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November 2007
Progress seen at Hope High
Posted Thursday, November 29, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Hope High School has created a safe, nurturing environment where students feel challenged and teachers feel empowered, but teaching students to read and think analytically continues to be an issue.
Yesterday, two members of the state Department of Education briefed high school faculty on the findings of a two-day evaluation by a visiting team of 25 educators from Providence and other school districts. The team visited almost every classroom, met with students and teachers, and interviewed colleges that have formed partnerships with the East Side high school.
The report will be one of many pieces of evidence presented to state education Commissioner Peter McWalters when he convenes a public hearing in early February on Hope’s progress three years after he intervened in the failing high school. In his order, McWalters told the school to make a number of sweeping changes, including breaking into three smaller learning academies.
Rick Richards, a state school improvement specialist, and Mary Canole, the state’s director of progressive support and intervention, presented the report before Supt. Donnie Evans, Providence Teachers’ Union president Steve Smith, and the school’s entire faculty.
According to the team’s findings, teachers place such an emphasis on basic routines and skills that the development of higher-order thinking skills is neglected. Some teachers ignore students as they disengage and sit quietly in class. Students aren’t asked to think deeply about what they’re reading. As a result, only a few students are confident thinkers, the report said.
Some students say they’re bored in class and therefore take less responsibility to become better readers. While some teachers encourage thoughtful class discussions, too often they fall short of pushing students’ understanding to a higher level.
The team also found that a teacher’s ability to use literacy strategies varies according to how long that teacher has been with the district because the major training in literacy was done some years ago. This lack of expertise diminishes both the quality and the cohesiveness of literacy instruction.
Arthur Petrosinelli, one of three principals at the high school, agreed that Hope has to do more professional training in literacy instruction, but said that the district has to assume some of this responsibility, adding that there has been no district-led professional training on literacy this year.
Petrosinelli said Hope High School spent the first 2½ years implementing McWalters’ order, which called for the creation of three learning communities, advisories, partnerships with outside institutions, and active parental involvement.
Petrosinelli seemed to sum up the report’s conclusions when he said, “We’re on the right road but we have a ways to go yet.”
The commissioner’s team was much more enthusiastic about other aspects of Hope’s progress.
“Students at Hope demonstrate a sense of pride in their school,” the report said. “They are aware of their great diversity, accept one another’s differences and embrace their cultural distinctions. Students report that they look forward to coming to school.”
While this might not sound like a big deal, it was only a few years ago that Hope students routinely left school in droves at lunch, in some cases, never to return. And veteran teachers remember when bathroom fires were a weekly occurrence.
The visiting team also had high praise for Hope’s principals and teachers. The administration has made it clear that students and staff will carry themselves with respect and dignity.
“To a remarkable degree, teachers and students accept these important expectations, make them their own, and live up to them on a daily basis,” the team wrote. “Over and over again, the team heard people testify to the enormous progress that has been made over a few short years in this area.”
Hope High School was also credited for spreading leadership among its teaching staff, who are responsible for running the school improvement teams and implementing the new graduation requirements.
“This evident level of acceptance of major change initiatives would not exist without the widespread participation of teachers in school leadership and decision-making.”
The team, however, said that more work needs to be done to define the separate identities of each of the learning academies: arts, technology and leadership.
The high school also received kudos for establishing strong partnerships with several area colleges, including the Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams University, Johnson & Wales University and Rhode Island College. Some colleges have helped the school write new curricula while others have given students a chance to take classes on campus.
But the college partners have “an acute concern” about the lack of computer software and hardware, especially in relation to the Hope Technology Academy. Evans yesterday acknowledged that technology is a problem and said that, while money remains a challenge, the district is committed to finding solutions.
After the report was read, Evans added his own words of praise:
“You have one of the most nurturing cultures in the district,” he told faculty. “This is a caring school and an orderly environment. There is a tremendous amount of involvement with parents and the community.”
The school, he said, has a strong sense of vision, holds high expectations for its students, and uses student data to shape instruction.
Evans ended by saying, “You are doing a great job, considering all that you’ve been through.”
After the hearing in February, McWalters has three choices: to continue the state’s involvement at Hope, modify the order, or abolish it all together. Before he hears testimony, both the high school and the district are expected to come up with a plan that charts the school’s future goals.
