. Throughout the year, the consulting teacher visits and mentors the new teachers and provides a recommendation to an evaluation team about whether the teacher should continue in the profession. The evaluation team includes administrators and other teachers.
“Most people will tell you the system we have is broken,” said Lawrence, who attended RIFT’s news conference. “Why can’t we fix it with union and management doing it together?”
The program is expensive. Consulting teachers commit to three years, training a total of 30 new teachers before returning to the classroom. Districts pay the consulting teachers’ full salaries during this period. Lawrence said that Toledo hired nine consulting teachers for the 2008-09 school year, at a cost of $1.2 million to the district.
Nationally, the issue of teacher quality is heating up. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have both highlighted rigorous teacher evaluations and mentoring programs in recent speeches.
The topic is receiving more local attention, too. The state Department of Education on Wednesday presented the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education a new framework for more meaningful teacher evaluations.
“Right now, we don’t really have a system. Everyone has a different evaluation process,” said Paulajo Gaines, the state’s director of educator quality and certification. “We are trying to standardize what it is we are looking for when we look at educators.”
The state proposal, which will be the focus of a public hearing in the fall, differs from the teachers union’s proposal in one important regard, Gaines said. If the Regents adopt the new evaluation framework, tenured as well as new teachers would undergo the more rigorous evaluation.
“Research has shown us that the single most important factor in a child’s success in the classroom is the quality of the teacher,” Gaines said. “That’s why our framework applies to all educators.”
Renovation makes Nathan Bishop the school of choice
Posted Wednesday, May 27, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — With a dramatically overhauled Nathan Bishop Middle School set to reopen this fall on the city’s East Side, a growing number of middle-class parents have decided to put their trust in the public schools.
After undergoing a $35-million renovation, Nathan Bishop will open this fall with slightly more than 200 sixth-graders, the majority of them from the East Side, including less-affluent neighborhoods such as Camp Street and Mount Hope.
Supporters are hoping that the refashioned Nathan Bishop, which will offer Advanced Placement courses, student advisories and team teaching, will attract children of more affluent parents back to the public schools.
So far, Nathan Bishop seems to be doing just that: more than 55 students are coming from private schools, including Moses Brown, The Wheeler School, Providence Country Day, St. Mary Academy-Bay View and several other schools. And more than 65 youngsters will come from two high-performing public elementary schools, Martin Luther King and Vartan Gregorian.
According to the 2000 census, almost half of the East Side’s 937 middle-school students, which include grades five through eight, were enrolled in private schools.
Parents say that Nathan Bishop represents a turning point for the city’s public schools. Until now, affluent parents typically opted out of the public schools because the city’s middle schools were seen as failures, plagued by chronically low student performance, disruptive students and a high turnover of principals and staff. Only one middle school, Nathanael Greene, was seen as an option because of its gifted-and-talented program.
“This truly was a David-and-Goliath story,” said Lucia Gill Case, whose son, Lars, will attend Nathan Bishop this fall. “This school had gone downhill. It was in horrible shape. There was a sense of hopelessness.”
In the spring of 2006, then-Supt. Donnie Evans stunned parents with his decision to close Nathan Bishop, citing falling enrollments and alarmingly low student achievement. But Evans was forced to reconsider after hundreds of East Side residents launched a massive e-mail campaign protesting his decision. Evans not only listened, he invited parents to participate in the process of planning a new middle school.
“Now, there is this beautifully renovated building where many students can walk to school,” Case said. “It has a certain miraculous quality, like Obama becoming president.”
The new Nathan Bishop is changing for the better for several reasons: a dynamic principal, Michael Lazzareschi, who was named Rhode Island’s 2008 elementary school principal of the year; greater autonomy for the principal, who can hire his own staff; the opportunity for students to take advanced courses and a learning environment that offers the latest technology.
Tobias Lederberg, of Laurel Avenue, graduated from Nathan Bishop more than 30 years ago and he is tickled that his son, Eli, 10, will go there next year. Eli currently attends the Henry Barnard School, a laboratory school at Rhode Island College.
“We’re going back to the public schools,” Lederberg said, adding that he would have probably sent his son to a private school if Nathan Bishop had not been available.
“First,” he said, “we like that it’s a neighborhood school. Secondly, there are a number of students from his current class at Henry Barnard that are going there. There is some comfort in knowing that other people have made the same decision.”
Every parent interviewed for this story said that what sold them on Nathan Bishop was Lazzareschi, who currently runs the successful King Elementary School on Camp Street.
“What clinched it for us was Michael Lazzareschi,” said Debra Warshay, whose son, Matthew, currently attends the Jewish Community Day School in Providence. “He has a very sophisticated understanding of the role that parents play. I think he has a vision of what the school can be.”
Warshay, who lives on the East Side, said she was excited by some of the policy changes at Bishop, notably that the principal has the authority to choose his teachers, a policy that was successfully implemented at Hope High School.
Still, the decision to send Matthew to Nathan Bishop was not made lightly — or quickly, Warshay said.
“What I needed,” she said, “was enough time to trust that the school’s potential wouldn’t be blocked by archaic policies like bumping.”
Starting this fall, teaching vacancies at six schools, including Nathan Bishop, will no longer be filled based on seniority, which has often led to bumping — wherein a teacher with more seniority can replace someone with less seniority, a process that can result in a cascading series of disruptions.
Warshay also likes the fact that the school is opening with the sixth grade only, which means that her son will always be in the oldest class at the Elmgrove Avenue school. Bishop will add grades seven and eight during the next two years, for a total of 600 students.
In a 2001 Brown University survey, Providence parents said that offering a gifted program was the single most important factor that would bring them back to the public schools. But parents who were involved in the early planning of the new middle school wanted it to be inclusive. Instead of offering a separate strand for gifted and talented students, Nathan Bishop will offer advanced courses to all students, depending on their abilities.
That was a huge draw for a number of parents, who said that without that offering they might have sent their children to a private or parochial school.
But parents stress that this is not about creating a boutique school for the city’s middle class. Although almost 80 percent of the school’s students will come from the neighborhood, many of those who attend the two feeder elementary schools are children of color.
These parents hope that Bishop will be the catalyst for a deeper change throughout the school system.
“Superintendent Tom Brady feels strongly that it’s not just about Bishop,” Case said. “He is starting to put things in place that will be harbingers of change all over the city.”
“The Providence public schools want to be the school of choice for all families,” Brady said. “My goal is to put the charter schools out of business in five years.”
Educators relieved stimulus money coming their way
Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island will receive a huge infusion of federal money for schools, after the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday the release of $111 million for the current and next school years. The money is arriving just in time to save hundreds of jobs in schools statewide, according to relieved state education officials.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that due to the timing of the stabilization money coming in to the state, there are districts with such significant cash-flow issues that rather than laying off a couple of teachers, districts would have been facing a scenario of closing school for a number of weeks and losing all of their teachers for a portion of the school year,” said David V. Abbott, state deputy education commissioner. That crisis will now be avoided, he said.
More than half of the economic stabilization funds — $69 million — will replace state money for local public schools that was cut in Governor Carcieri’s spending plans for fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2010.
The funds are part of the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (President Obama’s stimulus legislation) and were intended to preserve public education in difficult financial times.
The rest of the federal cash consists of $21.5 million for the state’s three public colleges and about $20 million to offset cuts in the Rhode Island state police budget, according to Carolyn Dias, finance director for the state Department of Education.
Some leaders, including Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, have decried the use of federal funds to replace state aid to schools, saying cash-strapped school districts need additional support. The federal stimulus package was designed to create and protect jobs, they say, not plug state cuts.
Education officials have been more circumspect.
“While it would have been nice to have been able to use the stabilization funds to increase the amount of funding to our school districts,” Abbott said, “the sad reality is, without the federal assistance, untold numbers of teaching and support jobs would have been lost in our schools.”
A spokeswoman for Carcieri said the state had not yet received the money but that it would be coming shortly.
The state is also receiving $43 million this year in stimulus money for special education and low-income students through two federal programs, Title 1 and Special Education. Vocational education programs and independent living grants for the disabled are also included in this extra money.
“That really is new money and it will do a lot of good,” Abbott said. “Given that our poorest districts are also historically our lowest performing, the state has been working with those districts for years on improvement plans …. We are very confident they will use this money to address the needs that have been identified.”
The state must track how the stimulus money is spent. A new accounting system now used by all school districts will help officials show where the money goes, Abbott said.
Rhode Island can apply for another $54 million in stabilization funds this fall. But receiving the second installment hinges on whether a waiver from the state is accepted by the federal government, said Amy Kempe, Carcieri’s spokeswoman.
The state must show it is spending the same proportion of money on education as it has in past years — about 27 percent of total state spending. But because of cuts to the education budget, that means the General Assembly must find ways to save money in other areas or increase revenue. Carcieri has already said he will not raise taxes; instead he wants lawmakers to approve pension reform that he says will save tens of millions of dollars.
Providence ends ‘bumping’ by teachers with seniority
Posted Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Starting with six schools in the next academic year, teaching vacancies in Providence will no longer be filled based on seniority, a shift that could have far-reaching implications for every school district in Rhode Island.
In a letter to all staff on Wednesday, Supt. Tom Brady announced that principals, working closely with school-based interview committees that include teachers, will choose which teachers will be assigned to their schools based on a common set of criteria. No longer will seniority be the driving force behind all staffing decisions.
Brady didn’t reach this decision alone.
In early February, Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, ordered Brady to begin filling vacancies based on teacher qualifications because, he said, the district wasn’t moving quickly enough to improve student achievement. McWalters made it clear that teachers contract language would not stand in the way of his “corrective-action order” to the school district.
McWalters said a 1997 state law, called Article 31, gives the commissioner broad power to intervene in chronically low-performing districts, as does the federal law known as No Child Left Behind.
Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees, said McWalters’ order, coupled with several recent court decisions and the federal law, could have huge implications for school districts around the state.
“This recognizes that student welfare trumps any kind of contract language on seniority,” Duffy said. “I think it’s a good move.”
Brady’s decision, however, may deep-six his efforts to develop a collaborative relationship with the Providence Teachers Union. Steve Smith, president of the 2,000-member union, said he was blindsided by Brady’s announcement and threatened to sue the district:
“He ignored our ideas,” Smith said. “This doesn’t empower teachers. It relies solely on the principal’s authority.”
According to Smith, Brady knew that the union was preparing its own hiring policy, an assertion that Brady denied.
If the union’s recommendations aren’t taken seriously, Smith said, it will have no choice but to file a lawsuit.
Brady denied that this was a unilateral decision, adding that his office and the union met for at least six hours and that his plan incorporated several of the union’s recommendations. In his letter to teachers, Brady said that he appreciates the “uncertainty and angst that may surface as we implement a dramatically different system for hiring and assigning teachers.”
Starting this fall, teacher vacancies in four Providence schools — Hope High School, Veazie Street Elementary School, Lauro Elementary School and Perry Middle School — will be filled based on whether the applicants have the skills needed to serve students in those particular schools. The principals of the district’s two new schools — Nathan Bishop Middle School and the Providence Career and Technical Academy — will have the authority to hire their own teachers. The entire school district will move to this new plan at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year.
MCWALTERS ORDERED Providence to radically change its assignment policy because he wanted to end a practice called bumping. Under the current seniority rules, when there is a layoff, the most-senior teacher can dislodge someone with less seniority. In a district with 2,000 teachers, bumping can result in wholesale dislocations. In recent years, some smaller high schools have lost a third of their staff due to bumping.
The result is a school system in which large numbers of teachers are constantly in flux, a system in which someone with a lot of seniority winds up teaching a particular class not because the teacher is the best person for the job, but because of the number of years that person has logged in the school system.
Brady emphasized that the new hiring policy is based on mutual consent, which would work like this: A teacher interviews for multiple vacancies. Once all of the interviews are completed, the committee ranks which teachers would be a good match for various openings at their school, while the individual teacher ranks which schools would be acceptable.
“No applicants will be assigned to schools that they have indicated to be unacceptable,” the policy states. “Conversely, no schools will be assigned to applicants that they have indicated to be unacceptable.”
Teachers will also have to submit evidence to support their applications, including three pieces of student work, a record of their professional development, two letters of reference and a cover letter that addresses specific questions developed by the district.
Teachers have the right to appeal their assignment, all the way up to the education commissioner’s office.
Unions object to charter school provisions in budget
Posted Wednesday, April 8, 2009
By Cynthia Needham
Journal State House Bureau
PROVIDENCE — As hundreds of parents pinned their hopes on winning a spot in Rhode Island’s charter schools Tuesday, teachers union leaders rushed to the State House to protest a plan that would give the alternative public schools more leeway in how they do business.
Under the proposal –– nestled in Governor Carcieri’s budget plan for the coming year –– charter schools would not be bound by prevailing wage, tenure and retirement-system clauses that govern other public schools.
Removing those requirements, supporters including the governor say, would eliminate the red tape that can hamper classroom innovation. Such freedoms give charter schools greater control over budgets and personnel and allow them to attract and pay for top teaching talent.
But teachers union representatives vehemently object, contending it amounts to an end run around collective bargaining units, giving management an excuse to pay lower wages and do away with seniority protections.
“It’s wrong, it’s unfair, it’s unconscionable, it’s absolutely unnecessary and it wasn’t the deal that was struck when the original charter law was put into place,” James Parisi, a lobbyist for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, told the House Finance Committee in a hearing Tuesday.
The original charter law, drafted more than a decade ago as Rhode Island looked for new ways to foster innovation in its public education system, called for the new class of schools to be tied to local districts. It was later amended to liberate such schools from district oversight, making it easier for independent groups to start new institutions.
A year ago, the legislature approved yet another new class of schools, known as mayoral academies, which unlike the state’s existing 11 charter schools did not require specific salary or tenure structures, or obligations that teachers contribute to the state retirement system.
The governor’s budget proposal, if approved by lawmakers, would extend that flexibility to all charter schools. (It would also add $2.8 million for existing schools and $1.5 million for new or expanding schools, including the first proposed mayoral academy, in Cumberland.)
Deputy Education Commissioner David Abbott said the change would not prevent schools from organizing into unions if they chose to do so. Rhode Island already has three unionized charter schools.
The idea, he reiterated, is simply to give schools more autonomy in how they spend their dollars. Schools in other states including New York have used the freedom to pay teachers higher-than-average salaries, he noted.
“It’s just a question of flexibility of how they choose to allocate the funding they get. Should they choose to increase teacher pay to attract more highly qualified candidates, they would have to make that up somewhere else in their overall budget,” Abbott said.
But Parisi and Henry Boeniger, of National Education Association Rhode Island, say the plan could also cause problems for the state’s retirement system.
Currently, most charter school teachers are enrolled in the state pension system. If enacted, the new law would allow schools to elect not to continue participation in the state system.
“If you waive charter schools’ obligation to participate in the teacher retirement system, you are in effect relieving them of the obligation of paying off the unfunded liability that’s in our pension plan …” said Parisi. “Once you start exempting people from participating in the pension system you’re also exempting them from their share of paying off the unfunded liability.”
Governor Caricieri Tuesday said “that’s not a reason not to allow more flexibility in the operations. The unfunded liability for pensions needs to be dealt with but not in the context of requiring union rules in the way they are operating.”
The House Finance Committee made no decisions on the proposal, though members including Chairman Steven M. Costantino raised questions about how the state Board of Regents selects which charter schools to approve and fund. Union leadership has accused the mayoral academies of trying to leapfrog other charter applications now pending.
Abbott conceded that while the process was not always competitive, a moratorium that temporarily banned the creation of new charter schools until last year generated a backlog of applications. It is now up to the Regents to decide which new schools to approve and how to divvy up the funding, he said.
The unions say now is not the time to thinking about funding new schools.
“What I don’t understand,” Parisi said, “is how the governor could propose expanding charter schools when the public school districts are hurting as much as they are hurting.”
