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February 2005
Board saves nurses, social workers from layoffs
Posted Monday, February 28, 2005
Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson sought the layoffs of almost 100 teachers and other employees because of a projected deficit of $19 million.
BY RICHARD C. DUJARDIN
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- A divided School Board refused last night to lay off 21 nurse-teachers and 10 social workers but agreed to send pick slips to 20 guidance counselors and 47 elementary school teachers.
About 150 people attended the meeting to appeal to board members to hold their ground and send a message to Governor Carcieri and the General Assembly that the board believes the proposed 1.7-percent increase in state aid is woefully inadequate and that they won't adopt any further cuts that jeopardize children's safety and education.
The School Department has a projected deficit of $19 million for the next fiscal year.
Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson said layoff notices are needed in order to keep the School Board's options open, because the notices can be rescinded. Teachers and other employees such as coaches, athletic directors, nurses and guidances counselors cannot be laid off for the next school year unless they are notified by March 1.
Maila Toray and Robert Wise were the only board members to vote against layoff notices on most of Johnson's recommendations, but they voted with the majority in refusing to send notices to nurse-teachers and to social workers.
Under Johnson's proposal, half of the nurse-teachers in the district would have received layoff notices for a possible saving of $1.36 million.
But board member Dilania M. Inoa said nurse-teachers are too important, and she did not want the board to have the option to remove any of them from the payroll. She and Toray, Wise, Adeola Oredola and Grace Gonzalez voted against laying them off. School Board President Mary McClure voted in favor of the layoff notices, and Dr. Milton Hamolsky abstained.
A proposal to notify 10 of the School Department's 40 social workers that they were being laid off failed on a 4-2 vote. Gonzalez recused herself from that vote because she said one of the laid-off employees would have been her daughter's social worker. Eliminating the 10 jobs would have saved $650,000.
The board voted 6-2 to send notices to four athletic directors and 67 coaches that they would lose their stipends for sports if athetics is cut.
On a 4-3 vote, the board upheld layoff notices for 20 guidance counselors, for a potential savings of $1.3 million.
At the public hearing before the votes, more than 50 adults and youngsters from ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, marched into the meeting at the Springfield Elementary School carrying flowers as they followed a mock coffin bearing the words Our Future. About a dozen of them were linked by a yellow plastic chain.
Nancy Krahe, a social worker, told the board, "This meeting feels like a sinking ship" and said the board had a responsibility to "us, the passengers" to see that ship did not founder.
A refusal to protest a lack of money from the state would be "like refusing to send out a distress signal," Krahe said.
Providence school chief a finalist job in Texas
Posted Friday, February 18, 2005
Melody A. Johnson will soon learn whether she's been chosen to be the new superintent of schools in Forth Worth.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson, whose contract expires in August, is one of two finalists for the superintendent's job in Fort Worth, Texas.
Johnson said yesterday that she expects a decision in the next week or two.
The superintendent's job in Fort Worth, a district of 80,000 students -- and the third-largest in Texas -- pays about $300,000.
That figure is a huge jump from the salary of $169,156 Johnson receives in Providence, where the enrollment is about 27,000. Johnson also receives an annuity of $8,000 a year.
School Board President Mary E. McClure said she was not surprised when she got a call Wednesday evening from Johnson, who is in Texas this week attending a conference of the American Association of School Administrators.
"I knew she had been recruited, and if the right job came along in Texas, it would be hard to turn it down," McClure said yesterday.
Johnson said that she is drawn back to Texas, where she has worked most of her life, by strong financial and personal reasons.
"I've said all along that it is not possible for me to become vested" in Rhode Island's public school teacher retirement system, Johnson said.
Unlike educators at the university level who may take their pensions with them when they get a new job across state lines, retirement programs for public school teachers and administrators are not portable.
Johnson has said she needs to work three more years in Texas to become vested in its teachers' pension system.
She said it is an honor to be considered by the School Board in Fort Worth, which interviewed her twice in the last 10 days, but she would have "very mixed feelings" about leaving Providence.
On Monday, the Providence School Board informed her that it wants to offer her a new three-year contract. Johnson's current agreement with the board gives her 30 days from that notification to decide whether to stay or go.
McClure said yesterday that the board will continue to work on Johnson's contract until "we're told not to."