Newcomer’ students actually look forward to coming to class
Posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
Born and raised in West Africa, at least half of the students in Murkje de Vries’ class had never seen snow before Tuesday’s insubstantial flurry.
For many of these teenagers, this is a year of firsts: the first time in the United States, the first time in an American high school, the first Thanksgiving.
Yesterday, de Vries asked each student to stand up and read a short piece entitled “What I am thankful for….”
Malida, who is from Guinea, reads without glancing at her paper:
“I am thankful for my life.
“I am thankful for my school.
“I am thankful for my friends.
“I am thankful for my parents.”
Another young woman, who is shy, can’t stop giggling, burying her face behind a sheet of paper. De Vries lets her finish reading and then offers a few suggestions.
“I know that in some cultures, this isn’t respectful,” she says, “but in America, you need to make eye contact with your audience. It’s that silent language — body language.”
Every year, dozens of families arrive in Providence from Liberia, Guinea and Sudan. Some of the children have spent their entire lives in refugee camps; others have been on the move, one step ahead of the latest insurgency, the latest civil war. Many have witnessed the unspeakable. They have seen their families and their villages torn asunder.
Because their lives have been chaotic, these students have had little formal education. Some don’t know how to read cursive. Others can’t recite the alphabet. A few don’t know how to hold a book or read from left to right.
One way or another, the older students wind up in the newcomer class at Mount Pleasant High School, and those that make it there are blessed because De Vries views teaching as a calling.
“Ah, Chercher,” de Vries says with a smile to a particularly boisterous student. “Mon enfant terrible.”
There is a holy aspect to this work, De Vries says, a sweetness to these students that stands in startling contrast to the lives they have led.
“They often call me mother,” she says. “It’s like an extended family.”
As if on cue, the bell rings and a young woman slips through the open door and gives de Vries a hug.
In a culture where urban districts are begging students to stay in school, “newcomer” students actually look forward to coming to class. When the newcomer class was located at Nathan Bishop Middle School, the students would arrive at 7 a.m. and sit on the steps, waiting for the doors to open.
Providence has two newcomer classes, one at Mount Pleasant, the other at Gilbert Stuart Middle School. Students stay with the same teacher all day, much like the children in self-contained special-education classes.
Because they have had little or no formal schooling, the students are taught a little bit of elementary-level social studies, math and science with a heavy concentration on fluency in English.
“These teenagers come here with great challenges, but also with a great desire to learn,” said Pam Ardizzone, who runs the high school-level program for English Language Learners. “However, if they weren’t newcomers, there is no way they would be able to survive the traditional education system.”
Some students pick up the basics quickly and can make the transition into an English-as-a-Second-Language class. Typically, students spend a year in the newcomer class, although Providence educators concede that some students need more time to adjust to their new surroundings.
“It’s mind-boggling,” Ardizzone said. “There’s no way to anticipate all of the possible scenarios. It’s a constant learning curve.”
Teaching older children with little or no previous education is still very much a work in progress. The newcomer program began five years ago as a separate academy for students who needed a setting where they could learn at their own pace. Two years ago, the district decided to move to a new model because, at Nathan Bishop, the newcomer students were too isolated from their peers.
In one sense, you could say that the district is building the airplane while it’s flying. One of the biggest challenges is figuring out which students belong in the newcomer class and then designing a system that monitors their progress once they leave.
“There are many cases where the child arrives without a transcript,” Ardizzone said. “Sometimes, the child says that he has completed eighth grade but really hasn’t. That’s how students have fallen through the cracks in the past. We’re tightening up the whole system of student identification.”
The other challenge is the lack of resources. Providence has nearly 100 refugee students at the middle and high school levels, and that number doesn’t include students from Latin America who have had limited schooling. Approximately 4,000 students are enrolled in the district’s bilingual or English-as-a-Second Language programs.
But the district only has three English Language Learner specialists to help teachers deal with the web of social, emotional and academic issues facing these students and no formal professional development on refugee-related issues. Next semester, the International Institute will begin to hold teacher workshops on African refugee issues, and students from Brown University will begin to tutor students who need help after class.
The district is also taking a hard look at the expectation that all students should graduate from high school in four years:
“We need to find a way to let them stay in high school for a fifth or sixth year,” Ardizzone said. “That’s a discussion we need to have with the state Department of Education.”
