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November 2006
Del Sesto High to add principal, outside expert
Posted Friday, November 17, 2006
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Del Sesto High School will get a third principal and an outside intervention expert to help turn around the troubled school, Deputy Supt. Frances Gallo said yesterday.
Although she acknowledged that the building needs extra help, Gallo repeatedly denied that Del Sesto, which houses a high school and a middle school, was a school in crisis.
“This is an urban high school, and it’s filled with kids,” she said. “It will feel disorderly. We need to get down to earth. When I’m there, I don’t see disorder. Is there groping going on in the building? Probably yes. Is it appropriate? No.” The district, she said, needs to give teachers the skills they need to cope with this sort of behavior.
Gallo said that the district is adding another principal to work with Assistant Principal John Craig, who oversees Del Sesto High School. In addition, the district has hired Donald Pellegrino, an outside intervention expert, to help the four principals figure out how to work together as a team. In addition to Craig, the complex has a middle school principal and a principal in charge of the entire building.
During Tuesday’s School Board meeting, several middle school teachers complained that the school was out of control. They said Del Sesto High School students were unruly and disruptive, interrupting classes, talking back to teachers and bothering middle school girls. One middle school teacher, Jeremy Senser, said he saw a girl being groped by a male classmate, while other teenagers watched. When he asked the couple to break it up, the girl swore at him and refused to give him her name.
These teachers say that it simply isn’t appropriate to house older teenagers with younger ones. Del Sesto began as a middle school and added ninth graders last year and tenth graders this year. Elementary school students are taught in a separate building on the same North End campus.
Although teachers said the problem has been building for some time, Gallo said the school had a smooth opening.
“Gradually,” she said, “the kids got comfortable. … The teachers started slipping.” They stayed inside their classrooms during passing time. The principal spent more time in his office, filling in for clerical staff or dealing with crises. Before you know it, Gallo said, things started to happen.
“There were a variety of incidents across our schools, and we acted on them,” she said. “We are retraining our principals and assistant principals on how to conduct an investigation.”
Pellegrino, a former administrator from Massachusetts, was hired three weeks ago to help all the high school principals develop their leadership skills. Gallo said the district asked him to evaluate the situation at Del Sesto, and, after observing the school, Pellegrino recommended putting additional staff in the building.
“We are adding another principal for the remainder of the year who can work with Mr.Craig in conjunction with Mr. Pellegrino,” Gallo said. “We want to build a culture that offers a safe and orderly learning environment.”
Gallo denied that the district failed to act on the problem in a timely manner.
“On Oct. 27, the faculty met with the union,” she said. “The following Friday, the union brought it to our attention and we began to create a plan.”
On Tuesday, the director of middle schools, Denise Carpenter, told teachers about the additional support that the district had planned. Carpenter met with members of the School Improvement Team and the union.
Gallo said that part of the problem arises from the understandable tension between middle school teachers, who felt the building was theirs, and the high school teachers, who began arriving last year.
At least one high school teacher said that Del Sesto has been unfairly maligned by the school’s middle school colleagues. The teacher, who asked to remain nameless, said the middle school students are just as unruly as the older ones.
“We were thrown into the building last year with no books and no supplies,” the teacher said. “The middle school teachers resent us being here. The school just doesn’t jell.”
Both groups of teachers agree on one thing: that the high school doesn’t belong in a middle school building.
Asked whether the district would consider moving the high school students to the new building under construction on Adelaide Avenue, Gallo said, “all of this is on the table.”
Del Sesto has had a troubled past. The high school began the 2005 school year without adequate textbooks and supplies. After teachers complained that the school was rudderless, Supt. Donnie Evans appointed Craig to put the school back together.
In March, students staged a sit-in after Craig was transferred, something the principal had originally requested. But Evans restored Craig after listening to the outpouring of support from students and faculty.
‘Crisis at Del Sesto High’ in Providence
Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Del Sesto Middle School teachers complained that the high school students in their building are so rude, noisy and disruptive that it is making it next to impossible for them to teach.
Jeremy Senser, a middle school teacher, told the Providence School Board last night that there is “a crisis at Del Sesto High School,” adding that the negative school climate is not only interfering with his ability to reach his students, but also setting a bad example for younger students.
Two years ago, ninth graders were moved into the Del Sesto complex, which includes Springfield Middle School. An elementary school is located in a separate building on the same site.
With the arrival of 10th graders this fall, Senser and other teachers said that the building became even more out of control, especially during passing times.
“It’s dangerous to surround seventh and eighth graders in such a negative climate,” he told the board. “I’ve seen a decrease in student achievement, in teaching and learning, even in parents’ ability to get into the building.”
Outside the meeting, teachers described a situation in which high school students roam the hallways during class time, talking loudly, swearing and speaking on their cell phones. Senser said he saw a female high school student being groped by a male student while several teenagers watched. When he tried to break up the gathering, the girl told him to get lost, using a four-letter word. When he asked for her name, she repeated the sexually explicit swear word, then threatened to beat him.
“The high school students have no respect for middle school teachers,” he said. “They don’t listen to us.”
“Teachers are starting to close their doors,” one teacher said, “and that’s a telltale sign that a school is in crisis.”
Meanwhile, middle school students feel intimidated by their older peers, especially middle school girls, who are subject to harassment from older boys, according to teachers. Senser said it is not unusual for older boys to burst into his classroom, looking for middle school girls.
“You can’t have a middle school in the same building as a high school,” said Rick Taylor, another middle school teacher. “Most of the research suggests that this model is wrong.” The middle and high school students not only share the same floors, they share the cafeteria, labs and other common areas.
And there are different rules for the two age groups. Middle school students are not allowed to bring cell phones and backpacks to class, while high school students are permitted to do so. As one teacher put it, “There is no cohesive plan” for the complex.
When the K-12 complex was created two years ago, the goal was to create a seamless education facility where teachers would nurture students as they moved from elementary to middle school and up. But middle school teachers say the real reason for the move was to ease overcrowding at high schools until a new high school could be built. That school is under construction and should be finished in January.
Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers Union, said he met with faculty members on Oct. 27 and again yesterday, and has requested additional administrative support from the school district.
“This is what happens when you have insufficient funds,” he said last night. “You make decisions that aren’t right for kids.”
After last night’s meeting, Supt. Donnie Evans said he was sending two administrators to the building this morning to help restore order to the complex.
Del Sesto High School made headlines last year when a group of teenagers staged a sit-in to protest the removal of their principal, John Craig. Evans restored Craig to that position after meeting with the students, who spoke of how Craig was like a father to them. But middle school teachers said Craig was so busy dealing with crises that he didn’t have time to patrol the hallways.
“This situation is no fault of the teachers or the administrators,” Smith said. “The complex was dealt a difficult hand.”
Where graffiti stood now green blooms at D’Abate School
Posted Friday, November 3, 2006
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A mural blooms off Kossuth Street where street graffiti once reigned. The painting, which is really a poem, is the only spot of color on an otherwise shopworn street.
It is painted on the worn brick of William D’Abate Elementary School, an oasis of green in a densely settled neighborhood. The poem is written in three languages — English, Spanish and Khmer —the languages spoken by children in the school. Beneath the poem are dozens of pint-sized handprints in green paint, the color of green plants, the color of life.
In 1995, bilingual teacher Ligna Sanchez decided to do something to stop the graffiti that kept appearing like blight on the school walls. Working with several young adults from the community service organization City Year, they painted a mural that illustrated the popular poem that begins “If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient. …”
For 10 years, the wall-sized mural remained unscathed. An elderly woman who lived across the street kept watch, according to D’Abate Principal Lucille Furia. But then the woman moved and the vandals returned. When D’Abate opened this fall, the mural was ruined.
Furia was outraged. During a conversation with Ann Miranda of Struever Bros Eccles & Rouse, one of the school’s community partners, Furia mentioned what happened to the mural. Struever Brothers, which developed Rising Sun Mills on Valley Street, told Furia that the company would restore the mural and hired a local artist, Elizabeth Alexander, to do the work.
Struever Brothers has been a great partner to the children of William D’Abate, Furia said. Last year, the company mobilized 200 volunteers to tear up the concrete sidewalks, replacing them with grass and flowers.
“They exemplify what we try to teach the children,” Furia said, “that everyone has a responsibility to their neighborhood, their school, their own backyard. We all have to work to build a community.”
Recently, the children added the finishing touches, painting their palms with green paint and then pressing them flat against the wall beneath the intricate Khmer script.
“The kids thought it was magic,” said Alexander, 24, who lives in the Armory District. “They thought it was really slimy.”
The mural will now be covered with a special varnish that makes it easier to remove graffiti.
In the late afternoon light, the words of the poem almost disappear into the colorful background. They say:
“If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient.
“If children live with security, they learn to have faith.
“If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
“If children live with acceptance and friendship, they learn to find love in the world.”
Teacher thrives on a new challenge
Posted Friday, November 3, 2006
LINDA BORGJournal staff writer
Sharon Lloyd Clark has worked at elite prep schools and is now in charge of turning around the poor performance of Providence high schools.
The Providence Journal / Kris Craig
PROVIDENCE — Sharon Lloyd Clark has seen education from both sides of the class divide: as the director of an elite prep school near Boston and as an adviser helping urban schools improve.
This summer, Supt. Donnie Evans tapped Clark to be his director of high schools, one of three top administrators who will be responsible for elementary, middle and high schools. While the other leaders came from within the system, Evans went outside to hire Clark.
Clark was working for the Education Alliance at Brown University when she met Evans, also a newcomer to the Providence schools. Her job with the alliance involved helping Providence high schools reexamine everything from teacher training to graduation requirements.
Her expertise in high school reform dovetailed nicely with what Evans was looking for in a high school director.
“He wants the high schools to be accredited, and I had worked with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (the accrediting agency),” she said in a recent interview. “I was impressed with this man who was going to focus on high student achievement.”
When Brown agreed to loan Clark to Providence, everything fell into place.
“It’s wonderful for Brown to make this kind of commitment,” Clark said. “I will still have my colleagues at the alliance and the scholarly work there should funnel into my work here.”
Clark, who is 57 and lives in Westport, Mass., with her husband, has always been a high-achiever. A native of New York City, she attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, a school where students must pass a test to gain admission. Afterward, she studied Latin, Greek and history at Muskingum College in Ohio.
During a summer Outward Bound program, Clark was one of a group of college students who taught 400 children at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. Half of the teenagers came from Harlem; the other half came from a rural section of Vermont called the Northeast Kingdom.
“I got hooked on teaching,” she said, “hooked on the whole notion of getting kids excited about learning.”
Despite that early interest, Clarke decided to go for her doctorate in medieval canon law at Cornell University. But when she was just shy of finishing her dissertation, she took a hard look at where she was heading.
“Nobody was really interested in my dissertation,” she said. “I felt like, ‘Why should I finish this? It’s my pleasure but it doesn’t inform my day-to-day work.’ ”
By then, Clark had married a veterinarian who treats large animals, and the couple moved to upstate New York, where Clark began teaching at a private boarding school for girls. Those were heady times for single-sex schools because there was a lot of new research about the ways in which schools were ignoring female students.
During her tenure at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., Clark ran a conference called “Race and the Independent School.”
“Here we were in this white, privileged atmosphere,” Clark said. “If you are going to bring in children of color or children from working-class backgrounds, what will you do to support these kids?”
In 1989, Clark met Ted Sizer, one of the founders of the small schools’ movement, who hired her to run the Institute for Elementary and Secondary Education at Brown, where she spent the next four years working on high school reform.
Two years ago, she returned to Brown, becoming the assistant director of the Education Alliance, which helps districts rethink how high schools should function.
In her new role, Clark is responsible for evaluating the city’s high school programs, personnel and principals. It is her task to turn around the poor performance of the city’s large comprehensive high schools.
“Poverty is not an excuse [for poor performance],” she said. “We want all of our high schools to be accredited. We have to figure out how to make high schools more personal. And I’m taking a hard look at what we need to do to be ready for the new high school graduation requirements.”
(Of the city’s four large high schools, only Classical High School has full accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges).
By spring of 2008, seniors will need to meet a fresh set of state requirements to graduate from high school. They will have to demonstrate that they have mastered certain skills, either through a senior project or a portfolio of their work.
Clark does not believe that there is any magic bullet that will transform high schools, lower the dropout rate and boost college enrollment.
“Small schools are not the answer if you do them the same way you did large high schools,” she said. “I am a reformer. I want to create a portfolio of high schools so that students have choices.”
Clark has two children, a daughter who works as a structural engineer in New York City and a son who attends Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in New York.
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