Besides Johnson, the other finalist for superintendent in Fort Worth is Jesus Chavez, superintendent of the Corpus Christi School District, according to Dr. Manuel Flores, a member of the School Board in that city.
Efforts to reach William Koehler, president of the Fort Worth School Board, were unsuccessful yesterday.
But Flores said he understands the Fort Worth board is expected to make a decision next week, naming a single "finalist" according to Texas law.
The law in Texas allows school boards to conduct searches for superintendents in virtual secrecy, requiring only that boards disclose the "name or names" of finalists at least 21 days before any meeting at which the boards expect to vote to hire anyone.
Typically, school boards disclose the name of only one finalist and vote to hire that person a few weeks after the disclosure.
Fort Worth's public schools have been run by an interim superintendent, Joe Ross, since July.
The previous superintendent, Thomas Tocco, was removed last June in the wake of a construction-billing scandal that cost the school district $16 million. Tocco was not immediately discharged but transferred to another position and was paid his full salary of $314,000 through the end of 2004.
In the mid 1990s, Johnson, then working at the Texas Education Agency, took a job as an associate superintendent to Diana Lam at a time when Lam was attracting national attention for her reform efforts.
Six months after Lam came to Providence in 1999, she recruited Johnson as her deputy superintendent.
Johnson, who came to Providence in February 2000, has said she originally intended to stay only 18 months.
But she remained, she said, in part because she was invited to join an intensive year-long training program for urban superintendents sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation.
The foundation is financed by SunAmerica chairman Eli Broad, and its superintendent's program aims to bring a corporate-style approach to leadership and management in urban schools.
Johnson said the experience thoroughly rejeuvenated her professional practice.
In August 2002, when Lam abruptly left Providence for New York City, the School Board quickly hired Johnson as superintendent, saying it could count on her to continue the reforms Lam began in 1999.
As deputy superintendent, Johnson had been responsible for day-to-day implementation of the district's academics, including an aggressive agenda of professional development that focused initially on elementary literacy.
Since then, the elementary schools have shown solid gains in test scores, particularly in the most recent round of testing last March.
Middle schools and high schools also posted gains across the board last year, although those positive results have been overshadowed by a dropout rate that has been creeping upward, as well as escalating state intervention at Hope High and other secondary schools.
Johnson's proposed school cuts go deep
Posted Thursday, February 17, 2005
On the chopping block are the positions of 21 nurse-teachers, 20 guidance counselors and 10 social workers. Also in jeopardy are the jobs of 59 athletic coaches and 4 athletic directors.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- A presentation that Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson had intended to deliver at Monday night's School Board meeting minced no words about the effects of proposed staff cuts for the next school year: "devastating."
The staff of nurse-teachers would be cut in half, from 45 to 24, and two nurse-teachers would be assigned to a special-education program for the most severely handicapped students, who attend school 230 days a year.
The remaining 22 nurse-teachers would each have to cover two school buildings, jeopardizing the schools' ability to respond to medical emergencies as well as more routine exams and documentation of childhood immunizations, according to the presentation.
In addition, Johnson's proposal calls for eliminating the positions of 10 social workers, 20 guidance counselors and teachers, including 23 in elementary schools, for a total of 101, according to the presentation.
Those staff cuts would eliminate $4 million of an estimated $22-million shortfall in revenue for the next school year.
Furthermore, Johnson suggests athletics also might be cut. The athletic program, including 59 coaches, 4 athletic directors, and transportation, costs about $1 million a year, according to school officials.
Johnson never delivered her presentation Monday night because a stream of parents, children and teenagers affiliated with ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- marched into the auditorium at the Public Safety Complex and disrupted the meeting, chanting as they called on the board to reject cuts in staff.
A copy of her presentation was released on Tuesday. Johnson was not available for comment.
The elimination of 10 social workers' positions would represent a quarter of the social work staff of 40, according to Patricia Nailor, director of personalized support for the school district.
In the past few years, 4 social work positions and 25 guidance counselors' jobs have been eliminated, she said, breaking up teams of social workers and counselors who used to support the families of elementary school children in crisis.
The current plans call for the elimination of another 20 guidance counselors, reducing the number from 60 to 40.
Sixteen of the 20 positions will come from middle schools and high schools, and four will come from elementary schools, according to Debra DeCarlo, the district's chief of operations.
Johnson said the cuts will adversely affect class scheduling, record-keeping, college applications, career exploration, "and most importantly, counseling."