Inside the newcomer class at Mount Pleasant, none of this really matters. De Vries is constantly making connections between the concrete and the abstract, the text and real life. After reading a story set in Japan in which soup figures prominently, de Vries asks the class to describe their favorite soup, which turns out to be spicy pepper.
Because the story centers on a man who is choking on a rice cake, deVries explains about dialing 911 for emergencies in the Unitied States, which leads to a discussion of the Heimlich maneuver.
“There is a tenderness to this work,” she says later. “It’s the American philosophy, you know, that we are all here together, celebrating learning and life.”
Journal Article - School board hires new communications officer
Posted Tuesday, November 20, 2007
TO: All Union Members
FROM: Steven F. Smith
DATE: November 14, 2007
The enclosed article appeared in today’s November 14, 2007 Providence Journal.
The article is self-explanatory. I was outraged when I learned that the Superintendent and the School Board intended to fill this position in light of severe budget constraints.
I spoke before the School Board last night and this article accurately reflects the nature and tone of my comments.
****E N C L O S U R E ****
School board hires new communications officer
By Linda BorgJournal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Providence School Board last night appointed a new facilitator of communications and media relations to the tune of $68,682, a decision that the president of the Providence Teachers Union called a slap in the face to teachers.
Christina O'Reilly, the senior marketing and communications officer at the Community College of Rhode Island, will be responsible for reaching out to the news media and handling communications in the School Department. She will fill the vacancy left by Maria Tocco, who left the district in September to take a position with the Fall River School Department.
O'Reilly will report to Kim Rose, who oversees communications and parent engagement.
PTU President Steven Smith said that hiring a media person at nearly $70,000 sends the wrong message to teachers and staff, many of whom have been displaced from their jobs because of the district's budget crisis. More than 120 fulltime teachers were laid off this summer, recalled and then re-assigned to the long-term substitute pool, which means they no longer have a classroom of their own.
Because the district faced a $6-million budget deficit this year, the department had to cut deeply into its teaching ranks, including reducing the number of special education teachers. The district recently received permission from the Rhode Island Department of Education to increase the size of special education classes as a way to close the budget shortfall. That decision has since been appealed to the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education.
"What are you going to have a communications person talk about?" Smith said. "Removing teachers? Eliminating electives? Increasing class size for our neediest students?
"This is an insult," he said. "Everyone should feel the pain. You're sending a message that the School Board is out of touch."
Supt. Donnie Evans told the board that the facilitator of communications is not a new position, adding that other districts similar in size to Providence have much more robust central administrations.
"It's a miracle what we do with our limited staff," he said. "Communication is very important."
O'Reilly has worked for the Community College of Rhode Island for the past five years and from 2000 to 2002, she was the communications coordinator for the Hospital Association of Rhode Island. She is 31 and lives in East Providence.
The School Board also appointed Catherine Oneppo as interim director for high schools, a position vacated by Sharon Lloyd Clark. Oneppo had been principal of the Cooley Health, Science and Technology Academy, a small high school on Thurbers Avenue.
The board also awarded citations to the following people:
*Penny Pare was awarded the Social Worker of the Year award by the National Association of Social Work, Rhode Island chapter. Penny routinely visits families at home and accompanies them to appointments.
*Jerry Luongo, a gym teacher at West Broadway Elementary School, who saved a child from choking by performing the Heimlich maneuver.
* Diane West and Scott Sutherland for their contributions to the education profession. Sutherland, one of three principals at Hope High School, and West, a guidance counselor at Hope, published an article called "At the Heart of School Reform" in the American School Counselor Association magazine.
Day of reckoning ahead for Hope
Posted Tuesday, November 20, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Is Hope High School ready to come out from under the state’s intervention order or does the once-struggling high school need more support before it can go it alone?
In February, Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, will hold a hearing to help him answer those questions. At the forum, McWalters will hear testimony from the players in the Hope community: teachers, parents, principals, central office administrators and college partners.
“The question is, ‘How well has Hope implemented the order and what, if anything, should Hope be doing differently?’ ” said Mary Canole, director of progressive, support and intervention for the state Department of Education.
McWalters will examine all kinds of evidence, from student work to the report from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which recently restored full accreditation to the school.
The most comprehensive evaluation, however, may come from the reflections of a team of 25 state and local educators sent out by the Department of Education to shadow students, observe teachers and meet with faculty and staff in small groups.