Providence After School Alliance going to the high schools
Posted Tuesday, April 7, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Imagine a place where high school students could converge to find out where to take art classes, get a summer job or go for health screenings. Then imagine a Web site where teenagers could find out about the latest poetry slam, hip-hop concert or art offerings at AS220.
Five years ago, at the urging of Mayor David N. Cicilline, the Providence After School Alliance — known as PASA — created a network of after-school activities for middle school students, half of whom had nowhere to go between the time school let out and the time their parents came home from work.
On Monday, Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Sen. Jack Reed joined Cicilline and dozens of youth groups to announce the launch of a high school version of PASA’s nationally recognized middle school program.
Five years ago, Cicilline decided that the city’s middle school students needed a coordinated network of activities to engage students during the long and sometimes hazardous hours that follow the end of the school day. The Providence After School Alliance was the result of that effort. Rather than duplicate existing programs, PASA created a network of activities around neighborhood hubs — a middle school or a YMCA — and then provided free transportation within the neighborhoods.
Today, 1,800 middle school students take juggling or learn to sail after school. Initially, the alliance focused on middle school children because that age group had the fewest after-school activities and the greatest need. About 50 percent of middle school students are alone when they get home.
Cicilline always dreamed of extending the program to the city’s 7,000 high school students, half of whom have never participated in any after-school activity.
“Our kids spend a lot more time out of school than in school,” Cicilline said yesterday. “We need to recognize that.”
“We’re graduating 400 middle school kids a year,” said PASA’s executive director, Hillary Salmons. “The question kids ask is, ‘What’s next? How do we go deeper?’ ”
The high school version of the After School Zones is called the Providence Hub and it will exist in real time and in cyberspace in the form of a Web site. Hub.com will bring together all of the resources available to teenagers, from after-school arts programs at New Urban Arts to summer internships to HIV screenings. The site will also be interactive, allowing students to share their interests and even post comments about existing programs.
Because most teenagers have to hoof it to after-school activities, the program will also provide bicycles planted at various locations around the city in addition to a local trolley that would drop teens off at places such as AS220 and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Students will also be able to access information at automated kiosks scattered around Kennedy Plaza.
What is unique about this effort is that high school students helped create it. Last year, PASA tapped teenagers from 10 youth organizations and invited them to brainstorm what an effective after-school program would look like. Those students interviewed 1,300 young people, asking them what they wanted and what services were missing.
“Right now,” Michelle Duso, a consultant who helped design the high school plan, said, “kids need to go to three different places to find out information about summer jobs, internships and financial aid. It’s very fragmented. The Hub will be the central place that collects all of this information.”
Duso gave the following example. AS220 is a place where students can create art and make music, but it is not equipped to help students who are having academic problems or substance-abuse issues. The Hub would be able to answer those questions, taking a burden off nonprofit groups that have a more defined mission.
“This will be a central conduit for a system of extended-day learning programs,” said Paul Sproll, who runs the Department of Teaching and Learning at RISD. “Teens live in several different worlds. Being connected to the Hub gives all of us access to the world of teens.”
The hope, he said, is that the Hub will allow youth and arts organizations to reach many more high school students.
The PASA program hopes to raise $500,000 in start-up funds. So far, it has received $150,000 from the City of Providence and Bank of America.
Regents, Carcieri vote in new education commissioner
Posted Friday, April 3, 2009
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Providence Journal Bulletin
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- As expected, Deborah A. Gist was appointed the state's new education commissioner at a 3:15 p.m. ceremony Thursday at the State House. She is the first woman to hold the post.
The Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously voted to appoint Gist, along with Governor Carcieri, who is permitted by state law to cast a vote.
Gist "is a committed educator who recognizes the importance of community as we accelerate our efforts to get all our students to proficiency and close the achievement gap that exists between our urban and suburban schools," Carcieri said. "Rhode Island is now poised to realize the promise of our current reform efforts and move all our students to the highest levels of performance."
Gist, 42, resigned Wednesday from a similar job in Washington, D.C., where she oversaw the district's public schools as a "state superintendent." Her resignation is effective June 30, and she officially takes over for departing Commissioner Peter McWalters July 1.
However, Gist said she intends to spend time in Rhode Island before then, working closely with McWalters to ensure a smooth transition. Her successor in Washington, a former assistant secretary of education, was announced by Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the news broke that Gist had been offered the job here.
Gist was appointed by former Mayor Anthony A. Williams in 2004, but found herself in an awkward position after Mayor Fenty took over the school system in 2007 and named Michelle Rhee as the day-to-day administrator for the city's schools. Rhee has spearheaded a time of huge upheaval in the distressed Washington, school system and has been profiled on the cover of Time magazine.
Gist, meanwhile, oversaw the city's 59 charter schools; compliance with federal requirements, including yearly testing of students and classification of schools; transportation; early childhood and adult education. However, Gist reported only to a deputy mayor.
Gist will be paid about $200,000, including salary and retirement benefits, but the details of her contract are still being ironed out, said Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the Department of Education.
Gist plans to visit Central Falls High School at 8:30 Friday morning to get her first glimpse of a Rhode Island urban school, Krieger said.
Roger Williams assistant principal denies comment about Dominican flag
Posted Friday, March 6, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — As assistant principal Robert Perkins tells it, last Friday was a frustrating day at Roger Williams Middle School.
It began badly. Perkins was in the corridor when he saw three students racing down the hallway waving a Dominican flag, which got quite a response from other students who were celebrating Dominican Independence Day. Perkins took the flag away and told the boys that he wouldn’t tolerate any behavior that would disrupt the school day. He told the students that he would keep the flag until the end of class.
Later, Perkins said he walked through the school, with the flag tucked under his arm. A teacher approached him and asked if he planned to “lock down” the school because students had been so unruly.
“It was crazy that day and the day before,” Perkins said in an interview last night with Dan Yorke, a talk show host on WPRO. “I don’t know why. It was just the vibe.”
After disciplining the three students, Perkins met with a concerned parent, was waylaid by a couple of teachers who needed help with some disruptive students, then walked into the school cafeteria, where he discovered a mess that students had left behind.
“I was at my wit’s end,” said Perkins, who calls himself a disciplinarian. “I had had it. Everything was laying on me that day. I threw that flag on the ground and I stepped on it.
“But I didn’t do it out of anger,” he said. “I didn’t do it out of anger for the flag or the kids. I’m just glad it wasn’t a baby.”
Perkins said there were no students present when he stepped on the flag. And he denied an earlier allegation in which he supposedly said, “I’ll mop the floor with your flag.”
“Never, never, never,” he said. “That never happened. That never was said.”
But the bad day only got worse.
At lunch, a major food fight broke out in the lunch room. According to the police report, several students began singing and banging on the table, and then two students began throwing apples and bread at another table. Before long, a large crowd of students began screaming and running around the cafeteria, “creating an unsafe environment,” according to the police.
When the police tried to place one student in custody, another boy interfered and began yelling at the patrolmen. The teen repeatedly refused to calm down even after the police ordered him to do so. After the police and the school administrators got the cafeteria under control, three students were brought to the police station, where they were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Yesterday, Perkins said that the food fight had nothing to do with the flag incident. But by the end of the day, he said that he had suspended about 20 students, some for the food fight, other students for inappropriate dress.
Perkins went home and returned to work on Tuesday. (Monday was a snow day).
Around 10 a.m., Perkins said he got a phone call from principal Rudolph Moseley. The middle school director, Denise Carpenter, met him in his office and told him he would have to leave Roger Williams immediately.
“She said, ‘You’ll be getting a letter from human resources,’ and that’s it,” Perkins said. “She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, tell me what was going on.”
On Wednesday, Perkins said he received a letter saying that he had been placed on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation. He said he didn’t know why he had been suspended until he read yesterday’s Providence Journal. Perkins said he was disappointed that Supt. Tom Brady didn’t speak with him before placing him on leave.
“Mr. Brady, you have tarnished my reputation,” Perkins said. “I’m on the front page of the Journal, above the sex offenders. This issue is more important than those issues.”
Brady, in an e-mail that he sent out on Tuesday, wrote that an administrator at Roger Williams had “displayed a lack of judgment and cultural insensitivity in his actions toward students who were demonstrating pride in their Dominican heritage.” Brady also wrote that “such blatant disregard for the culture of another by any member of the Providence School Department is never to be tolerated.”
Brady, who never identified Perkins by name, also apologized to the students and their families for the apparent actions of the assistant principal.
Yesterday, Perkins said he would love to return to work, but Mayor David N. Cicilline said that he should be fired if, in fact, he stomped on the Dominican flag: “This behavior is totally unacceptable and has no place in our schools.”
School officials, including Brady, declined to discuss the matter further yesterday. But principal Moseley said the public perception of the school has been improving, along with students’ test scores.
— With reports from Maria Armental and Alisha A. Pina.
Providence schools develop new graduation requirements that will do away with the district’s fragmented curriculum
Posted Friday, February 13, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Imagine a school district with 13 high schools, each with its own curriculum, its own graduation requirements, even its own version of algebra 1.
That’s what Providence has had for years. But not for long.
School officials here have developed a new set of graduation requirements that will do away with the district’s fragmented curriculum, a system in which two-thirds of the 321 high school courses lack a curriculum guide, a system in which students can take courses such as General Math that don’t prepare them for college work, a system where students can discover during their senior year that they don’t have enough credits to graduate.
For the first time, these new requirements will impose a uniform curriculum across all high schools, all courses and all grade levels.
According to Supt. Tom Brady, the goal is that algebra 1 will look the same whether you attend Hope or Mount Pleasant. Every student deserves the same high-quality course work, Brady said, and the only way to do that is to make sure that every high school offers a curriculum that is in line with the district’s standards.
Providence is one of three school districts (the others are Cranston and Burrillville) facing mounting pressure from the state Department of Education to adopt more rigorous high school graduation standards. Districts have until 2012 before they face penalties, but state education officials hope the remainder of the schools will be on board by 2010.
Unlike most Rhode Island school districts, which have only one high school, Providence has 13 schools, which makes it even more challenging to bring all of them into line. Complicating matters further, several high schools have been allowed to develop their own curriculums, which led to initial reluctance to move to a uniform system. But, chief academic officer Sharon Contreras said, the days of allowing schools to pursue their unique brand of education are over.
“We’re establishing uniform, high standards,” she said. “Before, schools determined the course sequence. The district will determine that now.”
In the sciences, for example, students will take biology, followed by chemistry and then physics. Non-college courses, such as Fundamental Science, will be eliminated.
The state now requires students to demonstrate they have specific skills in order to graduate. Students must meet the following standards: achieve partial mastery on the state NECAP exam, which is taken in 11th grade; complete a senior research or exhibition project; complete 21 credits and finish the district-approved course work.
For the first time, students will also have to take a lab-based science course.
Although every student will receive the same diploma, there are two distinct paths: a traditional academic one and a technical one. Students who follow the technical track will not be submitted to a watered-down curriculum, as was common in the past, Contreras said. Rather, they will be allowed to substitute certain traditional math and science courses with technical ones that are directly related to the construction trades or electrical training.
When the new $70-million Career & Technical Academy opens this fall, the building will offer nine career paths, a wireless library, recording and television studios, a student café and cosmetology salon. When finished, the CTE will offer graduates industry-recognized certificates of competency, and, in some careers, students will be able to enter industry training programs with advanced standing.
The new graduation requirements will also establish guidelines for students who want to earn college credits; permit students to earn credit online and require schools to provide extra academic help for students who fall behind.
Although some high schools already offer dual enrollment programs, Contreras wants to make sure that every student, no matter where they attend high school, has an opportunity earn college credits. The new regulations will also allow middle school students to earn high school credits.
So far, state education officials like what they have seen. Roy Seitsinger, the state director of middle and high school reform, said he thought the policy was acceptable but stressed that this is the first of several steps toward the district having a fully approved graduation plan.
“Having a clear policy is critical for Providence to move forward,” Seitsinger said. “This is the cornerstone of their graduation plans.”
The district must now prove that the policy has substance. Every high school must have student advisories or something similar; teachers must be trained to implement the new graduation standards, including the student exhibition; and the new requirements must be explained to students and parents.
The Providence School Board is scheduled to vote on the new policy Feb. 23.
As ESL students lag behind, Rhode Island cities look to fine-tune instruction
Posted Wednesday, January 7, 2009
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — In spite of all the rhetoric about the surge of illegal immigrants, the number of students who speak little or no English has decreased in Rhode Island over the past five years.
State and local education officials couldn’t explain why those numbers are declining, but some educators wondered whether Governor Carcieri’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, combined with the state’s abysmal job market, has contributed to the reduction.
Central Falls had about 1,000 students enrolled in English as a Second Language classes seven years ago; now, it has 600 students who fit that category. In Providence, the number has declined slightly over the past five years, from 16 percent to 14 percent of the total student population.
Nationally, however, this population has more than doubled over the past 10 years, especially in the Southeast, where 13 states saw a growth of more than 200 percent.
But Peter McWalters, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said those numbers should not obscure very real performance gaps between English language learners and their fluent peers.
According to a national study by Education Week, an education policy magazine, only 13.8 percent of English language learners in Rhode Island scored proficient on a state math test compared with more than 50 percent of all students statewide. In reading, 11.3 percent of English language learners are proficient versus slightly more than 60 percent of all students statewide.
Nationally, only 9.6 percent of ESL fourth- and eighth-graders scored proficient or higher in math on a nationwide test and 5.6 percent scored proficient in English. Across the United States, 25 percent of all English language learners are failing to make progress toward English-language proficiency.
In Rhode Island, McWalters said, “We’re not in agreement that these kids are worth it because we are torn between a culture that’s says, ‘We don’t want you,’ and one that wants them to come here. We have to decide that these kids are worth it and that it is necessary to pay the bill.”
That said, Pawtucket and Central Falls are teaming up to teach middle and high school teachers how to think like ESL instructors.
“It’s making them all ESL teachers,” said Patricia Morris, the director of English as a Second Language in Central Falls. “They understand that they have to teach language skills as well as content — math or science.”
Meanwhile, Rhode Island College has agreed to offer ESL certification at a reduced cost to teachers in Pawtucket and Central Falls. As Morris said, “We’re trying to expand our pool of qualified candidates.”
But she suggested there is an inherent flaw in a system that measures students by a standard that she claims is impossible for them to meet.
“If an ESL student could meet the standard,” she said, “then they would no longer be classified as ESL. A student must take the math test regardless of how long they’ve been in this country. This is what drives ESL teachers crazy.”
English language learners are not a monolithic group, however. Nearly two-thirds are second- or third-generation Americans, with at least one parent born in the United States.
As a state, Rhode Island acknowledges that raising student achievement does call for a one-size-fits-all solution. In Providence, some children arrive in high school with little or no formal education in their native language, much less English. Other students have witnessed horrific violence and spent much of their childhood in refugee camps.
“We are not endorsing a bilingual program for everyone,” McWalters said. “What we are endorsing is a more sophisticated way to teach” English language learners.
The good news, he said, is that the leaders of urban districts such as Providence and Central Falls are looking for guidance in this area. In fact, the Department of Education has been working with urban school districts to fine-tune ESL instruction so it meets the needs of individual students.
As McWalters put it, “We are way beyond resistance. Providence School Superintendent Tom Brady is looking for help. Central Falls Superintendent Fran Gallo is leading it. The question is: Do we have the money and horsepower to do it?”
Health program ordered to arbitration
Posted Tuesday, December 23, 2008
By Philip Marcelo
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A Superior Court judge barred the City of Providence from changing its health-care benefits administrator as planned on Jan. 1, saying it must submit the issue to binding arbitration with unions.
But Mayor David N. Cicilline, who says the change would save the city more than $11 million over three years, said he would appeal Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer’s order to the state Supreme Court today.
“It is disappointing that the court’s action enabled the [unions’] strategy to undermine an open and competitive bidding process that will result in an $11-million savings for our taxpayers,” Cicilline said. “Facing costs of $58,000 for every week of delay, the city will appeal … to the Supreme Court immediately.”
In a morning hearing yesterday, Pfeiffer ruled that the city and the unions representing municipal employees must bring their dispute over the change to binding arbitration, as specified in their collective bargaining agreements. He also denied a request from the city that he stay his decision pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Paul Doughty, president of the city firefighters union, called the city’s decision to appeal the order “short-sighted” since a ruling from an arbitrator may force the city to reverse any changes it makes on Jan.1, even if it receives a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court.
“The city should be sitting down with the unions and following the contracts that they negotiated rather than seeking court orders,” says Steven Smith, president of the city teachers union.
At issue is whether the proposed change from a single benefits administrator, Blue & Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island, to two administrators, UnitedHealthcare of New England (for medical benefits) and CVS/Caremark (for prescription drug benefits) represents the same level of services.
According to all but one of the city union contracts, the city may change benefits administrators so long as the new administrator offers “equivalent services” as offered by the city’s longtime administrator, Blue Cross & Blue Shield. The firefighters union contract does not have any provision allowing for the city to change its benefits administrator from Blue Cross.
Also at issue is whether the city can change administrators at all without first negotiating with the unions. The unions claim that the city unilaterally awarded the contracts for the city’s benefits administration to United and CVS/Caremark in October; the city maintains it was within its rights to do so.
Last week, the six unions representing active employees –– including teachers, police officers, firefighters, City Hall employees and School Department clerical staff –– as well as two unions representing retired city workers filed requests in Superior Court to halt the planned changeover.
Senior Assistant City Solicitor Anthony F. Cottone said that the city will now file an emergency motion to stay the Superior Court order.
Cicilline argues that bringing in new benefits administrators does not change the benefits guaranteed under union contracts.
Providence is self-insured, meaning that it assumes the risk associated with the payment of the claims made annually by the roughly 5,000 city employees and 4,500 retirees and dependents who receive benefits.
“This is just the company that processes the payment and paperwork,” said Cicilline. “The plans themselves remain unchanged.”
The unions counter that United does not provide the same network of doctors as Blue Cross although they have said previously that they do no oppose CVS/Caremark taking over the city’s drug plans.
Meanwhile, Blue Cross & Blue Shield, whose contract with the city expires Dec. 31, disputed Cicilline’s assertions about the savings from switching to United and the loss of money from any delay in the planned switch:
“Contrary to the city’s assertions, they will not save $11 million over the life of the contract …,” James E. Purcell, president and CEO of Blue Cross, said in a statement. “We can provide the city with tangible savings by providing health insurance services on an interim basis to city employees under the terms of our recent bid.”
Unions seek halt to health care change
Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2008
By Philip Marcelo
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Six unions representing city employees sought court orders yesterday to stop Mayor David N. Cicilline’s plan to change the city’s health care benefits administrator on Jan. 1.
A Superior Court judge will decide next Monday whether to impose the legal actions, which were sought in response to the city’s awarding two separate three-year contracts, one to UnitedHealthcare of New England to administer its medical benefits, and another to CVS/Caremark to handle its prescription drug coverage, in October.
Providence is self-insured; it assumes the risk associated with the payment of the claims made annually by the approximately 5,000 city employees and 4,500 retirees and dependents who receive benefits.
The October decision severed the city’s decades-long relationship with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island to administer those claims, a move that is expected to save $11 million over the life of the contracts while providing the same services as Blue Cross, according to Cicilline.
But the unions, which represent municipal employees, firefighters, police officers, public school teachers, administrators and clerks, say that the city has not sufficiently proven that UnitedHealthcare’s services are equal to Blue Cross’ services.
Each union filed separate requests for temporary restraining orders in Providence County Superior Court yesterday morning, all essentially claiming that the city is in violation of the collective bargaining agreements.
Their main arguments are that United’s network of doctors is smaller than that of Blue Cross, does not have the same medical protocols and does not include an arbitration clause requested by unions.
They also say that the city should have first negotiated or sought arbitration with the unions before going forward with the changes.
“The main issue is the legal process,” says Paul Doughty, president of the Providence Firefighters’ Union. “The city can’t unilaterally change agreements outlined in the [collective bargaining agreement].”
The city filed an objection to the union’s request.
“We’ll ask that the complaints be dismissed because there is no legal basis for them. The contract with United is the result of an open, competitive bidding process,” Cicilline said yesterday.
Superior Court Associate Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer scheduled a Dec. 22 evidentiary hearing in which he will decide whether to uphold the unions’ request to stop the Jan. 1 changeover.
Cicilline said that the unions’ actions threatened to deny the city nearly $11 million in savings at a time when it can least afford it.
“The city is going to confront one of its toughest budgets in its history,” he said at a Christmas event at Dominica Manor on Federal Hill yesterday. “The city urges the labor unions to withdraw this lawsuit and stop any efforts to block this health-care administrator change that will save this city money.”
The city will continue to prepare for the health-care transition, he said.
The $11-million savings is a new calculation of the potential savings from the transition. Previously, the administration had said the deal would save $7.8 million.
Cicilline spokesman Rhoades Alderson said that Hewitt, the city’s health-care consultant, found “significant discrepancies between the benefits that were outlined by contract and what Blue Cross was actually implementing,” based on the information it disclosed.
Blue Cross had been implementing services that cost about $1 million per year more than what the contracts called for, he said. So over the three years of the UnitedHealthcare contract, the city would save another $3 million, he said.
What can $11 million get for residents?
According to Cicilline: “We can repave 18 to 20 miles of city roads, provide summer jobs for every public school student, and save residents $240 per household,” though he added that none of the anticipated savings had been earmarked for any specific expenses.
Meanwhile, the unions say they asked the city to consider expedited arbitration, a process which would have resulted in a ruling within one week’s time, according to Doughty. The city has declined.
“Expedited arbitration would have required different processes for each union so it would have been cumbersome,” said Alderson. “It is also a much less transparent process with no transcripts or briefs and would not have been appropriate for this issue of pressing public interest.”
Unions protest change in health-care managers
Posted Thursday, October 30, 2008
By Philip Marcelo
Journal Staff Writer
The crowd booed and hissed and screamed “liar!” as the familiar black city-owned sport-utility vehicle pulled up to the door of the downtown restaurant. Out bounded Mayor David N. Cicilline, wearing a dark coat and insulated from the masses by a staff member and a security detail.
Members of six city unions opposing the city’s decision to change its health care benefits manager picketed yesterday evening in front of Waterplace Restaurant, an upscale restaurant on the river walk across from the Providence Place mall where a group of young professionals was holding a fundraiser for the mayor.
By an unofficial Journal count, there were at least 500 in the crowd; union members estimated 700 to 800 were in attendance.
A police detail of about 15 officers was sent to keep the peace. The crowd dispersed at about 6:30 p.m., shortly after former Providence Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. made his way through the crowd.
Earlier this month, the city awarded two separate three-year contracts, one to UnitedHealthcare of New England to administer its medical benefits, and another to CVS/Caremark to handle its prescription drug coverage.
The decision severed the city’s decades-long relationship with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and is expected to save $7.8 million over the life of the contracts while providing the same services as Blue Cross, according to Cicilline’s administration.
Under the new agreements, the city remains self-insured; the only difference now is the third-party administrator, the company that oversees the management of city insurance coverage, has changed.
But the unions, which together represent municipal employees, teachers, police officers, firefighters, school clerks and administrators, are critical of the deal with United even if they are satisfied with the new prescription terms under CVS/Caremark.
Among their chief concerns is that city employees will not have as many options in choosing doctors under United, a fear that city officials say is unfounded.
The unions say that United’s physician network –– those doctors approved by the health-care administrator –– includes about 97 percent of the primary care doctors Blue Cross offers; however the company has only about 85 percent of the medical specialists –– which range from plastic surgeons to obstetricians –– that the unions had under Blue Cross.
Cicilline says that after meeting with union leaders yesterday, his administration has offered to allow certain members to remain with their current doctor or specialist, even if the doctor is outside United’s network. Union officials dispute that any agreement was reached.
Those granted the special consideration under the offer would include members suffering from a chronic or serious illness such as cancer, as well as organ transplant recipients, or women in their third trimester of pregnancy. The consideration would remain in effect until treatment is complete, Cicilline said.
Another union complaint is that the city is not taking enough time to implement the changes, which go into effect Jan. 1.
The less-than-three months window, which comes during the holiday season, does not leave enough time for dependents to make adjustments, if necessary, says Paul Doughty, president of the Providence firefighters union.
Cicilline says the city has given enough time to allow for a smooth transition, sending out three communications in recent weeks to city workers regarding the change in medical and prescription benefits managers. Briefings about the changeover are expected to continue department by department, and representatives from United have already met with fire and police union memberships, with the others to follow, he said.
Meanwhile, the administration has established a hot line for employees with questions about the plan and a Web site that addresses frequently asked questions.
There will also be a six-month grace period for members who have physicians not in the network. Those members would have the same coverage as they had under Blue Cross until July 1, 2009, when they would have to change doctors or choose to pay out-of-network rates.
Neither satisfies the unions.
They demand a written commitment that the city cover the difference of claims not fully paid by United that would have otherwise been covered by Blue Cross.
The unions have also asked the city to consider creating a board to review medical claims in the event they are denied by United, but that is a request that the city has denied, according to Director of Administration Richard I. Kerbel.
School Supt. Tom Brady says he’s job is about building trust
Posted Monday, October 27, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — When Tom Brady arrived here three months ago, the school district was in turmoil: Supt. Donnie Evans was on his way out, the teachers had issued a no-confidence vote in the administration and the relationship between the School Board and the teachers’ union was acrimonious.
Brady, a retired Army colonel with top leadership experience in the Philadelphia and Washington schools, recognized that one of the first things he had to do was rebuild frayed relationships with his constituents, including teachers, parents, community leaders and the City Council. And so he embarked on a 90-day “listening and learning” tour whose goal was to introduce himself to the community, and, ultimately, heal the rifts that were keeping the district from moving forward.
Brady calls his management style “leadership by walking around,” which means you talk to people first before you make any big changes. During his first eight days in Providence, he visited every one of the district’s 45 schools. He asked each city councilor to take him on a tour of his or her ward. And he is meeting with small groups of parents in a series of informal conversations called “backyard chats” that allow families to put a face on the new superintendent.
“It’s all about building relationships,” Brady said last week. “The two questions I hear the most are, ‘How long are you staying?’ and ‘Can you do snow?’ I want people to know that I have a decent amount of experience and that I’m not going anywhere.”
In a district that has seen three superintendents come and go in nine years, sticking around counts. The turnover at the top has been harmful to students and staff, according to consultants. During a recent independent audit, many teachers told the consultants, “We’re just worn out.”
While it is too soon to see an uptick in test scores, Brady seems to be winning the first battle: restoring confidence to a demoralized district.
“He’s what Providence needs,” said Karen Feldman, who runs a youth-empowerment group called Young Voices. “He acknowledges when things are not right but he doesn’t dwell on the negative. We need a stellar manager of resources who is also politically savvy.”
During his first week in Providence, Brady took time to meet with the private foundation that was reviewing a major grant proposal from Young Voices, a small grass-roots organization. It is those small but important gestures, Feldman says, that build trust.
Nowhere were relationships more strained than with the 2,000-member Providence Teachers Union, whose members have been anxiously awaiting a new contract for 14 months. PTU President Steve Smith said Brady immediately reached out to the union and reopened negotiations, which had been stalled for months. At present, the union and the city are on the verge of ratifying a two-year “bridge” contract. As soon as that agreement is inked, both sides say they will sit down and begin work on a long-term contract that will deal with meatier issues, such as teacher evaluations.
“I can’t emphasize enough Tom Brady’s role in working out an agreement,” Smith said last week. “He’s thoughtful. He listens, and his goal is to have a true collaborative partnership with the union.”
Does Brady offer substance as well as style? Brady points to several concrete accomplishments during his first three months in office. In August, he brokered a new contract with the union that represents teacher assistants by offering a compromise that preserves jobs but calls for more training. The union, which staged a protest at a City Council meeting, threatened to hold the school budget hostage unless their demands were met. Brady asked for a meeting with the union’s president, the two sides reached an agreement, and the school budget was approved by the council shortly thereafter.
Brady also developed a 90-day plan that addressed five goals: increasing student achievement in a district where 40 percent of the schools are classified as low-performing, improving the efficiency of the business side of the district, creating a positive culture for school employees, improving the public’s trust through honest communication, and working collaboratively with the unions.
Brady hired consultants from the University of Texas to help the department craft a district-wide curriculum for math and science, bought 41,629 new textbooks and offered teachers 24,000 hours of professional training over the summer.
Brady has also taken a hard look at two offices that a recent audit said weren’t performing effectively: the human resources department and the central office. The independent audit concluded that “the human resources office has been ineffective for at least eight years.” The consultants found that the school system doesn’t have enough administrative capacity to develop a uniform curriculum, much less evaluate how well it’s taught. “There are a lot of chiefs and secretaries,” the consultants wrote, “but no one in between. Key positions in math and science have gone unfilled.”
Parents have long complained that the Providence schools are far from welcoming. In a district where 59 percent of the students are Latino, parents say that the School Department, in many cases, doesn’t value their language or their life experiences. A series of missteps by former Superintendent Evans, from the closing of a popular West End elementary school to the infamous Dec. 13 snowstorm that stranded children on school buses for hours, further tarnished the department’s public image.
Today, parents are expressing a cautious optimism that the schools have taken a turn for the better. Brady, they say, listens to their concerns and responds quickly when issues need to be addressed. While he offers a sense of hope, he doesn’t promise the moon.
“Things seem to get done,” said Lauren Zurier, who sits on the School Improvement Team at Classical High School. “And his hiring choices have been very sound.”
Jill Davidson, the PTO president of Vartan Gregorian Elementary School, says parents know who Brady is and what he stands for.
“He has this ability to focus on the details,” she said. “And he is serious about taking parents as his partners.”
Brian Principe had waged war with the district over the closing of the much-loved West Broadway Elementary School last year, mounting an unsuccessful legal challenge to force the School Board to reopen the school. After a recent conversation with Brady, Principe said that “for the first time, I’m excited again about the prospects for the city.”
“I don’t feel this is just the honeymoon period,” Principe said. “He’s sincere and he has plans and he’s being deliberate in his understanding of the district.”
When Mayor David N. Cicilline recruited Brady in March, he said the district needed a leader who could deliver textbooks on time, sign a contract with teachers and restore the public’s trust. So far, Cicilline said Brady has delivered the goods.
“Tom has done an excellent job of establishing relationships with important partners,” the mayor said. “He has done an excellent job of establishing relationships with the local colleges and universities.”
Cicilline also credited Brady with tapping into the expertise of the Broad Foundation, which trained Brady to become an urban superintendent. Broad, a national education think tank, has paid for the district to hire an expert to reorganize its human-resources department and its central office.
“When I listen to parents and teachers,” Cicilline said, “there has been a uniform confidence in his leadership and his accomplishments. Tom, in his first 90 days, has shown that he’s a strong leader who can convene different groups who have a stake in our kids’ success.”
McClure to resign from Providence School Board
Posted Thursday, October 23, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Mary McClure, whose 9-year tenure on the School Board is extraordinarily long for an urban district, has announced she will step down in late December. She has been president of the board for nearly five years.
In an interview yesterday, McClure denied that she was leaving because of calls for her resignation by parent activists upset with the way in which Supt. Tom Brady was hired last winter. She said she is leaving to pursue private business interests that will demand more of her time.
“I thought long and hard about this last year,” McClure said. “But we had just started our work with Reform Governance in Action and I wanted to finish that work.”
Reform Governance in Action refers to the board’s shift in focus from day-to-day decision-making to larger policy issues. Next year, many of those policies, from creating a uniform curriculum to developing new high school graduation requirements, will come to fruition, McClure said.