At Monday's meeting, Fredlin Bennett, a elementary school guidance counselor, told the school board that "the safety net has been getting more and more holes in it."
Bennett said that during this school year alone, she has worked with a fifth grade boy who was so close to suicide that he had worked out a plan for ending his life, and intervened in the case of a first grader who told her, "Daddy got really angry and threw me down."
"Those children's voices will be dying if you vote yes on these cuts," Bennett said.
Johnson had told the audience that she would pull from the agenda the resolutions concerning layoff notices and staff reductions, allowing for more public comment.
"By moving public comment up front, it put the focus on public comment, rather than her presentation," DeCarlo said.
DeCarlo was asked whether athletics might also be on the chopping block.
Coaches and athletic directors historically have received annual layoff notices so that they can be re-hired in accordance with the demand for their sport.
Johnson's presentation listed the district's 59 coaches and 4 athletic directors under the category of staffing cuts, on the same page as the 21 nurses, 10 social workers, and 20 guidance counselors whose positions are to be eliminated.
"These are areas that may be looked at," DeCarlo said. "If we don't put some options on the table, our hands are tied down the road," DeCarlo said.
Johnson and her staff have proposed the job cuts without knowing how much money they will have for the next fiscal year.
The amount of state aid to education is decided in the late spring or early summer, and the City Council has until July 31 to set a tax levy.
Johnson's presentation also listed the elimination of 23 elementary school teaching positions, which DeCarlo said stemmed in part from a change in age requirements that has reduced kindergarten enrollment this year and will affect the first grade in the fall.
Overall, she said, elementary school enrollment is in decline, which will enable the district to close the annex to the Edmund G. Flynn Elementary School in leased quarters at the Urban League and cut the positions of two assistant principals.
Two more assistant principals will be cut at the high school level, with the closing of the Harrison Street School, DeCarlo said.
School board moves meeting
Posted Monday, February 14, 2005
PROVIDENCE -- Because teachers and parents are expected to protest the proposed elimination of 102 jobs, the School Board has moved its meeting tonight from the school administration building to the Public Safety Complex at Dean and Washington streets.
When the public session convenes at 6:30 p.m., the board will be asked to approve layoff notices for 102 teachers, social workers, guidance counselors, and nurses, a budget decision that the board has not discussed.
In the last two years, the School Department has cut roughly 350 teaching and other professional positions, gutting music and arts instruction and many other electives.
The latest reductions would save an estimated $4 million of an projected $20-million deficit in the next school year.
Parents who are members of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations, say the newest round of cuts is unacceptable.
"We know that there is a problem with our school district being $20 million in the hole," JoEmily Collazo said in a statement. "We also know that our children need smart professionals and a low student-to-teacher ratio to succeed.
"Right now, most schools only have one nurse," she said. "Who will take care of medical emergencies if that position is left vacant?"
The ACORN statement said the organization wants to work with the Providence Teachers Union, the board, and Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson on a better solution to fix the deficit.
School Board wants Johnson to stay
Posted Friday, February 11, 2005
But the superintendent isn't saying what her plans are when her contract expires, deferring comment until she speaks with board members.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The School Board plans to notify Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson that it wants to keep her in Providence after her contract expires at the end of August, board President Mary E. McClure said yesterday.
The board has until the end of the month to notify Johnson whether it wants her to stay and, if so, to extend her contract for another year or negotiate a new multi-year agreement.
Johnson then has 30 days to tell the board whether she will stay.
"I think she's doing an amazing job and want to keep her," McClure said, "but we haven't notified her officially."
Johnson, who is in her mid-50s, has said that for retirement purposes, she must return to Texas, where she has worked most of her life.
McClure said that Johnson has told the board "her retirement is a big factor" in her plans.
"She has also said that she would like to stay here," McClure said.
When asked about her contract or her plans, Johnson declined yesterday to answer questions, saying she has not discussed them with with the board.
She is paid a base salary of $166,000, and $3,156 for an advanced degree, for a total of $169,156, according to assistant city solicitor Sara Rapport. Johnson also receives an automobile allowance of $300 a month and an annuity of $8,000 a year, Rapport said.
Johnson's departure would raise questions about the continuity of academic reforms that began in August 1999, when Diana Lam became superintendent. Six months later, Lam recruited Johnson from San Antonio to become her deputy superintendent, and Johnson stepped into Lam's shoes when Lam left for New York in August 2002.
McClure said that since Johnson came to Providence in Febrary 2000, she has established a "solid infrastructure for building a high quality education."
"There has been system-wide progress instead of little pockets of progress," McClure said.
As deputy superintendent and as superintendent, Johnson has put in place a district-wide curriculum linked to standards of performance, a full program of professional development, and new approaches to literacy that are well supported by research findings, McClure said.
In addition, the district has begun attacking literacy problems at the adolescent level and up, and has introduced new programs in mathematics and science, McClure said.
"We are starting to see the results" in all grade levels tested by the state, McClure said.
The dropout rate has been on the rise, however, going from 28 percent in June 2002, to 38.7 percent in June 2004.
And Peter McWalters, the state commissioner of education, recently announced that he is escalating his intervention at Hope High School and in other high schools and middle schools in Providence.
McClure said she couldn't comment on the dropout rate until she knows more about the way it's calculated, or whether it might be influenced by more accurate data in the last few years.
"The fact remains that there have been big increases in the targets met" on statewide tests, McClure said.
Although the most significant overall gains have been in elementary schools, where reforms have been under way for the longest period of time, middle schools and high schools "went from no targets a couple of years ago to meeting most of them," McClure said.
She said McWalters' latest intervention at Hope was oddly timed, right after Hope's scores increased and the Providence Teachers Union negotiated a "groundbreaking" contract.
She alluded to a new union-management school intervention team created by the contract. That team wrote a plan that McWalters used as a foundation for his latest intervention order.
Johnson "has done everything you can ask of a superintendent in very, very difficult financial situations," McClure said.
School librarians still waiting for decision
Posted Thursday, February 10, 2005
The state education commissioner promised a decision on staffing by Jan. 31.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- In November, state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters promised school librarians that he would decide well before the second semester whether the city's three largest high schools could continue to operate with one librarian.
The second semester started Jan. 31.
And McWalters still has not made a decision on a temporary waiver he granted Providence in the fall of 2003 -- three semesters ago -- for each of the libraries to cut its staffing from two to one librarian.
Late last month, two Providence school librarians appeared at a meeting of the Board of Regents to remind McWalters that he missed his deadline.
James DiPrete, the chairman of the Board of Regents, assured the librarians that a decision would come "soon."
The state's Basic Education Plan requires high schools that have more than 1,000 students -- Hope, Mount Pleasant and Central --to employ two librarians.
School librarians have said they are dissatisfied with the length of time McWalters has taken to make a decision and with Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson, who cut the librarians' positions for budgetreasons.
At McWalters' request, librarians and the principals of Hope, Central, and Mount Pleasant submitted to the state Department of Education last spring information on the effect of the staff reduction at the schools during 2003-2004 school year.
The principals concluded that services have not been compromised, but the librarians found otherwise.
Barbara Ashby, librarian at the George J. West Elementary School, one of the two librarians who spoke at the regents' meeting, said that with one librarian, the Hope, Central, and Mount Pleasant libraries are closed for a third of the school day, during the librarian's lunch and free period.
When the libraries are open, the librarian is hard put to respond to teachers' requests for assistance with research for their classes and inquiries from students, said Ashby.
Ashby said she and other librarians dug out the details of operations of the three high school libraries before they submitted testimony to McWalters' office in June.
Libraries at schools that have fewer than 1,000 students also close during the school day when teachers and students need library services, but the requirements of the Basic Education Plan does not address those situations.
She said that if McWalters decides to restore the second librarian's position at the schools, he must add a second librarian at Classical High School, which has more than 1,000 students and has operated for years with only one librarian.
Regardless of the requirements of the state, Ashby said, it is her understanding that in at least two of the three high schools, there was historically one school librarian until the Providence Teachers Union filed grievances.
At the regents' meeting, board Chairman James DiPrete told Ashby and Peter Quesnel that "we understand your concern.
"You should know you will be hearing soon," he said.
State stops short of taking over Hope High School
Posted Tuesday, February 8, 2005
By GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Commissioner of Education today signed a highly detailed and prescriptive order for change at Hope High School that puts the welfare of students at the center of decision-making and uses a special master as the Commissioner's own eyes and ears to monitor progress on a daily basis.
Digital Extra
Look back at the coverage of the Hope High hearings, plus the special Journal 2003 series, "Hope: Inside a High School," a snapshot of a school in transition, as seen through the eyes of its students, teachers and principal.
Commissioner Peter McWalters, acting under legislative authority granted him in 1997 to intervene in failing schools, stated emphatically that he is not taking over Hope High School.
But in installing a special master who will report directly to McWalters, the order clearly gives the Commissioner final authority to decide matters in dispute; authority that until now has belonged to Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson.
The order departs from contractual methods for teacher selection that emphasize seniority and teacher preference. Instead, it sets up a system of annual review of teachers’ commitment,``growth’’ plans for teachers not living up to their pledges, and counseling by colleagues. Teachers who don't meet the requirements can be moved to another school.
At a mid-morning press conference outside his office, McWalters said ``this is going forward as it is’’ because of the existince of a union-management school intervention team that he regarded as a vehicle for modifying existing contractual provisions for the sake of improvements at Hope.
But earlier in the morning, the union president, State Rep. Steven F. Smith, D-Providence, told Hope teachers that there are ``problems’’ with the order and that it will get a careful reading by the union’s lawyers.
The order, crafted as a result of a stall in reforms that emerged last spring, calls for action almost immediately.
The order re-affirms the roles of three existing small learning communities focused on the arts, technology, and leadership, and gives each one authority over its budget and staff selection, building on elements of various plans devised during the last year both by the Hope faculty and by the district-level union-management school intervention team.
But the order goes far beyond any of those plans in spelling out a school schedule, getting community partners involved in making the decisions that will enable students to take advantage of outside enrichment opportunities, linking students with faculty advisors, and linking those advisors to the students’ parents.
Teachers have just two weeks – until Feb. 18 – to signal whether they want to stay at Hope by submitting a 19-point statement of commitment to a teacher review team of three administrators, three teachers, and two representatives of community partners.
The teacher selection process calls for a face-to-face conversation about the letter of commitment between the teacher and the review team, with a recommendation going from the review team to the superintendent on whether the teacher should be invited back next fall.
By March 1 -- in about three and a half weeks -- the special master will be in place, McWalters said.
By March 15, a chief operating officer will be appointed who will oversee issues requiring coordination among the three small learning communities, which share the same gym, cafeteria and library.
On April 11, the beginning of the fourth quarter of the academic year, each student will be connected with an advisor who will help with course selection for next fall.
Hope students don't expect big changes
Posted Friday, February 4, 2005
As the state commissioner of education unveils his plan to improve beleaguered Hope High, its students aren't convinced that it will affect their school experience.
BY KAREN A. DAVIS and GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writers
PROVIDENCE -- Uncertainty is an uncomfortable place to be when you're a teacher at Hope High School, awaiting the decision of the commissioner of education today on the future of the school, a guidance counselor and a union official said yesterday.
Teachers "just want to know" what commissioner Peter McWalters has in store, said guidance counselor Marianne Davidson, who is also a vice president of the Providence Teachers Union and contributed to a union-management plan intended to persuade McWalters not to escalate the level of his intervention at Hope.
The commissioner will go to Hope at 8 a.m. to brief the faculty on his order, which is expected to be a detailed plan for reform that represents an escalation of his intervention at Hope since June 2002. It will be released to the public at 10:30 a.m.
The steps leading up to the order, including a hearing on the state of affairs at Hope held in December, stemmed from McWalters' growing dissatisfaction last year with the pace of reform at the school where students have poor achievement test scores and a dropout rate of some 52 percent.
There are no classes today because teachers have a professional development program.
One teacher, Dennis Kraus, said his colleagues have indicated they are "beyond frustration" in trying to create a turn-around at Hope.
"Nobody is talking about the real problems," said Kraus, a special-education teacher in the Academy of Information Technology, one of three small learning communities at the school.
"How do you engage the kids when there is a college-only curriculum?" he asked rhetorically, with "very, very high-end biology [where] they can't read the textbook?"
"There is such a disconnect between the real world, the classroom, and what the central office is talking about," Kraus said.
"We do not have keyboarding or consumer math," he said, and words such as credit and debit, everyday terms in the business world, do not appear in the Hope curriculum.
Brandford Davis, a junior, said McWalters should "pay more attention to the students."
All the speculation about what might happen to Hope has created a huge distraction that has "taken away from learning," he said in a telephone interview.
Brandford said he didn't choose to attend Hope, but in the three years he has been there "the school has improved academically and socially."
Students who flooded out the doors of the aging school yesterday afternoon said the mood has not changed significantly among students. .
They said they weren't worried about the announcement or the fact that McWalters plans to appoint a special master to oversee the school.
Several said they did not believe McWalters' order would affect them.
Paul Rambocas, a senior, said he believes the school has improved over the last year and a half.
"There's less fighting . . .it's far better than what it's been before," Paul said. He said the school has more extra-curricular activities, such as dance classes, and more after-school programs.
Most students are not affected by the rumors of change, Paul said. And some just don't pay attention to reports or rumors because they've heard the talk before.
Instead, Paul said, "they just go to class, do their work and keep doing what they've been doing."
Derlyn Lopez and Fernando Lopez, both juniors, said the school has seen improvement and that it is hampered by having people outside the school making decisions about what should change inside the doors of 324 Hope St.
"I think it's somewhat going to change," said Kersanthia, who was among the students waiting for a bus yesterday afternoon. But "students aren't nervous about it."
Her friend, Catherine, agreed.
"Things might change for the teachers, not the students."
Kersanthia said she believes that the quality has diminished because Hope has not had a principal since June.
Since then, the building has been run by directors of three small learning communities, with support from the central administration.
"Things are not that good," said Eric Barbosa, who doesn't believe any changes will affect him because he is a senior. "It's going really bad . . . They keep changing stuff but nothing gets better."
Yismaldy Javier and Ruthdolly Baez, both sophomores, said they believe the school had seen a bit of improvement over last year.
But Ruthdolly Baez noted that the absence of a school-wide principal has "made a [negative] difference . . . [The three directors] don't have control over the school."
If a special master is appointed, Ruthdolly said, "hopefully the teachers will teach us more and get students more involved."
Ruthdolly said she believes there needs to be more after-school programs.
"
Students said they are more concerned with the everyday details of student life including schedules, the quality of lunches and secure lockers.
Yismaldy noted that it took three months for some students to get their locker assignments. And until recently, some lockers still didn't have locks that worked.
DelSesto could be converted
Posted Wednesday, February 2, 2005
The middle school might become the city's next high school.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Can you envision DelSesto Middle School on Springfield Street as a high school?
With a flat middle school enrollment and a bulging high school enrollment, the idea makes sense economically and educationally, school officials say.
Projections show enrollment of ninth graders will increase 850 in September, according to Frances Gallo, the district's chief administrative officer, and converting DelSesto to a high school would mean a place for about 200 of those students.
She said the district would still need to continue its school construction program, which has been adding at least 400 seats a year for nearly a decade.
Additional details on enrollment, and the status of the city's search for a new school site, were not available yesterday.
Meanwhile, parents of children attending the Springfield Street education complex will have a chance to ask questions and voice their opinions at a public meeting tonight at 7 in the second-floor library at DelSesto Middle School.
According to a plan outlined at a School Board meeting on Monday, the Carnevale Elementary School, also part of the Springfield Street complex, will add grade six in September.
Carnevale, like most of the city's elementary schools, now ends at the fifth grade, but Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson said research indicates sixth graders perform better in elementary schools.
"It's a very tender age," she said. "My personal experience and belief is that it's a good thing to keep them at the elementary level."
Students entering the seventh and eighth grades would attend the Springfield Middle School, which is across from DelSesto Middle School in the same building. Both middle schools include grades six through eight.
Johnson said the best way to create a small high school is to add one grade every year, a method that has worked well in "growing" other small high schools in the city. Those schools include the Providence Academy of International Studies, the Health Science and Technology Academy, and E3 Academy.
School Board member Robert Wise said he was concerned because Springfield Middle School and the proposed DelSesto High School would be in the same building and share common areas such as the cafeteria and the library.
"I'm concerned about a seventh grader going into an 11th and 12th grade environment," he said. "I'm concerned about what happens in common areas when it's not a controlled situation."
Gallo said middle schoolers and high school students would not be scheduled to have lunch together.
But Johnson indicated the topic merits further discussion.
Because the high school would develop one grade at a time, the change in the building would not be abrupt, she said.
"But five years down the road, there's a seventh grade and there's an 11th grade," Wise said.
Johnson said that a K-12 complex on Springfield Street would promote the idea of a neighborhood school and encourage parent participation.
Children who attend Carnevale would go on to Springfield Middle School, Johnson said, and the only "break grade" would be the eighth, when youngsters could choose DelSesto or not.
The relatively small size of DelSesto -- it holds about 400 students -- would encourage increased personal attention to students, according to a presentation by Johnson made to the School Board Monday night.
The superintendent said response to the plan has been favorable.
"Parents seem to welcome it," Johnson said. "The kids are positive about sticking around."
Board member Milton Hamolsky asked whether a small high school would be able to offer the same breadth of curriculum as a larger school.
"There is no one-size-fits-all," Johnson said.
The Health, Science, and Technology Academy has test scores high enough to rate as a moderately performing school, Johnson said.
But she also said Central High School, with more than 1,500 students and a broader curriculum, is also doing well, judging from feedback from students, Johnson said.
She said a smaller school lends itself to greater personalization but is not able to field as many sports as a larger school.
Johnson said all high school will offer at least one Advanced Placement course or the opportunity to get college credit by taking a course at a college
Superintendent mum on layoffs
Posted Tuesday, February 1, 2005
The School Board is supposed to vote on the issue in two weeks.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson had intended to brief the School Board last night about a plan to save $4 million by cutting about 100 teaching positions.
But Johnson did not bring up the proposed job cuts for the next school year or the anticipated $20-million to $24-million budget deficit that prompts them.
For the past two years, staff cuts have shrunk the number of electives, reduced social services and left little flexibility in scheduling for teachers to meet and plan.
The staff cuts and teacher layoffs for next year did not appear on last night's agenda, and the next chance for a public discussion before the board is on Feb 14, when Johnson is expected to ask for a vote.
Layoff notices must be in teachers' hands by March 1 if they are to be effective in September.
Johnson told a reporter she had intended to discuss the staff reductions in private with the board but had been advised that that would violate the Open Meetings law.
The Providence Journal had asked the School Board's lawyer earlier about a potential violation of the law if layoffs were discussed in private.
A memo from the Providence Teachers Union to its members lists several categories of cuts, including social workers, guidance counselors, nurse-teachers, high school reform coaches who work with teachers, other coaches who help teachers manage children with behavior problems, middle school teachers, and teachers of English as a Second Language.
Last night, Dina Silvaggio, an ESL teacher at Asa Messer Elementary School, said she and others are concerned about the "growing problem of our students struggling to meet grade-level standards when some do not have the educational experience to even come close."
"We are talking about elementary and middle-school 'newcomers' -- innocent young students that arrive from other countries that have had little to no schooling" in their native language, she said.
"For example, how can a child who has never been to school, can barely write their name, and doesn't even know the sound of the letter 'a' be expected to function in a fifth-grade classroom?" Silvaggio asked.
"How can the classroom teacher meet the needs of this type of student while implementing grade-level expectations for the other students who are ready for the transition to middle school?"
Silvaggio questioned whether the needs of any students can be addressed in such a classroom.
She asked for classrooms for newcomers that would provide small-group instruction that builds on the education backgrounds of the individual students.
Johnson said Silvaggio has a "valid concern."
The School Department has a newcomer's school for about 75 high school students but does not have the money for all students, Johnson said.
During the last 18 months, she said, an estimated 50 to 60 students in each grade have moved to Providence. Their education backgrounds vary, and some have never attended a school.
Providence schools cannot meet the needs of these children, along with other youngsters, using the amount of money as other districts that don't have as diverse a population, Johnson said.
She alluded to Governor Carcieri's proposed 2.1-percent increase in state education aid -- an additional $3.8 million to the $181.2 million the city now gets.
School Board member Robert Wise asked Johnson how the School Department can maintain morale in classrooms because of the proposed layoffs and discussion last night about adding administrative positions -- albeit ones that would be paid by federal money.
Johnson said federal money would support administrative positions focused on improving academic achievement but would not put teachers in the classroom.
"There's a perception that if you're in the central office you're not supporting teaching and learning," Johnson said, "but it's quite the contrary."
For example, she said, central office administrators designed the newcomer school.
Another School Board member, Maila Touray, asked Johnson to the board alternatives to teacher layoffs at its meeting Feb. 14.
"Help me make a decision not to lay off teachers," Touray said.
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