The visit last week focused on one area: how well has Hope been able to improve student reading and the teaching of reading? According to Canole, the commissioner’s office decided to concentrate on reading because it’s the one subject that is taught across curriculum.
“Reading is a good lens to measure how effective a school is,” said Rick Richards, a school improvement specialist with the state Education Department. “All of these pieces will inform the commissioner’s decision to retain the intervention order, revise it or revoke it.”
Three years ago, McWalters ordered the 1,200-student Hope High School to break into three smaller learning academies: arts, leadership and technology. It was the first time that McWalters flexed his muscles under a state regulation called Progressive, Support and Intervention, which gives the commissioner broad latitude to impose major changes on the failing school.
At the time of the intervention, Hope was a school in crisis: student performance was plummeting, the dropout rate was soaring and the building was considered out of control.
In 2005-2006, three principals were appointed with the power to hire their own staff, and teachers were asked to opt into the school and commit to a new set of goals. To make a big school feel more personal, the school implemented advisories, which pair a teacher with a same small group of students. Hope created individual learning plans, a guide that helps students identify their academic, social and personal goals.
To make sure Hope was following his order, McWalters appointed a special master, Nicholas Donohue, the former New Hampshire commissioner of education, to monitor the school’s progress for 18 months.
Last December, Donohue issued his final report, calling the school’s progress “enormous” and crediting its staff with responding “heroically” to the school’s many challenges.
But Donohue cautioned that the work was far from finished. Attendance was still too low, he said. Parental engagement remained a stubborn hurdle. And he recommended that leadership be distributed more equally among faculty and staff.
But Donohue said the single greatest impediment to progress, not only at Hope but at the city’s other three high schools, was the central office’s lack of capacity. The central office doesn’t have enough people to help individual schools implement reforms, from analyzing the data to revamping curriculum. Unless the district can provide schools with more support at the administrative level, the district will be limited to managing its most basic functions, Donohue said.
One of the teachers interviewed by school improvement specialist Richards Friday shared some of those concerns. He said that teachers receive conflicting directives from the central office. Last year, for example, the district threw out Scope and Sequence, a plan that was supposed to ensure that every ninth grader was learning the same material at the same time.
In high school, “they told us that American history will begin with the Civil War instead of colonization,” the teacher said. “The problem with that is most kids come here without prior knowledge of early American history.”
The teacher also complained about the lack of materials, a problem that hinders teaching and learning. At Hope, the history teachers received one set of source materials this fall that had to be shared by the entire department. The teacher also said that there is a lack of continuity in the professional training for teachers, calling it a bunch of “fits and starts.”
“Truthfully,” he said, “I hope that the level of support [from the state] can continue. Three years in, there has been a lot of progress but there’s a long way to go.”
A teacher in the technology academy said the partnership with Johnson & Wales University has been an overwhelming success, noting that the college helped the academy revamp its entire curriculum. But he said that the district has not been able to provide the technology needed to fully implement the new curriculum.
“Morale has taken a hit,” he told Richards. “We only have enough technology to support the first two classes in our strand. We’re not where we want to be.”
The teacher specifically said that the district has held up money that is needed to complete the curriculum, which calls for student research leading to a final project.
Teachers, however, said that they are positive about the changes at Hope, saying that there is a new climate of collaboration and accountability, and that the school is safe, orderly and welcoming to students and staff.
Once the report by the visiting team is completed and McWalters has reviewed it, the commissioner or someone from his office will present the findings at a Providence School Board meeting.
Some schools turn to direct instruction to master basics
Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Adam Heywood stands in front of a dozen 5- and 6-year-olds. On the wall, the sign says, “Feet on the floor. Hands in your lap. Back against the chair.”
“Let’s sound out the word maaad,” Heywood tells the class, stretching out the word.
“Maaaad,” the children repeat.
“Now say it fast.”
“Mad,” the children shout.
“Yes,” he said. “Here are some new sounds. Nnnnnnn.”
“Get ready,” he said. “Say it.”
“Nnnnn.”
“Yes,” he said, snapping his fingers to keep the class moving.
“This word rhymes with ear,” Heywood said. “Get ready. Say it.”
“Dear.”
“Yes.”
The tempo is very fast. The call-and-response sounds like a choral group. