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November 2005
Schools to audit activity accounts
Posted Tuesday, November 29, 2005
The decision follows revelations that money was missing from an athletics fund at Hope High School.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Providence School Department will begin to routinely audit student activity accounts in the wake of irregularities in the athletic account at Hope High School.
School Supt. Donnie Evans announced last night that the district is also in the process of developing a handbook that will establish checks and balances, to make sure that proper accounting procedures are followed.
According to chief financial officer Mark V. Dunham, the new policy will require that all student activities money be disbursed by check, that two individuals sign each check and that the books be balanced every month.
Almost every public school in the city has a student activities account. At the elementary schools, the accounts contain only a few hundred dollars; at the high schools, the accounts can run into the thousands of dollars.
The issue came to light after City Councilman Kevin Jackson claimed that money was missing from the account, which generates an average of $14,000 a year in interest.
The School Department's controller, Michael D'Antuono, acknowledged that the account had been overdrawn sometime last summer, but said it didn't appear that the money was misspent. Meanwhile, Hope's three new principals started another account this fall and turned the books over to the controller.
In addition, the School Department will ask an independent auditor to review two or three school accounts every year. The department will review the majority of the accounts on an annual basis, Dunham said.
A dozen Reservoir Triangle residents came to the meeting to oppose building a new high school on the site of the former Gorham Manufacturing plant.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Silvia Aldredge said that the Adelaide Avenue property had been designated as a Superfund site in 1988, adding that the state-approved remediation plan stipulated that the land should never be used for residential or recreational purposes, or for a school.
"Here we have a Superfund site and yet, with a wave of a wand, it's suitable for children," said David Kennedy, another resident. "To think of putting a school here is ludicrous."
Robert Dorr, of 60 Crescent St., said he had collected several soil samples and had hired a private firm to analyze them for hazardous substances. The test results, he said, were alarming. In one instance, 600 milligrams of arsenic was found in a sample, Dorr said, well beyond the acceptable level of 7 milligrams.
"The cleanup plans are not very thorough," said Catherine Orloff, of 64 Crescent St. "It's one whole site that has been heavily contaminated and not well studied."
Sen. Juan Pichardo, D-Providence, claimed that the city tried to "fast-track" the Adelaide Avenue site without allowing for adequate public comment and without informing the neighborhood.
He also said that the city tried to bypass the proper legal procedures. The city began work on the site but stopped when the courts issued a cease-and-desist order this spring.
Pichardo said he found it ironic that the city was moving forward with the Adelaide Avenue site after a Superior Court judge recently found city officials guilty of violating state statutes when they began building a school on a former landfill on Springfield Street.
In his decision, Judge Edward Clifton said the city failed to notify landowners before identifying the land as a potential school site, failed to make the results of the investigation public and failed to make public its plans for removing the contaminated material.
The ruling was made in response to a lawsuit filed by residents who challenged the construction of the Springfield Street school.
Good behavior in classroom starts at home
Posted Monday, November 28, 2005
Parents will attend workshops to learn how to encourage good conduct.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Teachers have long complained that students are coming to school ill-prepared to learn. The students do not now how to sit quietly, how to listen when others speak, how to offer their opinions in a respectful manner.
So the School Department, as part of its new positive schools program, will hold a series of workshops to explain to parents what kind of behavior is expected of students and what parents can do to support such behavior at home.
Deputy School Supt. Frances Gallo said the training would begin next month with 35 parent leaders, who, in turn, will hold workshops at their schools; the training will be conducted in English and Spanish.
"Right now," Gallo said, "we have rules but not relationships. We want to make sure that the parents understand the rules.
"It's not about rich or poor, black or white," she said. "But how many students could be saved if they had only asked for help?"
The rules are: Come to school prepared, respect yourself and others, plan for your future and ask for help. Those expectations are posted in classrooms across the district. Teachers explained what the rules meant at the beginning of the school year; some schools had school-wide gatherings to discuss the new code of conduct.
But the new focus on positive discipline will not work, Gallo said, unless families reinforce the behavior at home.
The first goal is to understand and create a peaceful environment at home. Parent leaders will ask if parents allow the following behavior at home: back talk, foul language, fighting, slamming doors and shouting. Next, they will discuss more effective parenting techniques.
"Be clear," the PowerPoint presentation states. "Be respectful. Avoid repeating your warnings. Follow through with your consequences."
The workshops will also give parents examples of appropriate consequences, from timeouts to restitution. Parents will break into small groups and role-play how they could resolve a specific conflict.
The district's new code of conduct establishes a specific set of behaviors, rated at levels one through four, with escalating consequences for each level of misconduct.
Gallo used the following example to illustrate how the code works. A student was expelled last month for 60 days for possession of a weapon -- a BB gun -- and for threatening a student.
In the old days, the student might have been suspended and left to his own devices. Not anymore. Now the student is sent to an interim school, a small alternative program where the student will work on his issues -- in this case, anger management -- with a team of professionals. Providence has four such centers, all of them run privately, with tuition paid by the district.
Suspensions typically run in increments: 45 days, 60 days, 90 days, and occasionally an entire school year.
But the goal is not only to get the disruptive student out of the classroom, it's to help him resolve his problems so he can return to school and continue his education.
Shortly before the student returns to the regular classroom, teachers from his alternative school contact faculty members from the public school. The interim school staff discuss what the student has learned during his absence and what he is still working out.
According to Gallo, the teacher says, "These are the things that Johnny has learned and these are the things he hasn't."
Three to five days before the student is slated to return, he visits his old school, accompanied by an adult from the alternative program, who asks if the student is ready to go back to school.
"Most kids want to stay at the interim school," Gallo said, "because they get lots of attention, they feel safe and there is no gang nonsense."
And therein lies the rub. The city, Gallo said, needs to create alternative schools for students who don't feel safe returning to their original schools.
She said that every school needs a team of professionals -- a social worker, a school psychologist and an intervention expert -- who can work with these students before their behavior escalates into something far more serious. In recent years, these positions have been cut because of budget restraints. The layoffs have occurred at a time when 83 percent of all families moving to Providence are headed by single parents who lack a high school diploma.
For too long, schools have tried to get troublemakers out of the classroom, bouncing them from one school to another. That, Gallo said, is beginning to change.
All of the middle schools have focus rooms where students are sent for chronic misbehavior. This takes the student out of the classroom, but keeps him in school, where he can continue his education and learn from his behavior.
"In the past, kids would be suspended for writing graffiti," Gallo said. "Now, teachers are supposed to have a conversation with the child and come up with an appropriate consequence," such as cleaning up the graffiti after school.
Last year, Perry Middle School began analyzing its data on discipline and the staff began asking questions: Why are students getting in trouble? When are the problems occurring? Are some teachers reporting more infractions than others?
What they found surprised even them. They discovered that 80 percent of the school's 748 students were well behaved, and only 5 percent were "frequent fliers," children who frequently get kicked out of class. And yet these 5 percent took up two-thirds of the teachers' time.
So the staff created a room, the Student Planning Center, where unruly students can calm down and discuss with an adult how they could have handled a situation differently.
"We're trying to make thoughtful interventions," Gallo said, "We're trying to build a sense of community, trying to get to a place where the kids say to one another, 'Sit down and be quiet.' "
Proteun November 2005
Posted Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Message from the President...
As one of two RIDE intervention districts, this is our second year that teachers in Providence are required by the Commissioner’s office to participate in one hour per week of professional development. The PTU successfully negotiated an hourly rate of pay for the mandatory professional development.
During the 2005-06 school year, 39 hours are required (21 hours/school level and 18 hours/district). I am confident that Commissioner McWalters will request a full report on professional development activities offered by the district as well as the participation rate of teachers. It is important that all teachers fulfill their professional development requirements. Failure to do so may result in further sanctions imposed by the Commissioner’s office, including a longer work day.
The Professional Time Joint Committee meets monthly to address concerns regarding Professional Development. A major agenda item currently being addressed is timely payment of professional development activities. If you have an issue you would like addressed, please contact your field representative and I will bring the issue to the committee for resolution. Finally, any feedback that you may provide about the quality of the professional development being offered is appreciated. You may e-mail your comments and suggestions to ssmith@proteun.org.
9th Annual Book Drive
Eight years ago, the Providence Teachers Union launched its first Book Drive for Providence Kids. Last year we ran our eighth annual book drive and donated 1,384 new books to Providence community centers. They, in turn, distributed the books to Providence children.
Today, I am pleased to announce our Ninth Annual Book Drive for Providence Kids. New books in all languages for children in grades K-12 may be dropped at the Union office between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. by December 13, 2005. Members are also welcome to make monetary donations.
Please join me in making this year’s book drive a great success!
Forty Week Club
The Providence Teachers Union invites all members to join the club!
By joining the Forty-Week Club, we can continue the tradition of helping the children of Providence. All Forty-Week Club proceeds are allotted to scholarships for Providence students and to many social and recreation agencies that help Providence students. For more information, please see your building collector.
Flu Clinic
On November 28, 2005, there will be two flu clinics conducted at:
Cooley/PAIS cafeteria
182 Thurbers Avenue
~ and ~
Mt. Pleasant cafeteria
434 Mt. Pleasant Avenue
3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
The flu vaccination is free; however, members must bring identification (i.e. Blue Cross/United Health card).
Building Delegate/Administrator Meeting
On Tuesday, November 8, 2005, the Providence Teachers Union hosted a building delegate/principal meeting with representatives from central administration in an effort towards establishing open lines of communication between teachers and administrators.
The meeting was well attended and issues such as School Improvement Teams, Article 31 Committees, Special Education concerns, Code of Conduct/Discipline concerns, Teacher Support Teams, etc. were addressed. Refer to your building delegate minutes for complete details.
Commissioner's Decision-Inclusion Classrooms
During the 2004-05 academic year, several inclusion classroom teachers and the Union filed grievances for lack of substitute coverage or appropriate compensation. In light of a recent decision from Peter McWalters, Commissioner of Education, it was confirmed that a substitute teacher is required in the absence of either the special educator or the regular educator assigned to an inclusion classroom.
The grievances have been sustained by the Providence School Department and the affected inclusion classroom teachers will receive all monies due.
School Closing Notification
In addition to notifying its staff of school closings via the media, the Providence School Department will also utilize its automated telephone message system. Teachers should verify that the office of Human Resources has his/her accurate telephone number on file.
Save the Date...
In support of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, Steve and Donna Smith are hosting their 3rd Annual Holiday Reception on:
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Detailed information to follow in a separate mailing.
Membership Meetings
Membership meetings will be held on the following dates:
December 14, 2005
March 8, 2006
April 12, 2006
May 10, 2006
Union Offers
Curves— PTU members may join for $29 down and $29 per month (w/ check draft, 12 month commitment). This promotion is available at three locations in Providence. For more information, contact Liz Driscoll at (401) 272-1119.
53 Weybosset Street
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 351-6121
47 Eagle Street
Providence, RI 02909
(401) 272-1119
1080 Hope Street
Providence, RI 02906
(401) 490-4884
Norwood Motor Group, 1400 Post Road, Warwick—PTU members may purchase a new Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Chevrolet or Scion, with a lifetime warranty, at 2% over dealer cost. Used vehicles may be purchased at 2% over dealer cost.
Hope High School sports fund overdrawn
Posted Tuesday, November 22, 2005
One of the school's principals says the account also owed money to vendors and a coach.
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 22, 2005
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The school district is investigating why an athletic account at Hope High School was overdrawn last year.
School officials don't believe that anyone intentionally misspent the money.
"We have no evidence that any money is missing," said Michael D'Antuono, the district's controller. "I'm being asked to go through the account activity from last year because, at the end of the year, the school had a negative cash balance. Sometime this summer, the account was overdrawn."
When Hope's three new principals arrived this summer, the books were in disarray. According to Scott Sutherland, one of the three principals, the athletic account was overdrawn, several vendors hadn't been paid and a coach was owed $1,900.
"The student activities office was not in order," he said.
By June 30, every high school treasurer is supposed to submit a financial activities report to the central office. But when Sutherland arrived, he couldn't find the report from Hope. After trying to make sense of the books, Sutherland sent them to D'Antuono for further analysis.
One school official attributed the problem to the constant turnover at Hope, which has had three new leaders or teams of leaders in as many years.
Last year, the school's treasurer, Janelle Clark, was transferred in the middle of the year to Feinstein High School and no one was hired to replace her, according to Kim Luca, the current treasurer at Hope.
"I just think it was a mistake," she said. "Nothing was purposefully fraudulent. There could be a million reasons why this happened. You have three directors working in three different schools last year and then the treasurer leaves halfway through the year."
Clark could not be reached for comment yesterday.
When classes resumed this fall, the school owed between $3,600 and $4,000 to sports vendors, Luca said. In addition, Sutherland said that the school had bounced two checks totaling $1,900 to one of its coaches.
Luca said the school's athletic account is still in the red by less than $1,000, but she hopes the deficit will be corrected when interest on the Beers Athletic Trust arrives. The trust was established 60 years ago to benefit athletics at Hope High School and is currently worth $500,000, according to D'Antuono.
The school typically receives $14,000 in annual interest from the trust. That money can be spent only on sports-related purchases.
Meanwhile, Hope opened a new student activities account this fall, because the principals wanted to start the year with a clean slate.
Luca has been working out payment plans with the vendors, who, she says, have been very accommodating.
The issue came to light last week, when City Councilor Kevin Jackson said money was missing from a fund that supports athletic programs at Hope.
"My issue is, 'Who was in control of the checking account?' " Jackson said yesterday. "Who was signing the checks? At best, this is poor accounting."
At Thursday's City Council meeting, Jackson said he would ask City Auditor James Lombardi to investigate.
'Learning walks' change Hope
Posted Thursday, November 17, 2005
The exercise focuses on the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Principal Scott Sutherland guided several teachers into an English classroom, where students were parsing the meaning of social class in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.
Because Victorian London is a tough sell, the teacher pulled out an old parlor game. Each student picked a card from a deck. Those who received a 2 were poor; those who received a 3 were rich. Without looking at their cards, the students showed them to their classmates, who either scraped and bowed or bossed him around.
Each student had to ask: "Am I a pauper or a prince?"
The students were having a ball. Although there was some initial silliness, everyone settled into their roles. And there was a purpose to this play-acting. On the blackboard, the teacher posted several questions: What does it mean to be poor? Does class matter in society?
After visiting the classroom, the team of educators met briefly in the hall to share observations and ask questions: Are students engaged in their work? Is the work rigorous? Has the teacher explained the reason for the lesson? Are examples of students' work posted on the walls?
This exercise is called a learning walk. Developed by the University of Pittsburgh's Institute of Learning, which trains urban teachers, the walk helps teachers, principals and district leaders examine how teachers teach and students learn.
Yesterday, Hope High School, which is under orders from the state to boost student performance, had the first of three district learning walks. The group -- which included Anthony Pope, the director of high school reform, the school's principals and several teachers -- spent an hour visiting classrooms in the Leadership Academy, one of three smaller schools at Hope.
During a learning walk, the team avoids criticizing individual teachers. Instead, visitors make broad observations about the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom.
What the team saw was teachers changing old routines to get students more involved in their studies. In one math class, for example, the teacher was running an auction. Each student had $2,000 to spend on a variety of items.
On the blackboard, the teacher had written: "Why are we doing this?"
He said, "Because we want to know how to be successful, how to spend wisely and how to make good choices."
"Who wants to be a famous rock star?" the teacher asked.
The bidding was fast and furious.
"Who wants to be extremely smart?"
One young man bid $500, then, in his excitement, outbid himself by another $100.
"Sold for $600!" the teacher said.
Not every class was flawless. In a Read 180 class, one student said he was bored. He wasn't able to explain what he was reading or what his assignment was. Read 180 is a program designed to boost the skills of students who are reading well below grade level. The class is divided into several work stations. Every 20 minutes, students move from one station to another.
In this class, four students worked on computers while others completed a writing assignment. The teacher moved from table to table, answering questions.
After the tour, the group gathered over coffee and muffins to discuss what it had seen.
"I saw nothing short of a transformation in terms of culture and climate," said Nicholas Donohue, the state-appointed special master. "Kids universally could say what they were learning."
But Donohue cautioned that this is just the beginning and that much more work needs to be done. Not all students could answer why they were learning what they were learning. Donohue, the former New Hampshire education commissioner, was appointed by Rhode Island Education Commissioner Peter McWalters to oversee reform at Hope and report back on the school's progress. The next report is due early next month.
Most of the feedback was positive, however.
"Not one class had a teacher lecturing from the front of the room," said Kathy Schulbaum, one of the observers. "The kids were working in pairs, working in groups and they were working right up until the last 30 seconds of class."
"In every classroom, there was a neat and orderly environment," said Sutherland, who heads the Arts Academy at Hope. "We've gone from chaotic classrooms to this."
Allan Izzo, the assistant principal, said he thinks that teacher training is beginning to take hold. He said one teacher who had difficulty controlling her class last year has made great strides this fall.
"It's like night and day in there," Izzo said. "The kids were focused and comfortable with the teacher."
A couple of observers said that teachers should push students to ask more challenging questions about what they are studying.
"What kinds of questions are the teachers asking?" Pope said. "Are we pushing kids' thinking far enough?"
Mary Markey, a biology teacher and chairwoman of the School Improvement Team, said she picked up several fresh ideas that she planned to use in her classroom. She suggested that more teachers be included in future learning walks, so they could learn from their peers.
"The kids were smiling," said Arthur Petrosinelli, the principal of Hope's Technology Academy. "That says a lot."
Another district learning walk is planned for December. The focus will be on the Arts Academy.
Renovation starts at Central High
Posted Wednesday, November 16, 2005
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Long plagued by leaky roofs, archaic plumbing and outdated technology, Central High School is finally getting major surgery -- $13 million worth in the first phase alone.
The city officially broke ground on the renovation project yesterday, but the work began over the summer. When it is done, the city's largest high school will have a new gym, cafeteria, library and science labs. The second phase of the project will cost at least $20 million and will include funds for new technology and new furniture.
At the groundbreaking, Mayor David N. Cicilline said the repairs are long overdue.
"Can we credibly claim to put a premium on education when desks and equipment are post-World War II vintage -- and at times you need to wear a coat in your classroom?" Cicilline told the crowd. "When the paint is peeling in the classrooms, the roof leaks, old radiators don't work? When science labs look like they're from a 1950s film?
"At a time when Providence's downtown is coming alive with modern hotels, condominiums and office buildings, what would we be saying to parents and teachers if we ignored the buildings where our children spend some of the most critical hours of their lives?"
Central High School lost its accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in July 2001, after it refused to host an accreditation visit. The district had asked the agency to postpone its evaluation because administrators were involved in a full-scale redesign of the high school under Supt. Diana Lam.
At the time, redesign plans called for the high school to become two smaller schools. It also called for major building improvements, which were supposed to begin during summer 2001.
But the reforms never took place and the long-sought renovations are just beginning, four years later.
Bianca Gray, Central's high school redesign coach, said a number of issues have stymied the school's efforts to break itself into smaller learning communities.
"Real estate is a real issue," she said yesterday. "You can't carve out space for three independent schools without some substantial improvements to the building."
Yet Hope High School, working with another big building, has after many setbacks finally broken into three smaller schools organized around themes.
Last year, Central's redesign team issued an ultimatum to the district: Repair the physical plant or the new programs won't happen.
"We need computers that work and rooms that are clean," Gray said. "We need an environment that supports the building of a healthy learning community."
The current reconstruction should help staff reach those goals. When the work is done, Central will have:
new classrooms with small-group workspaces
four new labs for physics, chemistry, biology and general science
a new media center with expanded reading and shelf space
two new computer labs
a new gym that will allow large assembles at Central for the first time in decades
digital surveillance cameras, new fire alarms and a new sprinkler system
new elevators that will make the building accessible to the handicapped
Meanwhile, Central High School has taken steps to create a more personal learning experience, Gray said. Incoming freshmen are assigned to a team, and those students stay with the same core teachers for the entire year. The school has introduced teaming in the 10th grade, on a much more limited basis. Central has also begun to offer a wide selection of afterschool activities, including theater, dance, music and sports.
"This," Gray said, "is another way of saying we care about you."
Meanwhile, faculty and staff are taking another look at how best to restructure the high school. Gray said the study group is leaning toward splitting the 1,650-student school into two smaller schools. Hanley Career and Technical Center, which shares space and students with Central, would be spun off as a freestanding vocational high school.
"Imagine a complex that has one school," Gray said, "a college-prep program for 800 students plus a first-rate vocational school next door."
But, Gray said, Hanley is in "terrible need of reconstruction." The vocational school has been neglected for years and needs $4 million worth of improvements, school officials said. The building, a honeycomb of cramped rooms, is no longer suited to provide state-of-the-art training in electronics, automotive repairs and carpentry.
Hanley is owned by the state. Rhode Island voters last year approved a vocational education ballot question that included $4.7 million for renovations at Hanley, but state Rep. Paul Crowley, D-Newport, chairman of the House Finance Committee's subcommittee on education, said recently that it makes more sense to build a new vocational high school in Greater Providence.
Board promotes Gallo to deputy
Posted Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Also, the Providence Teachers Union president urges stronger action against serious student misbehavior.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Providence schools have a new deputy superintendent: Frances Gallo, who served as transitional superintendent after Melody Johnson left for Fort Worth, Texas, this spring.
Supt. Donnie Evans recommended creation of the post of deputy superintendent and suggested Gallo for the job. The person holding the position will assume the helm in his absence. Gallo applied for the open superintendent's job in the summer.
She joined the department five years ago, as director of middle schools. Before that, she ran the Jamestown school system. She was appointed Providence's chief of administration in 2004 and assumed the superintendent's duties from April until June. Her salary is $140,000.
The Providence School Board also named Jonny Skye Njie facilitator of district reform, at a salary of $66,682. Njie will be responsible for overseeing teaching practices and new education programs. She will also assist Evans with his evaluation of high school reform. Njie was hired a year ago to be the city's youth opportunities facilitator. Working with Gallo, she developed a student code of conduct that was instituted this year.
Acting on Evans' recommendation, the School Board appointed Brian Baldizar special assistant to the superintendent. The new position and carries a salary of $72,000.
Baldizar will serve as liaison between the School Department and area universities. He will also help Evans keep track of his daily obligations and commitments. Baldizar had been the high school reform facilitator for the district.
In other business, Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers Union, said the School Department is not doing enough to protect teachers and students from students who commit serious infractions.
Smith's concerns focused on a student who has been suspended for 45 days for stealing a teacher's car. Citing confidentiality laws, the School Department would not identify the student or his school.
"Under Rhode Island law," Smith said, "stealing a car is more than major property theft. It's grand theft. Forty-five days. Does the student have a second chance of stealing a teacher's car [when he returns]?"
Smith said discipline problems are widespread. Fires have been set at Nathanael Greene Middle School this fall and teachers' cars have been vandalized at Perry and Gilbert Stuart middle schools.
"We need an alternative high school," he said after the meeting. "Barring that, we need a new code of conduct. The new code does not impose meaningful consequences."
Three more students have been suspended for serious disciplinary problems.
One was suspended for 147 days for possession of a knife and possession of a controlled substance.
One was suspended for 45 days for possession of a BB gun and a butterfly knife.
A third student was suspended for 60 days for possession of a gun and for threatening a student.
Also last night, several members of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, demanded that no high school be built on Adelaide Avenue until the city cleans toxins from the entire site.
"What does the School Board know about this site?" said Stephanie Cannady, a parent and member of ACORN. "Has the board looked at the documents?"
Another parent, Priscilla Peters, asked if School Board members had attended any of the many public meetings on the proposed school site, which was once home to a large silver manufacturing plant.
"The land needs to be remediated to the highest level," she said. "I don't want my son to run into health problems later on because he attended school on a toxic waste site."
Refusal to attend gym brings penalties
Posted Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Seven students had been warned at least three times before they were suspended, one of Hope High School's three principals says..
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Seven students were suspended for two days at Hope High School for refusing to wear gym clothes, one of the principals said yesterday.
Arthur Petrosinelli, the principal of the Technology Academy, one of three small learning communities at Hope, said the students had been warned at least three times before they were suspended for two days.
According to Petrosinelli, the students were written up, then received detention and had their parents called. Finally, Petrosinelli spoke with each student and told them that the next time they refused to wear gym clothes -- shorts and a T-shirt -- they would be suspended. The teens were suspended last month.
"Last year, Hope had two gyms: one for the students dressed and one for those that didn't dress for gym," Petrosinelli said. "We're not going to have that this year. You need to pass gym in order to graduate."
Petrosinelli said the rules for gym are part of a larger culture of order and respect that the school's new leaders are trying to instill at Hope.
"We're saying, 'Here are the standards. Here are the expectations,' " he said yesterday. "When you walk down the corridors, you see the rules and the regulations. Nothing is hidden. The reason why you see lockers without gang tags is because we have rules and we enforce them."
"Physical education is a course," said Wayne Montague, principal of the Leadership Academy at Hope. "It's valuable. There are expectations that students be physically and academically fit."
What about students who have personal reasons for not wanting to wear gym clothes? Perhaps they have issues about the way their bodies look; maybe they have been physically abused. In that case, Montague said, students should speak privately with a teacher, a guidance counselor or one of the principals. The adults, he said, are there to help students deal with any personal matter.
Hope High School has been in the spotlight since February, when Education Commissioner Peter McWalters ordered the embattled school to make substantial changes. In the spring, he appointed a special master to ensure that the state's plans were implemented.
The district appointed three principals this summer, and teachers were asked to commit to changes in writing. About half of the faculty members are new this year, and some of them are new to teaching.
The new leadership team at Hope believes that no learning can take place in a school where the environment is unruly, disorganized and disrespectful. To that end, the three principals have been vigilant about keeping the corridors clear during class periods, removing disruptive students from class, and cracking down on tardiness and attendance problems.
Yesterday, parents queued up in the main office to meet with the attendance officer, who spoke with them about why their children were skipping school and what might be done to solve the problem.
"Nothing can happen in the classroom without safety and order in the hallways," Petrosinelli said. "This is why they asked me to come here. We're turning this school around. We're fair and the kids know what to expect."
New system gives schools a direct line to parents
Posted Thursday, November 3, 2005
With Web-based technology, principals can send messages and alerts at times when adults are likely to be home.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Your daughter is skipping school and hanging out on Thayer Street. In the old days, the School Department would typically call home during the day, when most parents are working.
In some cases, the message would get through to the parent. In others, the child might intercept it. And in homes without answering machines, the message might not get there at all.
That won't happen anymore. The School Department has hired a company called NTI Connect-ED to let its fingers do the walking. Designed exclusively for public schools, the company's system enables superintendents, principals and other administrators to record, send and track thousands of messages in minutes.
Messages are recorded by using a phone and a computer with a Web browser, which allows the user to schedule messages and select specific groups; or using a phone to send calls in emergencies.
Spokeswoman Maria Tocco said the district liked this system because there is no hardware to install or maintain. The entire program is Web-based; principals need only a user identification, a password and a pin number to access the system, which they can do from home.
When students register for school, basic information, including their parents' home and work phone numbers, is entered into a database. If there is no answer when a parent is called, the system will retry the number several times.
The district has used the messaging system 85 times since it was launched more than a month ago. Every day, the district notifies parents whose children have unexplained absences. Those messages are sent in English and Spanish at 7 p.m. -- a time when most parents are at home.
The service can also be used to notify parents if schools are closing early or not opening because of weather emergencies.
Principals could use the system to invite parents to parent-teacher nights, to remind them of the annual state testing, or to inform them of new policies and practices. What's nice about the service, Tocco said, is that principals can record messages in their own voices. The software also allows schools to send out single-question surveys.
The service is so precise that a principal can deliver a message to a specific group of students. For example, Tocco notified eighth graders recently that Classical High School would be holding its entrance exam. Because some eighth graders have already taken the test, she refined the message to exclude those children. The software also enables the user to program the message to be sent at a specific date and time.
"It's one of the greatest tools a principal could have," said Robbie Torchon, principal of E3 Academy in the North End.
Last year, Torchon noticed that attendance was becoming an issue. Some parents were allowing their children to stay home because they weren't aware of the consequences for unexcused absences.