McClure has seen three superintendents — Diana Lam, Melody Johnson and Donnie Evans — come and go during her tenure. During that time, the district has boosted elementary test scores, built four new high schools (a new vocational school will open next fall), turned around Hope High School and brought the district into the information age.
But stubborn challenges remain: the district’s central office is woefully understaffed, the human resources department is dysfunctional and, at the high school level, the curriculum is fragmented and inconsistent. McClure said her biggest frustration is that the district is asked to do more with less every year, adding that budget cuts have made it difficult to improve student achievement.
Last winter, McClure survived a strong challenge by members of the City Council before being re-appointed to a three-year term. McClure was blamed for everything from the rancorous relationship between the council and the School Board to the handling of the Dec. 13 snowstorm, which stranded dozens of children on school buses until late at night. (Her term expires in January 2011).
In February, the teachers union issued a vote of no confidence in McClure’s leadership. Teachers staged informational picketing and said that they were frustrated by what they called the district’s lack of direction and lack of support. Teachers have also been stymied by the snail-like pace of contract negotiations, although Brady said recently that a new agreement is close to completion.
Last month, both McClure and the School Board came under fire for appointing Superintendent Brady in closed session, which, according to the attorney general’s office, violated the state’s Open Meetings Law.
Despite the growing drumbeat of criticism, McClure said she was under no pressure to resign and said she told Mayor David N. Cicilline about her decision late last month. Looking back, she said she has been proud to serve and doesn’t regret it for a minute.
“I’ve always told the mayor that this is the best job I’ve ever had,” said McClure, who is 59 and retired. “I’ve never done anything this meaningful. I’ve had a blast.”
Students cram for Classical High School admissions test
Posted Friday, October 10, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — On Yom Kippur, a day when most students are off having fun, 60 students from one of the lowest-performing middle schools in the city are studying to take the entrance examination for Classical High School.
These eighth-graders are not necessarily the smartest kids in their class. Not all of them get good grades or have a spotless attendance record. What they do have in common is the determination to get into one of the best high schools in the state, a school where 99 percent of the seniors went to college last spring.
Last year, 16 Perry students were admitted to Classical and 6 were placed on the waiting list. Perry’s principal, Frances Rotella, appealed to the guidance department at Classical. “These are college-bound students,” she said. “They get all As. They have near-perfect attendance records.”
After Classical took a look at the students’ entrance exams, however, only one child was admitted. Why? Because their test scores were weak. That’s when Perry’s two assistant principals, Jeremy Chiappetta and Shirley Kinsey, decided to offer a Saturday test prep program for any student interested in taking the Classical exam. Much to their surprise, 70 students signed up.
About one student out of four is accepted at Classical, and roughly half of those come from either Nathanael Greene Middle School, which has a gifted and talented program, or the state’s Catholic schools.
On Thursday, the last prep before the Oct. 25 test, Chiappetta assembles his eighth-graders for a pep talk in the school’s darkened auditorium. The students begin with the Perry pledge, “I pledge to do everything I can so that I can become a member of the class of 2017.”
“Last week, we put you in a real test situation,” Chiappetta tells them. “More than 100 questions were left blank. There are 298 questions on the test. Most of you only need to get 10 to 15 correct. Think of all the sacrifices you’ve made. Are you going to put all that at risk because of 5 or 10 questions?”
Then, Chiappetta, who wears his Yale sweatshirt to these sessions, repeats the various test strategies: Answer everything. Read the directions carefully. Double-check all of your answers. Make every minute count.
“I want you to spend 90 minutes a day reviewing the Kaplan [test] book,” he says. “I can’t guarantee that you will get into Classical. But even if you can’t, you are college material.”
Perry Middle School is all about getting students to make college part of their future. The Perry principals recognize that children need to start thinking about college in middle school, because, by high school, it’s often too late. In many classrooms, banners proclaim that students are part of the college Class of 2017 or 2016. The assumption is that they will all graduate from high school, no small feat in a district with a 75-percent graduation rate.
“The most inspiring thing for me,” Chiappetta says, “is finding ways to have all these positive relationships with these great kids. These kids are coming here on Saturday to better themselves.”
Chiappetta says that the school couldn’t do this alone, however. In addition to six teachers, Perry has enlisted two seniors from Classical High School and about six student volunteers from Rhode Island College. Thanks to Perry’s corporate partner, Amica Insurance, the two students from Classical — Ramone Rodriguez and Hamlet Urena — will receive scholarships of $450 when the training is over.
Although test prep sounds deadly dull, Perry’s teachers have tried to liven up things by creating word games based on Jeopardy questions. In Donna Perrotta’s English class, students have to use unfamiliar vocabulary words in sentences. To help them along, they are encouraged to create skits.
The girls really ham it up. Asked to create a skit around the word indigent, two girls sit on the floor with a sign that says, “Needs cash.” During a break, eighth-grader Staci Braxton talks about why she has been willing to give up her Saturday mornings to review flash cards and algebraic equations.
“I want to go to Classical,” she says, “because I want to be the only person in my family to go to a four-year college. I want to be a designer. I want to go to the Rhode Island School of Design.”
In Hamlet’s math class, the students are playing math Jeopardy.
“I’ll take basic algebra for $100,” one boy says.
The question is, “What is a coefficient?”
Ask any student and he will tell you that Classical is a sure route to college, and college is a guarantee of a better-paying job and a brighter future. Ken Vega isn’t sure if he wants to be a lawyer or an artist. What he does know is that Classical will increase his chances for admission to a four-year college.
“I want to be prepared to take the Classical test,” eighth-grader Wendy Iglesias says. “If I can go to Classical, I can go to college.”
But the preparation for college doesn’t stop here. Last spring, Perry brought a group of eighth-graders to four colleges, including Bryant and Brown universities. These were not ordinary campus tours, however. The students had to “apply” to college by filling out applications, including their grades and references, and writing college essays. Amica paid for the visits.
The previous spring, students spent the day at Harvard University. Based on their essays, students were admitted, wait-listed or rejected, just like the real college admissions process. Of the 50 students who applied, 42 were accepted — a much higher admission rate than Harvard’s 9 percent. Students even had a chance to have lunch with Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpen Faust.
This winter, Perry hopes to launch a third piece of its college campaign by inviting professors to speak to students about their areas of expertise.
“The endgame is college,” Chiappetta says. “If the path to college is Classical, that’s fabulous. Even if it isn’t, every kid here is pushing himself. I’d love for every one of our students to go to a great college.”
Back to basics paying off
Posted Wednesday, October 8, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Last year, the district introduced a new phonics-based reading program and a number of elementary school teachers objected, saying the curriculum robbed teachers of their creativity and denied children the opportunity to read real literature.
The program, called direct instruction, is a highly scripted way of teaching reading to students who are performing below grade level. It is an updated version of phonics instruction, which starts by teaching students to sound out individual letters, followed by combinations of letters, then words, and so on. Proponents say that children will become better readers once they can decode sounds and letter groups.
This year, direct instruction is being offered in seven elementary schools, most of which have failed to make adequate yearly progress for several consecutive years under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
At two schools, Veazie Street and West Elementary, the program is being offered to all students, not only those reading below grade level.
The beauty of direct instruction, supporters say, is that it groups students by ability, not age, so struggling readers no longer become frustrated because they can’t keep up and skilled readers aren’t bored because they are grouped with children of similar ability.
At Veazie Street, students in the early grades “walk to read.” For two hours a day, they leave their homeroom teacher and walk to a classroom where they are taught at their ability level. In a direct instruction classroom, grades are mixed. The child’s actual grade doesn’t matter; reading skills do.
In kindergarten through grade two, instruction is very scripted, but the curriculum becomes progressively more flexible as children advance through elementary school.
In Virginia Olivelli’s kindergarten class for English as a Second Language students, some children arrive with very little formal language training. In other words, a child might know only two colors, three shapes and their first name. Compounding the problem, students might have limited vocabulary in their native language because books are not readily available at home.
“Their school language doesn’t exist,” Olivelli said. “Some children don’t know how to follow directions; others don’t know how to read from left to right.”
Direct instruction takes none of these skills for granted. It starts with the most basic elements of language: the sounds of letters and letter combinations.
A teacher for 23 years, Olivelli said that she has never seen children leave kindergarten as well-prepared as they were at the end of last year, after only one year of direction instruction. Like many of her peers, Olivelli resisted the idea of teaching by using a lesson that leaves little to the teacher’s imagination.
Last year, critics argued that direct instruction dumbed down reading instruction, playing to those students with the weakest skills. It took all the fun out of teaching, they said, turning teachers into little more than actors reading a script.
Fast forward a year. Several teachers at Veazie Street say that they are sold on the program, whose official title is the SRA reading mastery series. They say it takes the guesswork out of reading instruction by providing daily lesson plans that map every minute of instruction.
“This is what I’ve wanted my whole career,” Olivelli said. “We can tailor instruction to the needs of every child. And, if you’re a new teacher, the program is all there for you. Sure, an actor is handed a script but he can bring it to life.”
At grade four and above, students spend more time reading texts, although they are basal readers, not literature in the true sense of the word. In Lynn DiPippo’s fourth-grade class, students are reading a condensed version of Jack London’s classic, The Call of the Wild. Although the plot follows that of the novel, the narrative is simplified and the names of some of the characters have been changed.
After several children read out loud, DiPippo pauses and asks the class a series of questions designed to tease out if the class understands the story line.
When a child stumbles over a word, DiPippo adds it to “the goodbye list,” which means that the entire class will go over that word the following day.
“I’m absolutely sold on it,” DiPippo said. “These children need structure and this program gives them the structure they need.”
The majority of the district’s 40-plus elementary schools still use a program called balanced literacy, which emphasizes reading comprehension. Although this model uses phonics, it holds to the theory that students learn best by reading real literature.
But Veazie teachers said that balanced literacy isn’t well-suited to children who are struggling to decode words. According to DiPippo, with that approach, children couldn’t read stories on their own and quickly grew frustrated.
“I’ve never seen so much growth in my nine years of teaching,” said Tom Nolan, a third-grade teacher. “Last year, there were 12 third-graders reading at grade level. This year, that number has more than doubled. This is working for kids who have a hard time decoding words. We’re no longer reading over their heads.”
According to Nolan, direct instruction addresses the five core reading skills: phonemic awareness (sounding out the letters), phonics (breaking words into sounds), vocabulary, comprehension and reading fluency. Students master sounds before they master letters and they learn to break apart words before they learn to write them.
Although Nolan says this approach isn’t as much fun for the teacher, he said he realizes, “This isn’t about me.”
Last year, several teachers from Pleasant View Elementary School complained that the brightest students suffered under direct instruction because the teacher no longer could provide accelerated instruction. Critics also claimed that the assessment used to place students isn’t a reliable measure of what they know because the words in the test are spelled phonetically, which children find confusing.
But Veazie Street teachers said that students are frequently tested and those who are ready to move ahead are sent to a more demanding class. Moreover, a literacy coach helps teachers analyze test data, conducts professional training and co-teaches in the classroom.
For many teachers, the proof is in the pudding. Students are happier. They are learning the basics more quickly and moving on.
“The kids like the program,” DiPippo said. “They feel more confident. They like reading out loud now.”
‘New’ Nathan Bishop aims to bring public back to public schools
Posted Friday, October 3, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — City and school officials broke ground on a “new” $35-million Nathan Bishop Middle School yesterday, which neighborhood families hope will spur a resurgence of interest in public schools on the East Side.
When the Elmgrove Avenue school reopens next fall, the exterior will look much the same but the interior will be completely fresh, from the new gymnasium to the Internet-accessible classrooms.
“I’ve always had a strong commitment to diversity and a sense of community,” said Lucia Gill Case, who was wearing a T-shirt that said “Future parent of a Nathan Bishop Middle School student.” “I’d love to have my two kids go to a school where everyone is on an equal footing.”
East Side parents see the refashioned middle school as a way to attract other families back to the public schools. The East Side’s two public elementary schools, Vartan Gregorian and Martin Luther King Jr., have already experienced a revival and parents hope that a high-performing middle school will keep families from fleeing the public schools once their children are older.
Nathan Bishop is appealing to parents because it will offer advanced placement courses, team-teaching and student advisories, some of the hallmarks of successful middle schools, Case said. Parents are also drawn to the idea that Bishop will be a neighborhood school, drawing roughly 80 percent of its 600 students from the East Side.
Kate Keizler, who has two children at Vartan Gregorian, said she is excited about Nathan Bishop because “this community cares, it’s motivated and it also believes that public education should be inclusive.”
School Supt. Tom Brady said, however, that no decisions have been made about who will attend Bishop and where they will come from. The school will open with a sixth-grade class this fall and then add a grade each year. Brady noted that there currently aren’t enough East Side children to fill the entire school, which has a capacity of 750 students.
According to the 2000 census, almost half of the East Side’s 937 middle school students, which included grades five through eight, are enrolled in private schools.
Sam Zurier, one of the leaders of East Side Public Education Committee, said that his group’s vision is that of a “greater East Side” that encompasses Mount Hope and Summit Avenue as well as College Hill and Wayland Square.
ESPEC was formed in response to then-Supt. Donnie Evans’ decision to close Bishop, citing declining enrollments and alarmingly low student achievement. Evans’ recommendation to close Bishop in the spring of 2006 took everyone by surprise. Initially, he proposed reopening the middle school as a temporary high school while construction of the new Adelaide Avenue High School was under way.
But Evans was forced to reconsider his plan after hundreds of East Side residents protested his proposal and launched an extensive e-mail campaign directed at elected officials. While the school’s immediate neighbors complained that teenagers would rampage through the neighborhood, a small group of East Side parents asked Evans to reconsider. Evans did just that and appointed a parent-led study committee to advise him on what a new Nathan Bishop would look like. The committee presented their findings to Evans and he recommended them to the School Board.
As envisioned by the parents, the new Bishop would have an advanced academic program, much like the one at Nathanael Greene Middle School, except that it would be open to all students, not only gifted children.
As Zurier described it, the school would offer an ŕ la carte menu of advanced classes similar in structure to AP classes at the high school level.
Yesterday, Mayor David N. Cicilline framed the new Bishop against a larger backdrop, the city’s proposed $790-million overhaul of the district’s 40-plus schools, some of which are nearly 100 years old.
“Schools should be places of inspiration,” he told the crowd. “A student should walk into school and immediately feel valued and challenged.”
“As a former alumnus of Bishop, I can tell you it was a dark, dank, uninspiring place,” said state Rep. Gordon Fox of Providence. “Infrastructure matters. Children cannot achieve in miserable conditions.”
And City Councilman Cliff Wood said that Providence needs Nathan Bishop to work.
Meanwhile, Brady is weighing three finalists for principal selected by a search committee that consisted of parents and school officials. A principal could be chosen by the end of this month, he said.
Task force takes on transformation of city school district
Posted Thursday, October 2, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — More than 30 leaders from public and higher education, the local schools, the religious community and City Hall met yesterday to discuss ways in which the community can help the school district transform everything from the curriculum to the central office.
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, along with Supt. Tom Brady and Mayor David N. Cicilline, convened the Providence Partners Blue Ribbon Task Force to do the following:
•Identify the most critical issues facing the district.
•Invite local organizations to share their expertise.
•Outline specific ways that the district can work more effectively with local partners.
•Begin matching community expertise with district goals.
Warren Simmons, Annenberg’s executive director, said that community partners were there to begin a conversation about how they can partner with the school district more effectively.
“We’re not here to cast blame and point fingers,” Simmons said. “We’ve had a succession of individual saviors. They stay an average of three years, and then they leave. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Do we own the problem?’ Are we going to invest in this leadership and solve the problem?”
It’s time for community leaders to focus on improving the entire district, not “scattering our attention on our favorite schools,” Simmons said.
The institute also released its synthesis of 11 previous studies on the school system, including the PDK curriculum audit, the Council of Great City Schools human resources’ report and separate evaluations of the district’s reading, math and English as a Second Language programs. The so-called “meta-review” is designed to help the district build a broad set of civic, business and community partnerships that will ultimately lead to school reform.
The institute conducted the evaluation at no cost at the request of Brady.
Given the state’s fiscal crisis, Brady said that it is unrealistic to expect the city or state to bail out the district’s struggling schools, which suffer from a lack of resources, a lack of central office staff and a lack of technology.
“The pie is only so big,” Brady told the crowd. “I can make a plea to the city or the state for a larger piece of the pie, but that’s not going to work, or I can expand the pie. We want to ask, ‘What can you contribute as organizations?’ ”
Brady provided some context for what the district is doing to address major shortcomings, from creating a systemwide math and science curriculum to making the student registration center more user-friendly.
He also shared some important demographic information: The district is the third-poorest in the country, after Hartford and Brownsville, Texas. Nearly 60 percent of the 24,000 students are Latino but that population is not monolithic. There are second-generation families from the Dominican Republic and newcomers from Honduras, and each population has very different needs.
He also told the assembled leaders that the district is “very, very close” to signing what he called a “next-step” contract with Providence Teachers Union. In earlier conversations, Brady signaled that the district would probably sign a short-term contract and then negotiate a longer agreement to deal with meatier issues.
“We’re in the mindset that school starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m.,” Brady said. “We need to think of that child from dawn until dusk, maybe later.”
The entire community, he said, needs to think seriously about pre-kindergarten, an area that some states are tackling because research has shown that an academically challenging early childhood program gives children a leg up when they enter public school.
Brady then asked the room to break into small groups to discuss the following questions: What can we do to be a better partner? Who else do we need to reach? And what concrete things can you do to help the district reach its goals?
“Every leader has a theory of change management,” Brady said. “We need to change the system, but we’re not going to blow it up. But we do have a sense of urgency.”
In the small-group meetings, community leaders discussed how local organizations can increase the size and quality of the central office staff, boost the district’s use of technology and create a core curriculum across subjects.
At one table, Chief Academic Officer Sharon Contreras described some of the challenges facing high school teachers. The faculty has agreed that algebra II and pre-physics need to be taught at every high school; however, many of the staff lack training in the subjects. How does the district support those teachers?
At another table, Cicilline and Peter McWalters, the state commissioner of public education, discussed how to evaluate teachers and how to grow a cadre of strong leaders from within the district. The conversation included Nancy Carriuolo, the new president of Rhode Island College, Larry Roberti, president of the administrators union and other top school officials.
The blue ribbon panel also includes Dennis Langley, director of the Urban League of Rhode Island; the Rev. Donald C. Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches; Terri Adelman, director of Volunteers in Providence Schools; Paul Sproll from the Rhode Island School of Design; Mary Sylvia Harrison with the Nellie Mae Education Foundation; Providence School Board President Mary McClure and the leaders of Young Voices, a student advocacy organization.
The task force will meet again in January.
New Classical principal comes ready to play
Posted Friday, September 26, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — When Scott Barr walked into Classical High School as its new principal, it just felt right, like coming home.
For 16 years, he was a history teacher at Classical, the jewel in the district’s public school crown and the only public school in the city that requires an entrance exam.
In 2006, he left to become an assistant principal at Cranston High School East. It was there that Barr grew professionally and became familiar with the issues that confront principals every day, from discipline to parent outreach. During Barr’s brief tenure at Cranston East, the high school underwent a wholesale renovation that increased the school’s footprint by a third, adding new science labs.
Barr has seen education from multiple perspectives — teacher, department head, assistant principal and School Committee member. After more than a dozen years on the contentious Lincoln School Committee, Barr, who is 46 and lives in Lincoln with his wife and two children, knows how to parse his words carefully.
“When you sit on a school committee, you see the big picture,” he said during an interview. “Our discussions were very public. Even the smaller decisions were big. I had people’s lives in front of me. I had to decide whether to uphold the firing of a teacher.”
During a couple of recent public forums, several Classical parents have criticized the school administration for failing to support Classical, pointing to a decline in the rich selection of afterschool activities and a building that has seen better days. Last spring, a group of department heads met with The Journal to discuss the state of the school’s textbooks, many of which haven’t been replaced in 12 to 15 years.
On his second day on the job, Barr was reluctant to address specific challenges facing Classical, although he said none of them was insurmountable. Echoing his boss, Supt. Tom Brady, Barr said that he wants to meet with all of the school’s players before he makes any grand statements about the school.
“My job is to listen and hear their concerns,” he said.
“First, I want to visit every classroom. I want to meet my department heads, pick their brains and ask what they need. I want to ask the kids, ‘How is your experience at this school? Are you joining clubs and sports? How many of your parents went to Classical?’ ”
At Classical, the parents are vocal and active. Several of them were part of a group of people, that included teachers and administrators, who screened some 50 applicants for the principalship.
Guy V. Pirolli, Class of ’73 and president of the school’s new alumni association, was on the committee. “Scott Barr was a longtime teacher at Classical,” Pirolli said yesterday. “He knows the school’s philosophy. He understands the school’s traditions. He was a department head. He understands the budget process.”
As a member of Classical’s parent-teacher organization when he taught there, Barr could always be called on to speak with parents about the pressing issues of the day, Pirolli said.
“When you put it all together,” he said, “he was someone who could walk in here and hit the ground running.”
Barr is fond of football metaphors and said that his leadership approach is similar to that of Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick. Before their first Super Bowl victory, the Patriots came onto the field as a team rather than as individual players. Barr said that sums up his approach to running a school.
“He’s firm, but fair,” said his former boss, Cranston East Principal Sean Kelly. “Every-thing I asked him to do was always done with the highest standards. He has good management skills, good organizational skills and he is easy to talk to.”
Lauren Zurier, a parent and member of the screening committee, said Barr was held in high regard by his colleagues at Classical. She also liked the fact that Barr had acquired policy experience during his tenure on the Lincoln School Committee, where he helped draft a new teacher-evaluation process for the district.
“He was very much loved by the kids at Cranston East,” Zurier said. “Every parent I talked to really liked him a lot. He is a leader without being confrontational. And he can see both sides of a question.”
Barr began his career as a substitute teacher in Providence in 1990 and was hired full-time in 1992. Classical is where Barr cut his teeth as a teacher and where he learned to lead.
“I went from twenty-something to forty-something there,” he said. “I see my students all over the place.”
As a teenager, Barr was an offensive lineman for the Lincoln High School football team, where he said that he “blocked for the guy who got all the glory.”
As the principal of Classical, Barr sees himself in a similar role — as a team player who works with faculty and parents to move the school forward.
Providence reports dismal showing on the state’s new science assessment test
Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The city’s public school students scored abysmally on the state’s new science assessment test in large part because what’s being taught in the classroom isn’t in line with what’s being measured by the test.
Only 9 percent of 4th graders scored high enough to be deemed proficient in science, 2 percent of 8th graders and 4 percent of 11th graders. Of the 20 lowest-performing schools in the state, 17 are in Providence.
Yesterday, city school officials gave the following example of how the New England Common Assessment Program does not necessarily measure what happens in the classroom. The district teaches students about electromagnetism in fifth grade, however, children are actually tested on the subject in fourth grade.
“This is not about a student who doesn’t know the material,” Supt. Tom Brady said. “It’s about the district not preparing them to take the test. The curriculum is not aligned to prepare students to be tested on this material.”
Echoing what state education officials said yesterday, Brady said that the dismal science scores were not a surprise: “I’m not dismayed,” he said. “We’re already starting to do the things we need to improve student knowledge.”
Governor Carcieri, however, called the test results “very sobering,” and said that it is “a disgrace that such a large chunk of our youngsters have not been getting the science content they need.”
Carcieri and Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, released the results of the first statewide science achievement test at a State House news conference yesterday. The test, which was developed jointly with Vermont and New Hampshire, was administered in May to students in grades 4, 8 and 11.
In Rhode Island, about one in four students achieved proficiency in science: 36 percent in grade 4, 18 percent in grade 8 and 17 percent in grade 11.
Local school officials said there are at least three reasons why student performance is so low in Providence:
•The curriculum is not aligned with the NECAP.
The state assessment tests students in space and earth sciences but they are not taught in many high schools in the state.
According to state school officials, only half of Rhode Island’s schools have begun aligning their science curriculum with the new state assessment. They also noted that Rhode Island, unlike other states, has refused to lower the passing score to make student performance look brighter.
•Urban districts, such as Providence, have devoted most of their time and resources to boosting literacy skills, considered the foundation upon which other skills are based. Because of that focus, little attention has been paid to science, and, in fact, the curriculum has been watered down in many schools.
•The district’s science curriculum lacks rigor, especially at the high school level.
Although Providence requires three years of high school science, there is no consistent sequence of science courses at all high schools. Some high schools offer Physics First, part of a statewide science pilot program; others offer the Fundamentals of Science, a course that does not prepare students for college-level work, according to Sharon Contreras, the district’s chief academic officer.
“High schools are not focused on inquiry-based learning,” said Natalie Dunning, the district’s new supervisor of science, a position that had gone unfilled for years. With this approach, the students become the researcher and the teacher guides them to understand scientific concepts.
“We don’t want just skill-and-drill science,” Contreras said. “We want a comprehensive science program.”
The School Board recently signed a $1-million contract with the Dana Center at the University of Texas to help the district develop a sweeping new math and science curriculum for all students, and Brady said that the new science curriculum will be completed by June.
Even at Classical High School, only 20 percent of students reached proficiency. Not one student reached proficiency at the following high schools: Feinstein, Hope Arts, Mount Pleasant and the Providence Academy of International Studies.
•There hasn’t been enough teacher training in the sciences.
Science teachers have received very little training in their field. Schools have largely been responsible for their own professional development and there has been little consistency across the board, according to Contreras.
Brady said that is about to change. The district will offer 70 sessions targeted at hot science topics this year. Next week, the School Department will begin to explain how science teachers can interpret the NECAP scores.
During yesterday’s news conference, McWalters stressed that the release of the scores isn’t a one-time event, nor will it be solved by a one-time fix.
“We’re going to have to get better content, better teacher preparation and more time on task,” he said. “We will always be faced with the sixth-grader who arrives at a fourth-grade level. We can’t change that. Until we change our entire frame of reference, progress will be slow.”
Doing more of the same — offering double blocks of basic science — won’t work, McWalters said. Instead, schools have to radically rethink the way they structure time in school, from extending the school day to extending the school year.
“Even if we get the right curriculum,” he said, “even if we get teachers up to speed, this is a systemic challenge that will be with us for a generation.”
Annenberg Institute to review reports on school district
Posted Tuesday, September 23, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Tom Brady has hired the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University to review a dozen major evaluations of the School Department that have been conducted over the past several years.
The goal of this “meta-review” is to pull out eight or nine recommendations that appear in each of the studies. Brady will then convene a blue-ribbon panel that includes Mayor David N. Cicilline, Annenberg Executive Director Warren Simmons, and members of the business community, the state Department of Education and higher education.
The panel will investigate what the district needs to do to bridge the gap between where the School Department is now and where it should be. Because money is scarce, Brady said he will ask major foundations to help the district provide the staff and financial support needed to do everything from revamp the human resources department to beef up central office staff.
“It’s tapping human capital,” he said. “Suppose Brown University wanted to give us four graduate students in urban education to help us update our policies?”
When Brady worked for the District of Columbia schools, Exxon-Mobil “loaned” one of its executives to help the district transform its procurement system. The new superintendent said he believes that school districts must think in fresh ways about how to not only raise cash, but to also take advantage of the expertise of area businesses and foundations.
The School Department, for example, might consider hiring a development officer whose mission would be to regain the millions of dollars lost when the Carnegie and Wallace Foundation grants expired a couple of years ago. Perhaps, Brady said, the School Department could ask a foundation to pay for the position.
Brady doesn’t want to see the reports gather dust sitting on a shelf. The Annenberg review will be completed in roughly 30 days.
Last week, two consultants, paid for by the Broad Foundation, which trained Brady to become a superintendent, spent several days in Providence interviewing staff and reviewing documents.
Jim Huge, a former superintendent and educational consultant, is evaluating the way the central office is organized. Among the questions he will ask are, “Do we have the right positions? Are there redundancies?”
An exhaustive audit by Phi Delta Kappa International recently found that the school system doesn’t have enough administrative capacity to develop a uniform curriculum, much less evaluate how well it is taught. No job descriptions are available for 43 percent of the positions listed on the organizational chart, teachers are omitted from the table of organization and essential positions, including supervisors of guidance and math, have not been filled.
“There is not enough middle management capacity to get things done,” Brady said. “There are not enough people to drive the district’s core beliefs and organize effectively to meet those beliefs.”
Betsy Aherns, the former director of human relations for the Fairfax, Va., School Department, is evaluating the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the human resources department.
According to the PDK report, “The human resource office has been ineffective for at least eight years.”
The PDK consultants urged the district to hire an experienced human resource professional to run the office, train or replace ineffective staff and approve a list of objectives and a timetable for improving the office.
“HR is a real problem,” Brady said. “Betsy’s report will provide us with recommendations on how to realign human relations so that it’s a service provider.”
City Council members call for elected school board
Posted Friday, September 19, 2008
PROVIDENCE — City Council members were fuming last night over the revelation that the School Board violated the state Open Meetings Law when it appointed the new superintendent, Tom Brady.
Council members seized on the opportunity to slam one of their favorite targets, School Board President Mary McClure, and to propose that the city elect, rather than appoint, the School Board.
Councilman John J. Lombardi led the charge, describing the School Board as aloof, irresponsible and in dire need of change.
“It operates under its own rules and is unmoved by the criticisms of the very people it is charged to serve,” Lombardi said.
After similar comments by Councilman Luis Aponte, Councilwoman Balbina A. Young followed up by saying McClure needs to be replaced.
“She is a detriment to the progress of the educational system in Providence,” Young said.
The real problem is systemic, said Councilman Nicholas J. Narducci. Because the School Board is appointed — the only appointed school board in the state — it doesn’t have the same level of accountability that an elected body would.
“Maybe it’s time for an elected school board — so they’re accountable to somebody,” Narducci said.
— Daniel Barbarisi
Providence School Board to repeat vote to hire Brady
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — School Board President Mary McClure said she regrets breaking the Open Meetings Law, but would not change the way in which Supt. Tom Brady was hired.
“We made a mistake,” she said yesterday. “I’m not trying to make any excuses.”
The attorney general’s office found that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Law three times when it appointed Brady as superintendent in March. The agency ordered the board to appoint Brady again — this time, in public session.
The state launched an investigation into the process after Judith Reilly, a Providence resident, filed a formal complaint this summer alleging that the law had been violated.
The attorney general’s office found that the School Board should have posted its intention to discuss the selection of a new superintendent at its March 24 meeting. The agency also faulted the board for failing to disclose that it was going into closed session to discuss the superintendent’s job. The School Board did state that it was going into closed session to discuss personnel, but the attorney general said it should have been more specific. Finally, the School Board also erred when it voted to appoint Brady during a closed session.
In an interview yesterday, McClure said that the board did not intend to circumvent the Open Meetings Law, nor did it intend to mislead the public.
Then why did the School Board appoint Brady in closed session? And why didn’t the board make its decision public when it returned to public session?
“I don’t have an answer to that,” McClure said.
Around March 17, the School Board met with Mayor David N. Cicillline, who said he had asked the Council on Great City Schools and the Broad Center for superintendent candidates and they had recommended Brady. Because the board supposedly only listened to the mayor, this meeting did not constitute a board meeting and no public notice was required.
During the next week, the board interviewed Brady in pairs, according to an affidavit provided to the attorney general by Assistant City Solicitor Adrienne Southgate.
“By splitting up the interviews so that a quorum was never reached, the School Board again avoided the public notice requirements of the Open Meetings law,” Reilly wrote in a letter to The Journal. “As long as school board members did not discuss Mr. Brady among themselves, they avoided causing a rolling or walking quorum, at least according to the attorney general’s office.”
McClure said that the board interviewed Brady in groups of two because of time and scheduling constraints. Asked if the board intentionally sidestepped the law, she said, “According to the Open Meetings Law, if you don’t have a quorum, there is no meeting.”
McClure confirmed that no other candidate was considered for the position.
At the time of the Brady appointment, several observers, including Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, criticized the board for not involving members of the public in its search for a new superintendent, as it did with previous Supt. Donnie Evans.
Yesterday, McClure said she would not have conducted the search differently, given what she knows now.
“Based on my understanding of the market, there was a very small pool of candidates,” she said. “We had consulted with two national agencies and this is who they recommended. A national search would have been very time-consuming and expensive and it seems unlikely that we would have found a better candidate.”
“Our goal was to get the best possible candidate,” she said. “The advice we got [from a previous search firm] was to keep things as confidential as possible.”
The timing of Brady’s appointment took everyone by surprise, coming a week after Evans announced his plans to resign at the end of his three-year contract. During a news conference held the day after the School Board appointed Brady, Cicilline said he had begun putting out feelers with the Broad Foundation in January, well before Evans made his decision public.
Yesterday, McClure denied that the board, which is appointed by the mayor, had been pressured into appointing Brady.
“The School Board voted unanimously to hire Tom Brady,” she said. “If we didn’t want him, we would have voted no.”
Yesterday, Cicilline, speaking through spokeswoman Karen Southern, declined to comment on the attorney general’s ruling.
On July 28, the board voted to appoint Brady again — this time in public. When asked about the need for a second vote, McClure said that the Human Resources Department couldn’t find any record of Brady’s original appointment and so voted again.
“I’m upset that we made these mistakes,” she said. “It is what it is. Now, we have to move forward.”
In its Sept. 11 letter, the attorney general’s office gave the board 10 days to indicate whether it plans to comply with the requirement to appoint Brady again. McClure said she will do whatever it takes to comply with the attorney general’s ruling, although the board has yet to set a date for the vote.
Nathan Bishop renovations on track for fall ’09
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Drive down Elmgrove Avenue these days and you will see the stately Nathan Bishop Middle School encircled by chain-link fencing, the sloping lawn replaced by mounds of dirt, the front steps missing.
The $35-million renovation of the East Side school is well under way, according to Alan Sepe, the city’s acting director of public property.
While the exterior of the three-story brick building remains largely untouched, the interior has been gutted. Construction crews are removing plumbing, electrical and heating systems, tearing out the old floors and removing the gymnasium. And they are starting to install new pipes and conduits for the electrical system. The brick exterior will be cleaned and re-pointed and a new entrance to the school will be built.
“We’re on target,” Sepe said recently. “The building will be open next fall.”
Nathan Bishop was slated to be closed because of declining enrollments and chronically low test scores until a group of East side parents lobbied hard to keep the school open. Former Supt. Donnie Evans appointed a parent-led study committee to come up with a design for the new school and, last summer, a design firm called Architecture Involution recommended a wholesale renovation of the building.
The consultants recommended restoration rather than new construction because recent changes in school construction regulations allow a larger volume of square footage if the project involves a restoration rather than new construction. The additional space means that the school can keep its existing auditorium and retain additional rooms for teacher planning and and allow for wider hallways.
With a restoration, the consultants said that there is a greater likelihood that the school will open in the fall of 2009 because groups such as the Providence Preservation Society will look more favorably on a restored Nathan Bishop. Renovation will also allow the architects to restore many of the building’s original features, including skylights that will flood the building with natural light.
The new Nathan Bishop calls for 10 classrooms on each floor, with two teams of 100 students per floor. Each of the building’s three floors will house one grade, for a maximum of 750 students, although area parents are hoping for a smaller population.
The plan also calls for a two-story library and media center on the second and third floors but leaves the school with two separate gymnasiums of 3,000-square-feet each. Virtually every surface will be touched, the architects said: windows will be replaced, brass and marble surfaces will be restored and the grounds will undergo extensive landscaping.
The East Side Public Education Coalition, the parents’ group, has recommended that Nathan Bishop offer student advisories, team teaching and an advanced academic curriculum open to all students.
State orders city to reappoint school superintendent
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The attorney general’s office has found that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Law when it appointed Tom Brady as superintendent in March and ordered the board to appoint Brady for a third time.
The attorney general’s office issued the order after reviewing a complaint filed by Judith Reilly of Providence. Yesterday, Reilly said that she is pleased with the order and looks forward to learning more about what transpired during those closed sessions.
The finding also sheds light on the last-minute decision-making that led to Brady’s appointment on March 24 during a closed-door meeting of the School Board — a week after then-Supt. Donnie Evans announced that he would not seek to have his contract renewed.
Around March 17, Mayor David N. Cicilline met with members of the School Board and told them about his efforts to find a replacement for Evans. Cicilline explained that he had asked both the Broad Foundation and the Council on Great City Schools to recommend possible candidates for superintendent and both groups recommended Brady.
At that meeting, Cicilline encouraged board members to meet with Brady and consider him a serious candidate, according to an affidavit by Adrienne Southgate, a deputy city solicitor.
“Over the next week, in pairs, members of the [School Board] interviewed Brady,” Southgate wrote. “No more than two [board members] participated in any interview. At various times, the mayor’s chief of staff and his liaison to the Providence School Department were present.”
On March 24, the School Board held a regular public meeting that included a closed session for personnel matters. After the open portion of the meeting was over, the board went back into closed-door session.
The board, during this session, voted 9-0 to appoint Brady as the next superintendent, according to Southgate’s affidavit. School Board member Maila Touray moved to appoint Brady as superintendent and the motion was seconded by Ronnie Young.
The minutes of the closed session “shed almost no light on what transpired during the course of either closed session,” Southgate writes. School Board President Mary McClure’s notes simply state, “Brady contract — approved 3/24/08.”
“I think the people will be interested to know how brief the discussion was,” Reilly said, “and that it seems like it was done in less than 30 minutes.”
The board never indicated that it was going into a closed session to discuss the possible appointment of a superintendent, nor did it publicly announce its vote afterward in public session, according to Special Assistant Attorney General Adam J. Sholes.
It wasn’t until four months later — July 28 — that the board voted to appoint Brady in open session. And Reilly said that that vote may have been prompted by a ruling that found that the Cumberland School Committee violated the Open Meetings Law by voting in closed session to give a raise to its superintendent.
In Providence, the attorney general’s office found that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Law in three areas:
•The agenda of the March 24 meeting failed to disclose that a new superintendent might be appointed.
In a 2005 case involving the town of East Greenwich, the state Supreme Court found that a meeting notice “reasonably must describe the purpose of the meeting or the action proposed to be taken.”
•The School Board voted to appoint Brady in executive session.
Rhode Island law allows discussions of job performance to be held in closed session, but the actual vote must be taken in open session.
•The board violated the law when it voted in closed session to invoke the “exceptional circumstances” clause, which allows the board to appoint a superintendent without first conducting a search. This clause was used to appoint Melody Johnson as superintendent several years ago.
Despite these violations of the Open Meetings Law, the attorney general’s office decided not to impose a fine:
“We have been provided no facts that suggest that the board willfully or knowingly violated the Open Meetings Act,” the office wrote. “However, this finding serves as notice to the School Board that its actions violated the Open Meetings Act and may serve as evidence of a willful or knowing violation in any future similar case.”
Because the Brady vote occurred in closed session and was never publicly disclosed in open session, the attorney general’s office ordered the board to take a new vote on Brady. If the School Board does not comply with this order, the state may take legal action.
Meanwhile, Reilly said she has written a letter to Brady explaining that her complaint is not directed at him, nor is she calling for the appointment of a new superintendent.
“This is about the process,” she said. “It’s not personal.”
Several School Board members, including Philip Gould, Touray and Katherine McKenzie, declined to comment on the ruling because they hadn’t had the opportunity to read it yesterday.
McClure, in a prepared statement, said it was never the board’s intent to circumvent the Open Meetings Law.
“Our focus was on trying to conduct business in the most open and transparent manner,” she wrote. “We will accept the attorney general’s findings and will immediately take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation.”
Mayor David N. Cicilline did not return phone calls.
School superintendent promises new registration system
Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Tom Brady said he wants to revamp the school registration process and promised that a new system will be ready by January.
Although complaints have reportedly declined this year, Brady said the department needs work and that the district is not taking care of parents in a prompt and effective way. The School Department, he said, will revive the student registration complaint committee to investigate how to make the registration process less difficult for families.
“Are we getting the word out to all parents in time?” he said. “The parking at the registration center [on Prairie Avenue in South Providence] is horrible. Maybe we should be looking at satellite centers to make it easier to register.”
To date, Providence has enrolled 22,855 students, 800 students fewer than in June, but considerably more than earlier estimates. Last month, school officials said that enrollment had declined by 1,700 students, although they anticipated that those numbers would bounce back after school began. At the time, school officials speculated that the state’s lagging economy, coupled with the foreclosure crisis, might be contributing to the decline of enrollments in Providence and Central Falls. Immigration advocates worried that the dip was linked to Governor Carcieri’s recent crackdown on undocumented aliens.
Brady, in a 10-page report to the School Board on Monday, said that the opening of school was the smoothest in recent memory, adding that there were only 52 teacher vacancies on the first day of class, down from 81 the previous year and there were only 10 teachers with emergency certification, down from 19 last year.
He also said that 95 percent of the district’s 9,924 school buses ran on time. When asked how this rate compared with last year’s, Brady said there wasn’t any previous data but said that the district would keep track of the information from now on.
A lack of technology has long plagued the school district and continues to be an issue, but Brady had good news to report on that front: Internet bandwidth has been upgraded at 28 schools for greater speed and access; Central High School now has wireless Internet access, and a new server that houses the student information system’s database has been installed.
Brady also noted that maintenance projects have been completed at 30 schools, including 19 roof repairs, 8 fire code upgrades, the installation of security cameras at 3 schools and the refinishing of 3 gym floors and 3 auditoriums. The summer institute, which offered nearly 300 workshops to teachers and staff, was singled out for praise. Brady reported that teachers completed almost 24,000 hours of professional development and said that the most popular session was a mandatory class on how to improve parent engagement. This was the first time that the School Department has offered an intensive summer training program, which teachers could use to satisfy the 38 hours of professional development required by their work contract.
Secondary math teachers also worked with the Dana Center of the University of Texas, Austin, to conduct a “gap analysis,” which looks at where the district is in terms of middle and high school curriculum and where it should be. The School Board on Monday hired the Dana Center to help the district develop a systemwide math and science curriculum for kindergarten through grade 12.
Brady brings special guest on school tour
Posted Friday, September 5, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Charles N. Fortes Academy is a piece of living history, its hallways lined with photographs and stories that describe the consecutive wave of immigrants who settled in Providence, worked in its mills and created its ethnic enclaves.
Yesterday, Supt. Tom Brady invited U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin to tour the school, in a renovated factory on Daboll Street in the West End, as part of their first official meeting, one of many that the new superintendent has been holding with parents, teachers and elected officials.
Brady told Langevin that he has already settled into his new job and that the real work has begun. An independent audit commissioned by former Supt. Donnie Evans last month provided the district with a brutally honest critique of what’s wrong with the system, including a finding that instructional shortcomings in reading and math have a serious impact on minority students, who represent more than 70 percent of public school enrollment, and the lack of a core curriculum at the middle and high school levels.
According to Brady, the report has also provided the School Department with a 200-page blueprint on how to move forward.
Brady, who has already visited 41 schools, said that the elementary schools are on track in terms of uniform literacy and math curricula, but said that the middle schools need a lot of work. The School Department is working on developing a standard curriculum for middle school students.
Langevin asked what Brady thought of a controversial new state regulation that, starting in 2012, makes state achievement tests count for a third of a student’s graduation requirements in English and math.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Brady said. “It’s difficult when you have multiple high schools doing different things, but we’ve identified the problem.”
Langevin mentioned that the federal No Child Left Behind law is up for reauthorization by Congress this year and added that the law, which has not been popular with many Democrats, needs some fine-tuning. Brady agreed.
“I like the law’s accountability,” Brady said yesterday. “But reaching 100 percent [proficiency] is not a standard. It’s distressing to see a school miss [making adequate yearly progress] because six children were absent. Suddenly, it becomes a failing school. That troubles me.”
During a brief tour of the school complex, which includes the Alfred Lima Elementary School, Langevin visited a second-grade bilingual education class and was told how difficult it is to find qualified bilingual education teachers.
He spent some time in a sixth-grade class where the students were learning about plate tectonics and the evolution of the continents from a single land mass into separate bodies.
Long-term subs caught in schools’ financial squeeze
Posted Wednesday, September 3, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — More than 70 long-term substitute teachers will not be recalled this fall unless the Providence Teachers Union agrees to a compromise plan that calls for rehiring the substitutes at a lower salary.
Long-term substitutes typically receive layoff notices in late February or early March, before a dead-line set by state law, but the notices usually are rescinded over the summer after the school budget has been approved by the School Board and the City Council.
Last month, however, about 75 long-term substitutes began hearing rumors that they wouldn’t be recalled if they were on step 5 or higher on the 10-step salary scale. Substitutes with considerable seniority were furious because they weren’t notified sooner, while others were upset that substitutes with much less teaching experience were rehired instead of them.
Long-term substitutes are paid union-scale salaries and receive full medical benefits. Many of them have been teaching in the district for years and have come to depend on the work. While some substitutes move from one classroom to another, others fill in for teachers who are out on year-long maternity leaves or sabbaticals.
At an Aug. 22 meeting, the Providence Teachers Union told long-term subs that they had a choice: all substitutes with more than four years of teaching experience would lose their jobs or the teachers could work for $100 per diem until a new contract is ratified.
According to the union’s Web site, once a contract is approved, the substitutes would receive retroactive salaries equal to the difference between the per-diem sum and the fourth-step salary.
“At this time, the Providence School Department is prepared to offer [long-term substitutes] who have not been recalled . . . the opportunity to begin substituting next week at the per diem rate of $100,” a letter from the union leadership says. “Once the tentative agreement is ratified by all parties [the School Board, membership and City Council], substitute teachers serving per-diems will be appointed as [long-term substitutes] retroactive to his or her first day of work.”
Yesterday, representatives from the school district’s human resources department began asking substitutes if they wanted to return on a per-diem basis, according to a letter from union leadership posted on the union’s Web site.
Both the union and the school administration have been tight-lipped about the issue, citing the confidentiality of contract negotiations. Steve Smith, union president, confirmed that the fate of long-term substitutes has been part of ongoing contract negotiations with Supt. Tom Brady, and that the union met with the substitutes on Aug. 22.
Although Smith said he appreciates the substitutes’ frustration, he stressed that there are no recall rights for substitutes in the existing contract; substitutes can’t assume that they have job security.
“When a long-term sub is hired, he or she receives a one-year appointment,” Smith said yesterday. “The district never agrees to more than that.”
According to Smith, the union is trying to work out a settlement that protects the pool of substitutes. He would not disclose details of the proposed compromise.
School spokeswoman Kim Rose confirmed that the department is recalling some long-term substitutes at a per diem rate of $100, but declined to say anything further about the proposed agreement:
“At this point, we’re in negotiations, so I can’t confirm anything,” she said. “But we are making the educational needs of students our top priority.”
Ann Morin, a long-term substitute and an elementary school teacher, has 36 years of experience in the classroom and was hired by the district in February 2006.
Under the proposed agreement, Morin would take a 34-percent pay cut, earning $44,275 a year instead of $67,000.
“This is frustrating and demoralizing,” Morin said. “It’s a waste. I’m a great teacher and here I am, sitting on the shelf. Some of the subs are the breadwinners in their families and this is what they will be making? One hundred dollars a day?”
Meanwhile, Morin and other substitutes say they are scrambling to find teaching jobs long after most districts have hired their staff.
“I want my own room,” she said. “I want to teach. This is what I do, and my career is on hold.”
New principal brings fresh approach
Posted Tuesday, September 2, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
“This staff has so far surpassed my expectations,” says Brent Kermen, the new principal at the William D’Abate Elementary School. “These teachers personify a collective commitment to education.”
PROVIDENCE — Brent Kermen doesn’t let a child walk past him without giving him a handshake or a high-five.
“How’s it going, handsome?” says Kermen, principal of the William D’Abate Elementary School near Manton Avenue.
Kermen is in front of the school every morning, greeting students and parents with a smile and a few cheery words to begin the day. As a new principal, he says, it’s important to be visible so parents can connect a face with a name.
“I have to put myself out there for them to judge,” he says. “Every kid that passes by looks me up and down.”
Kermen has big shoes to fill. Lucille Furia, who retired in June, spent 39 years at D’Abate, the past 13 as principal. In a district where principals rarely stay at one school for very long, Furia was nothing short of an institution. And, because of her longevity, the school has one of the most stable communities of teachers in the district.
“This staff has so far surpassed my expectations,” says Kermen, who is 37 and lives in Cranston. “These teachers personify a collective commitment to education.”
Kermen cut his teeth as an administrator in Newport, where he was assistant principal of Thompson Middle School. One of his biggest accomplishments there was developing a guide to help teachers prepare students for the state assessments.
Kermen represents the new breed of principals, who see themselves as instructional leaders, not simply school disciplinarians. After the morning bell rings, he pops into one class after another to make sure that students and teachers are engaged in honest work.
Friday is only the fourth day of school, but Kermen, who spent four years in the Marines, including a tour in the Gulf war, has already begun to identify the “alphas,” the children who are natural leaders.
During lunch, he points to a fifth-grade girl who looks far older than her peers, an adolescent trapped in an elementary school. She sits facing away from her classmates, a look of supreme boredom on her face. Kermen nods his head and predicts that she will turn out to be one of the leaders, the student that the other fifth-grade girls look up to.
“You can learn more in the lunchroom about who’s who on the social ladder,” he says, “than any place else.”
Details matter to Kermen. He notices that teachers flock to the teachers’ room for their lunch break, which means that they enjoy each others’ company.
He also notices that each of the three lunch periods runs like clockwork. The students queue up for lunch, sit down right away and throw away their trash before lining up to return to class. Although the noise level is high, it is not deafening and there is no fooling around. When lunch is over, the gym teacher blows a whistle and students automatically put their heads down and stop talking.
Kermen shakes his head and smiles. This order is the result of years of consistent leadership on the part of the principal and staff. The children know what it is expected of them and they model that behavior for the newcomers, especially the kindergarten students.
“The teachers here are so welcoming, so nurturing,” he says. “Lucille deserves a lot of credit.”
During the third lunch, a fifth-grade girl buries her head in her hands and starts crying. A teacher assistant tells Kermen that one of the boys said something nasty about the girl’s looks. Kermen asks the boy to apologize, and then pulls the girl aside.
“You know,” he tells her, “I don’t think he meant to be mean. Sometimes, when a boy says something like that to a girl, it really means he likes her. But if anyone does that to you again, tell me about it or your teacher. Are you OK? All right, let’s have a good afternoon.”
An urban principal wears many hats: cheerleader, disciplinarian, data guru, master teacher and social worker. Sometimes, the principal also has to be a clerk of the works.
When Kermen arrived at D’Abate shortly before school started, he found a building in turmoil. Construction crews were installing sprinklers and there were wires hanging everywhere and a thick layer of dust on every surface. Meanwhile, the courtyard was littered with broken glass and graffiti.
Kermen got on the phone to central office. He called the building’s union representative. For the two or three days before school started, maintenance teams worked double shifts to clean up the building.
“I had everyone down here,” he says. “Central office was outstanding.”
Since this is Kermen’s first year, the district has assigned a veteran administrator to be his mentor, Mary Brennan, a retired principal hailed for turning around Vartan Gregorian Elementary School on the East Side.
Brennan has given Kermen the kind of advice that only a veteran of a school district knows about, like how to get the buses there on time and who to call when a parent is late picking up his child.
But even in the best-run schools, plans can go awry, as they did on Friday, when a little boy bolted from the classroom and was caught running down the hallway. It seems that his mother had promised him that he would attend the same school as his big sister and when he wound at D’Abate, he had a meltdown. This was the second day in a row that the boy had tried to run away.
Kermen tried to calm him down.
“Lunch is coming up,” he said to the tearful child. “You can buy me an ice cream.”
Kermen called the school social worker and the district’s director of special education and explained that the child needed a more secure setting. In the meantime, he made sure that the teacher had a walkie-talkie in case the boy tried to make another run for it.
All too often, Kermen says, something at home sets the child off and that emotional upheaval travels with the child to the classroom.
“As a child, my family moved from Central Falls to Newport,” Kermen says, “and I remember like it was yesterday what it was like to be the new kid in school.”
In Providence, it isn’t unusual for students to move a half-dozen times by the time they reach high school. Sometimes, the family moves from Providence to Pawtucket to Central Falls, depending on the availability of affordable housing. All these changes add another level of anxiety to what is often a fraught moment anyway — the first day of school.
Bring it on, Kermen says. He is ready for the baddest boy, the toughest fifth-grader, because this is what he was meant to do.
New superintendent touches base — with everyone
Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Tom Brady hit the ground running yesterday morning, greeting bus drivers at dawn and dishing up bagels for breakfast at one elementary school.
By lunchtime, the district’s new superintendent had toured four schools, and he visited four more before wrapping up the day at Kennedy Plaza, where RIPTA buses disgorge hundreds of high school students every afternoon.
Brady, who arrived here from Philadelphia six weeks ago, is a natural at the “meet-and-greet.” Where former Supt. Donnie Evans was reticent, Brady is gregarious. Shaking hands, meeting new people and making casual conversation come as naturally to him as they do to a seasoned politician.
At the Fortes/Lima Annex, there were more than a few tearful kindergarten students struggling to get through that painful moment of separation from their mothers. In one classroom, Brady knelt down next to a miserable 5-year-old named Sharon and spoke a few words of encouragement. But it wasn’t until a teacher handed Sharon a big stuffed bear that she began to cheer up.
“We all need a huggy bear sometimes,” Brady said as he left the classroom.
Brady embarked on a “listening and learning” campaign shortly after his arrival in Providence, meeting with 250 teachers during an informal coffee hour, the first of three such meetings. In the weeks that followed, he met with parents and teachers in packed school auditoriums and in parents’ backyards; he toured the neighborhoods with City Council members and met with community groups.
His advance work is beginning to pay off. Yesterday, several teachers shook Brady’s hand and said, “We met at Hope High School,” or, “I heard you speak at one of the parents’ nights.”
Meeting the public sends an important message, Brady said, that “this is a team and we have to work together.”
In every class, Brady thanked teachers for their hard work and told students to have a great year. But he didn’t just stop for teachers. He introduced himself to custodians and kitchen staff, to secretaries and teacher assistants. Everyone got the same square handshake, the same direct gaze.
Brady has his work cut out for him in the goodwill department. A series of missteps during Evans’ three-year tenure — from the closing of a popular West End elementary school to the Dec. 13 snowstorm that stranded students on school buses –– has led to a spirit of distrust among teachers and parents.
Teachers, meanwhile, are frustrated by three years of budget cuts and the failure to secure a new contract. But Brady and Providence Teachers Union president Steve Smith have both signaled that the long-stalled negotiations are progressing and a resolution may be in sight.
Yesterday, Brady expressed curiosity about every aspect of the school day, from the bus monitors who keep the children safe to the people who prepare the school lunches. At Fortes Elementary School, Brady popped into the cafeteria where masses of macaroni-and-cheese were being prepared for the district schools.
In every classroom, Brady asked which textbook the teachers were using and how they liked it. At Mount Pleasant High School, he asked to see the teacher’s lesson plan. When she said that the plan was at home, Brady asked her to e-mail it to him. All this was done with a smile and the teacher didn’t seem to mind.
At Nathanael Greene Middle School, Principal Nicole Thomas introduced Brady to a young boy in a wheelchair named Wayne, whose medical condition is so complex that he needs a full-time nursing assistant.
At a recent public meeting, the child’s mother begged Brady not to separate her son from the nurse who had cared for him for several years. The nursing assistant made the same appeal.
“I figured if they both wanted the same thing, it had to be good,” Brady said. “We made it happen.”
In a district known for its revolving door of superintendents, Mayor David N. Cicilline has said that strong, consistent leadership must be the basis for academic achievement.
When Cicilline announced Brady’s appointment in March, the mayor made it clear that he was looking for an experienced manager, not an academic leader. In an interview this winter, Brady addressed his apparent lack of academic experience by saying that Providence needs someone who can manage complex systems, someone who can define the district’s mission and then tap the right people to get the job done.
Brady certainly has had experience running large systems. As commander of Fort Belvoir, Va., he oversaw a $770-million budget and more than 20,000 residents. As the interim education chief of Philadelphia, he was responsible for running the eighth-largest school district in the country, and as the chief operating officer of the District of Columbia public schools, he managed a $1-billion budget.
According to state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, the district needs a superintendent who can deliver the books on time, settle the teachers’ contract and find savings in the midst of a budget crisis.
Brady wrapped up his first day at Kennedy Plaza, where 800 high school students descend every afternoon after school gets out. Brady met with Police Chief Dean M. Esserman and Sgt. George Smith, who oversees the police detail at the plaza, which is now staffed by 8 to 10 patrolmen.
Yesterday, the RIPTA bus depot was calm. Three years ago, however, a brawl involving nearly 100 students broke out at the plaza and traveled up College Hill. Although some students were armed with bricks and bottles, no one was seriously hurt. The melee and several subsequent fights led the police to beef up their presence at the plaza.
“You can see the tension build some afternoons,” Smith told Brady as they walked around the plaza. “We’ve made hundreds of arrests. We average about five a week.”
Brady, who never stopped for lunch, ended the day on the same upbeat note with which he began it.
He said the first day of school was “absolutely smooth” and that it exceeded his expectations.
“I saw schools that were inviting and welcoming to parents,” he said. “The buildings looked good, the teachers were engaged and the children ready to learn.”
Workshop helps teachers hone communication skills
Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
WARWICK — Carolyn Reedom has been a teacher, a principal and an assistant superintendent, and she has seen and heard it all.
That’s one of the reasons why her presentation on parent-teacher communication was so engaging. Reedom knows what it’s like to be a teacher dealing with a disruptive child just as well as she knows what it’s like to be a principal on the line with a frustrated parent.
Yesterday, during a two-hour class at the Warwick campus of the Community College of Rhode Island, Reedom showed teachers how to break through some of the roadblocks that prevent teachers from communicating effectively with parents.
In a lecture that blended humor with a homespun wisdom, Reedom, a private consultant, says there are good reasons why parents have negative feelings about their child’s school.
“Every parent has caller identification,” she said. “When the prefix 456 shows up on the phone, they press ignore. Why? Because they know it is bad news. Ninety-eight percent of the calls we make are negative. We need to be making many more positive calls.”
The parent-engagement class is part of a month-long summer institute for teachers offered at several locations, including the Community College of Rhode Island. This is the first time that the district has offered teacher training in such an intensive format, according to district spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly. More than 300 individual classes are available and all teachers are required to take two classes: parent engagement and a session on special-education requirements.
O’Reilly says that this is also the first time that the school department has offered broad-based parent-engagement classes for all teachers. Teachers are required by contract to complete 39 hours of professional training annually and they are paid for their time.
Yesterday, Reedom said that teachers have to demonstrate their competence to an often skeptical audience. How many teachers, fed up with a child’s constant interruptions, will tell a parent, “I don’t know what to do about your child’s behavior?”
Instead, teachers should focus on the positive, saying something like, “I’m never going to give up on your child. I’m not going to let your child fail. I like your child.”
Reedom asks the class to role-play a variety of parent-teacher interactions. First, she stages a typical phone conversation between the parent of a disruptive child and a teacher frustrated with the child’s behavior.
The teacher begins with a litany of complaints: the child refuses to sit down, talks back and won’t concentrate on his work. The parent asks what she can do to help. The teacher continues to vent; his frustration is palpable. The parent grows upset and ultimately hangs up on the teacher.
“Do phone calls go like that?” Reedom asks. Many teachers nod their heads in the affirmative. “Did I sound like I like this child?”
No, the teachers said.
Write this down, Reedom says. Never call a parent when you are feeling frustrated or angry. Avoid words that will put a parent on the defensive.
“In every interaction, we have to demonstrate that we care about their child, that we like their child,” she said. “Parents want to know that we will treat their child fairly.”
Begin the conversation by saying something positive about the child: “Tyler has great potential,” or “Tyler is very bright.”
Reedom says there are two kinds of teachers: reactive and proactive. Reactive teachers nurture a preconception about “Tyler” based on office gossip. When the teacher finally gets Tyler on her student roster, she complains to her colleagues and gets them to validate her negative feelings about the child.
Reedom role-plays a typical conversation initiated by a reactive teacher:
“On my gosh, I have Tyler,” the teacher says. “I wonder if the district is still offering that early buyout.”
The class chuckles. Everyone has heard a variation of that conversation in the teachers’ room.
“What kind of a chance does Tyler have?” Reedom says.
“None,” the class says.
A proactive teacher calls Tyler’s parents and says, “I’m excited to have Tyler in my classroom. What can you tell me about him to make this a good year? What is his favorite subject? Math? I’d love to make him the chairman of the math resource corner.”
By now, most parents are hooked. Here is a teacher who is enthusiastic about their child’s furture, someone who cares enough to ask for advice from the person who knows him best. This parent will say to Tyler, “Finally, you have a good teacher. Do whatever she asks.”
Teachers also have to get better at communicating their expectations clearly. Reedom suggests that at the beginning of the school year, teachers send a welcome letter home spelling out the school’s homework and discipline policies.
“Homework is not busywork,” Reedom says. “It should be used the next day to review the previous day’s lesson. Many kids don’t know how to do homework. That’s our job, not the parents’.”
Never underestimate the lasting power of a handwritten note, Reedom says. Then, she pulls out three such notes, the only ones that her two children received during their entire public-school experience. When she got them, Reedom remembers thinking, “I don’t know this teacher but I love her. She told me my son is a great kid.”
“You can’t imagine what this does for parents,” she says. “If you want your school to be perceived as a caring school, this must be done.”
Contact parents at the first sign of a problem, Reedom says. Don’t wait until the child is failing a subject. Notify the parent early enough so the child can make up his missing work or change his behavior.
Reedom cites the example of a parent who complained that her son’s chemistry teacher never told her that he had failed to hand in 13 lab assignments. When the parent complained, the teacher said, “I did what I was required to do. I sent home the notice of failure at week 6.”
But Reedom says that teachers must go beyond what is required by contract or district policy.
“You can’t let a child fail because he is not responsible for his behavior,” she says. “Allowing him to be irresponsible will not teach him to be responsible.”
New D’Abate principal sees positive changes ahead
Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Brent Kermen, the new principal of William D’Abate Elementary School, realizes that it won’t be easy to fill Lucille Furia’s shoes.
In a district where principals come and go like the seasons, Furia was one of the few constants, spending 39 years in the same school, 13 of them as its leader. Kermen, who comes here from Newport where he was an assistant principal, actually knows Furia through his wife’s family and has met her several times. In fact, he recently stopped by her house to get the keys to his new school.
“It’s an honor to fill her shoes,” said Kermen, who is 37 and lives in Cranston. “I’m the beneficiary of her hard work. The staff is really on board, the expectations are very clear and the leadership has been consistent.”
Kermen cut his teeth as an administrator in Newport, where he was assistant principal of Thompson Middle School. One of his biggest accomplishments, he said, was developing a guide to help teachers prepare students for the New England Common Assessment Placement, the state test.
“We came up with testing strategies,” Kermen said, “test items and ways to analyze our curriculum to find out the gaps between the curriculum and the material on the tests.”
Although Thompson is still classified as low-performing, its students made enough progress on the NECAP this year to move off the state’s “watch list.” Chronically low-performing schools wind up in “corrective action,” which makes them eligible for additional services and ultimately state intervention.
Kermen began his career in Providence, where he taught fourth grade at Laurel Hill Elementary School for six years. He left the district to earn a master’s degree in school administration at Rhode Island College and then took the position in Newport.
When he saw that Providence had several administrative postings, he decided to apply:
“I was aware that the district had a new superintendent,” he said last week. “I had heard positive things about the direction Providence was going in and I wanted to be a part of that. The timing was perfect.”
Kermen said he is pleased that Supt. Tom Brady has indicated that he wants to establish a collaborative relationship with the Providence Teachers Union.
“There is no way you can move forward without an open, positive relationship with the union,” he said. “Having been a teacher in Providence plays to one of my strengths. I’ve seen both sides. I know what it’s like to have a program thrust at you.”
Kermen grew up in North Providence and then spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including a stint in the Gulf War. After finishing his military service, he returned and attended Rhode Island College for his undergraduate teaching degree. Kermen is the first member of his family to graduate from college.
“I really like helping kids,” he said. “The bigger the challenge, the more gratifying it is. Every kid deserves a fair shot.”
Kermen said he will not try to reinvent the wheel.
“I will listen and learn and build upon whatever is positive and make sure the district initiatives are carried out. “
Teachers’ union chief sees contract within reach
Posted Wednesday, August 6, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Providence Teachers’ Union President Steve Smith said that he is optimistic that contract talks will resume shortly and that a two-year contract is within reach.
Smith, in an interview Friday, said that he has met a couple of times with Supt. Tom Brady and said that the new superintendent seems eager to resolve the contract. The 2,000-member union has been working under the terms of its old contract since last August, when the contract officially expired.
“Mr. Brady has expressed an interest in reaching a resolution even if it’s a short-term one,” Smith said. “We’re open to working to reaching an agreement. We have to work out the financial details.”
Brady said recently that he would like to sign a contract as soon as possible with the understanding that the agreement could be reopened in a year to discuss deeper, more systemic issues.
Negotiations slowed to a crawl this spring after then-Supt. Donnie Evans announced his resignation, effective in mid-September. At the time, Smith said that both parties felt they should wait until the district had a new superintendent before resuming negotiations. Brady arrived here three weeks ago. A mediator was brought in last year after negotiations stalled.
“We felt we were very close earlier in the year,” Smith said. “If we can reach an agreement by September, we would begin negotiations on a longer agreement.”
It seems unlikely that teachers would have time to ratify an agreement before they report back to work on Aug. 25, Smith said, adding that he wants the membership to have ample time to review the language in a new contract.
After months of acrimony between the union and management, Smith signaled that the union is willing to collaborate with Brady.
“Our position is that we want to be a partner,” he said. “I am happy that he has taken a proactive role in such a short period of time and that he has expressed that working with the PTU is important.”
School Board President Mary McClure said she was hopeful that talks would resume in the immediate future. “The superintendent is obviously eager to establish good working relationships with all of the unions and that is evident in his work with Donald Iannazzi,” she said.
Brady reached a compromise with the teacher assistants that precludes layoffs but now calls for assistants to receive additional training so they can be more effective in helping struggling students to read. Iannazzi, president of Local 1033, had organized his members to turn out en masse at two recent City Council meetings and had taken out a half-page ad in The Providence Journal decrying the cuts.
The relationship between the union and the school administration reached a low point in March, when the union voted overwhelmingly to express a lack of confidence in Evans and McClure. The ballot question claimed that students were being denied a quality education and cited more than a dozen supposed missteps by the administration, including the Dec. 13 snowstorm that stranded more than 100 students on school buses.
The ballot also mentioned the “mass exodus” of teachers and administrators during Evans’ two-and-a-half years in office.
After the no-confidence vote was taken, more than 100 teachers staged an informational picket in front of the School Department’s headquarters on Westminster Street. The last time that the union took a vote of no confidence was in October 2001, when Diana Lam was superintendent.
At the time, union leaders said teacher morale was at an all-time low, citing the worsening budget crisis, constant turnover at the top and a perception that the district was adrift.
The union, Smith said, has no plans to strike or “work to rule,” in which teachers refuse to perform any duties beyond those specified in the contract.
Brady goes face to face to determine district’s needs
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — School Supt. Thomas Brady fielded plenty of tough questions last night, but no statement was as poignant as the one made by Charlotte Whittingham, a teenager who said that the public schools repeatedly fail their most disadvantaged students.
“I’ve been in four public schools in Providence,” she said, her voice breaking. “The kids at Classical High School have everything. It’s appalling. No, it’s disgusting how low the expectations are for the kids in the other high schools.”
Brady thanked her for her honesty and said: “I wish I could look you in the eye and say that every student will be challenged. But we will begin the work.”
For nearly two hours at Hope High School last night, the new superintendent heard that the school system was broken, that the School Board wasn’t effective and that some of the teachers no longer care. He heard from parents who said that they weren’t taken seriously and parents who asked when art and music would be restored for their children.
Through it all, Brady tried not to make promises he couldn’t keep, and sometimes he said he didn’t have the answers.
“You sound very good,” said Osiris Harrell, a parent activist. “But we’ve heard this before. Dr. Evans was very qualified. But because of the bull that goes on here, he wasn’t allowed to do what he wanted to do.”
Brady asked for six months: “Let’s see what the litmus test is then.”
One parent spoke about the racial and economic disparity that exists between East Side schools and the rest of the city.
“There is the East Side and the South Side,” Jean Nicolazzo told Brady. “There are different schools and different standards. We have to think about integrating schools along socioeconomic lines. We have to figure out how to entice the middle class to come back.”
Brady made it clear that he wasn’t going to address the needs of the few over the needs of the many. When a parent complained that Classical wasn’t as rigorous as it once was, the superintendent pointed out that the district had to raise the standards at all of its high schools, not just the jewel in the crown.
A school psychologist explained that Providence has a disproportionately large number of students in special education and said that the district’s suspension rate was among the highest in the country. Black males, she said, are suspended at much higher rates than other student groups.
Brady said he was putting together a group (not a task force) to look into the city’s large number of special education placements. He also said that there are alternative education programs where disruptive students can be placed until they are ready to return to the regular classroom.
The new superintendent was careful not to take pot shots at the Providence Teachers’ Union. A parent complained that the contract allows teachers with more seniority to bump those with less, which removes the responsibility for hiring faculty members from the principal.
But Brady, a former Army colonel, said that it would difficult to allow each principal to pick his or her own staff in a system as large as Providence, which has more than 2,000 teachers.
“I’m not going to say that bumping doesn’t work,” he said. “Seniority is an important factor. My job is to train teachers and move them up to these new standards.”
Parents also expressed frustration with the fact that superintendents come and go, yet nothing really changes at the school level.
“The most critical thing is to bring change down to the micro level,” Gail Gifford said. “If my child isn’t doing his homework, I want to know right away, not at the end of the semester.”
And parent engagement, parents said, has to be more than skin deep. As one speaker said, parents want to be part of the educational process, not consigned to holding bake sales.
During the evening, Brady said that he supported K-8 schools, a model favored by former Supt. Donnie Evans. He said he is open to working with charter schools, adding that they have a lot to offer. And he acknowledged that the district’s biggest challenge is how to fix the middle schools, which is where student performance falls off the cliff.
But the night wouldn’t be complete without a question about the Dec. 13 snowstorm that left dozens of children trapped on school buses until late at night.
“I’ve been making weather decisions for the last 10 years and I haven’t made one right decision,” Brady said.
“But all of those decisions were made in the best interest of the children. I can’t make it stop snowing. But I can say that there will not be children on buses at 11:30 p.m.”
Brady optimistic he can work with union and council
Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Less than two weeks into his new job, School Supt. Thomas Brady faced his first baptism by fire: an irate union that was pressuring the City Council to restore teacher assistant positions.
The Laborers’ International Union of North America, Local 1033, turned out en masse at last week’s City Council meeting to protest the loss of 40 elementary school teacher assistant positions in the school budget. A week earlier, the union took out a half-page ad in The Providence Journal decrying the cuts, claiming that first-grade students would suffer from the loss of personal instruction provided by the aides.
The district said that its hands were tied. Because of state and federal regulations, the School Department has to dedicate $2.9 million in federal anti-poverty funds, called Title I, to the high schools this year. Approximately $2.2 million will come from a reorganization of kindergarten and first-grade teacher assistants.
The union claimed that 40 positions would be eliminated. The department, however, said the reductions would come from positions accrued through retirement or attrition.
The union was making a lot of noise. The council was feeling a lot of pressure. The end result was a potentially toxic mix waiting to explode and possibly derail or delay passage of the school budget.
Enter Brady, who has already made a point of reaching out to various constituencies, from parents to union leaders. Brady knew that the school budget was before the City Council on Monday. He knew the union was upset. And so he called Local 1033 business manager Donald S. Iannazzi and asked to meet with him on Monday.
Yesterday, Brady said that he didn’t want the budget sidetracked by the furor over teacher assistants.
“I wasn’t concerned about the protest,” he said. “I wanted a resolution of this issue. And I felt the dialogue should be about the needs of the children.”
After lengthy conversations with the union and top School Department staff, Brady and Iannazzi reached a compromise:
•The reduction in teacher assistants from 160 to 120 would not result in any layoffs.
•Every kindergarten class would continue to have a teacher assistant.
•The remaining assistants would be reassigned as instructional assistants. These individuals would be assigned to work in elementary schools with the greatest academic need, with a minimum of one assistant at each elementary school.
•Vacancies resulting from retirements and resignations will not be filled.
What broke the logjam was Brady’s offer to train teacher assistants to help struggling students to become better readers, professional development that has not been offered in the past. The goal is to move teacher assistants from a custodial role to an instructional one.
“Here was an opportunity to talk about teacher assistants versus instructional assistants in a district that needs more adults in classrooms,” Brady said. “My vision is to see that they be provided with the proper professional development. Mr. Iannazzi concurred and said that, in fact, he had been thinking about this for the last couple of years.”
Brady said he never felt that the council was holding the school budget hostage over the teacher assistant issue:
“Number one, I never got the impression that we couldn’t get the budget passed without restoring those positions. Number two, the council showed a remarkable [restraint] as in, ‘We’re not going to get into the details. We’re going to let him run it.’ ”
At a special meeting Monday, the City Council approved a $322-million school budget and voted to raise the city’s tax levy by 3.75 percent.
Brady said that he hopes this agreement will demonstrate that he is serious about establishing collaborative relationships with the council, the unions and other school partners.
“I think this reinforces my intent that we will partner together for kids.”
He’s the other Tom Brady
Posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — “Hey, you look like Tom Brady,” a sixth grader said, his eyes wide.
“Nice to meet you,” said a tall, gray-haired man in a similarly colored suit and tie. “I’m the new superintendent.”
“I thought you were Tom Brady,” the boy said, crestfallen.
“I am, but I never played quarterback.”
“Awesome,” the boy said, smiling.
That’s how the day went for Thomas M. Brady, retired Army colonel, father of five and the incoming superintendent of the city’s 23,800-pupil school district. On his first day in Providence, Brady visited a couple of schools, met in small groups with teachers and central office staff and tried to get a feel for his new assignment.
Brady, 57, arrives here with an impressive resumé : a 25-year career in the Army; interim superintendent of Philadelphia, the eighth-largest school district in the nation; and, before that, chief operating officer of the Washington, D.C., district.
As Brady told teachers yesterday, “I know how to spell urban.”
Related link
Video: Watch Brady on his first day at work
Mayor David N. Cicilline recruited Brady in March after Supt. Donnie Evans announced that he would retire when his contract expires in September. At the time, Cicilline said that he tapped Brady because the school system needed a strong leader, adding that the district couldn’t afford to spend time on a national search, something the School Board did with Evans.
Yesterday, Brady exuded the sort of confidence that puts people at ease. During a visit to a summer school on Thurbers Avenue, Brady popped into classrooms, observed students at work and chatted briefly with teachers.
Nothing seemed to get past him. At one point, he stopped, glanced at a candy wrapper on the floor and immediately asked when the schools are cleaned. When Brady discovered that the doors to the library were closed, he explained that it isn’t unusual for the building principal to “feel proprietary,” locking up supplies and books when a summer school principal takes over.
In every class, Brady asked students where they were from because he said he was curious to find out where children lived in relationship to where they attended school. Because he is 6 feet, 2 inches tall, he made himself small, kneeling down to talk with the fifth and sixth graders and speaking softly.
“How are you doing?” he asked one boy. “Is this keeping you engaged? Are you keeping busy? Is the work challenging enough?”
Brady was full of questions, asking when teachers received their summer school training, how substitute teachers were used and how the Woods-Young building, which houses two separate elementary schools, was organized.
In one class, Brady checked a child’s math to make sure it was right. In another, he commented on how well a teacher used a common object — a packing box — to explain how to calculate surface area.
Brady faces some formidable challenges, however. The school district is struggling with a third year of budget cuts, the Providence Teachers Union issued a vote of no confidence in Evans lastwinter, and the state has placed the district in corrective action because a large number of the system’s 36 schools are chronically low-performing.
Yesterday, Brady tried to dispel some of the apprehension and distrust that has permeated the district since Evans surprised everyone by announcing his resignation. Teachers are frustrated by continued budget cuts and the steady exodus of experienced leaders. And they are discouraged by the glacial pace of contract negotiations, which have languished since the Evans’ announcement.
First, Brady said he believes in “management by walking around.”
“If you see my smiling face, I’m trying to find out what you’re doing,” he told a group of 70 teachers and staff. “Don’t be concerned if I’m asking questions. It’s not a threat. I’d rather catch someone doing something right.”
Next, Brady told the crowd that he is not about “screaming, ranting and shooting the messenger.” Let’s fix the problem and move on, he said.
When he worked in the District of Columbia, a school district where nothing worked, Brady said his office was lined with bookshelves full of studies, none of which had ever been implemented.
“I’m all about getting things done,” he said. “I don’t want a briefcase full of plans.”
And, he is all about accountability. When Brady was running on the Hope High School track this weekend, he noticed some graffiti. It was gone in no time.
“Graffiti,” he said. “If we leave it up for 24 hours, what message are we sending? That we don’t care.”
Brady made it clear that he would build on the hard work done by previous superintendents, adding that Evans did a very good job and is now moving on. Although Evans slipped out of the office early yesterday, he has been talking and meeting with Brady on a regular basis.
Brady also offered an abbreviated version of his agenda: increase student achievement; make business operations more efficient; improve communications with teachers, parents and taxpayers; spread the word about the district’s mission; bolster the administration’s relationship with the unions, and make sure that teacher training is aligned with the curriculum.
When Evans arrived here almost three years ago, he promised that Providence would be his last stop. Brady didn’t go that far, but he did say “I don’t want to be chancellor of New York or Los Angeles.”
He also shared a bit of his personal history: he is married with five grown children and six granddaughters and he began his career in education as president of a parent-teacher association in Fairfax, Va., an affluent community. Later, in the District of Columbia, he helped close 11 schools in one year as part of a $4.5-billion overhaul of the city’s aging school buildings.
At least one administrator was so impressed with Brady’s take-charge attitude that she said she was almost moved to tears.
“I felt for the first time, ‘Wow,’ ” said Kim Luca, supervisor of literacy and the humanities. “He exudes greatness. He’s a team player. He wants to treat people with respect and dignity. I haven’t felt this good about someone right off the bat in a long time.”
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 b |