"This year, we sent a message to parents in English and Spanish explaining our attendance policy," Torchon said. "We got a lot of positive feedback from parents."
He said attendance has surged this year, hitting a high of 90 percent on certain days.
"The phone calls do not supercede letters," Torchon said. "But we have a lot of letters that get returned. This provides a second layer of communication to help us make sure that parents are on the same page."
The beauty of the system, Tocco said, is that it gives principals feedback (in the form of a pie chart) about how many households were called and how many calls were unsuccessful. The software also shows how many calls went to wrong numbers, so the school can ask the student for the correct information.
At E3, Torchon discovered that 86 percent of his messages reached the home and 14 percent went to wrong numbers. Armed with that information, the school has corrected its database, and the wrong-number count is down to 6 percent.
Tocco said the program cost $80,000 this year, or roughly $3 per student. Next year, the school hopes to find a corporate sponsor to defray some of the cost; the sponsor's name would be included at the end of the message.
Defining times for school reforms
Posted Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Experts from the Carnegie Corporation are due next week to examine progress. The findings could help determine whether the nonprofit keeps investing in the city.
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- In October 2001, the Providence schools received $8 million from the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill & Melina Gates Foundation to reinvent the high school experience.
The initiative was supposed to break large, impersonal high schools into smaller learning communities, to make coursework more demanding, to improve teaching and to get students more involved in their education.
The ultimate goal was to get more students walking across the stage with high school diplomas that mean something -- not only to them, but to colleges and employers.
Four years later, high school reform remains a work in progress.
Several new, small high schools have opened. Hope High School has been broken into three academies, each with its own principal and theme. Under former Supt. Melody Johnson, the district standardized the high school curriculum so that a student taking Algebra 1 at Mount Pleasant is learning the same things as a student at Central High School.
Certain problems persist: roughly a third of the district's freshmen drop out of high school, and nine high schools are classified as in need of improvement under provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Only Classical High School, an exam school, is listed as high performing.
Next week, a team of experts hired by the Carnegie Corporation will visit Providence to meet with educators and discuss what progress the district has made, and where it should be going.
The Carnegie grant runs out in another year. Carnegie has said that it will continue to fund three of the original seven urban school districts across the nation that received the grants. The $8 million received by Providence is being administered by the Rhode Island Children's Crusade.
Mary Silvia Harrison, executive director of the Children's Crusade, is optimistic that Carnegie will continue to support the reforms in Providence:
"They believe Providence has made substantial progress," she said yesterday.
In December, the Children's Crusade, working with the district, has to submit a four-year progress report along with its plans for the final year.
"We are jointly responsible for making this thing happen," Harrison said. "We are also accountable for engaging others in the community."
Under the previous two superintendents, Providence developed a vision of how its high schools should change. The new superintendent, Donnie Evans, wants to explore whether the district should stay the course or make corrections.
Evans last week announced the creation of a high school steering committee to review what's working and what isn't. The committee will be chaired by Warren Simmons, executive director of the Annenberg Institute of School Reform at Brown University.
"In most urban districts, you have pockets of innovation and then the large, comprehensive high schools," Simmons said yesterday. "The challenge is how you take these pockets of innovation and bring them up to scale."
Some outsiders have suggested that the large, comprehensive high school is a dinosaur that has outlived its usefulness. But Simmons said it doesn't make sense to abandon the old models until you have figured out how to hire and train the teachers who must make it happen.
"The issue is not which school model to choose," he said, "but how you design the entire system."
Breaking big high schools into smaller ones is a step in the right direction, Simmons said, but it doesn't provide all of the answers. The district, he said, should pay attention to how schools educate students with special needs, and those who are learning English.
The high school steering committee will study, among other issues, whether the curriculum is rigorous enough, whether high schools need to do more to improve literacy skills and whether the smaller high schools are more effective in getting students to graduate.
But Simmons said that the district can't bear all the responsibility for transforming the schools.
"While Providence has made significant progress," he said, "much of the work isn't inside the school system. How do we take the resources in the community and focus them on supporting our schools?"
The Carnegie grant was designed to do just that: pull together partners from around the community to share their thoughts on making high schools work.
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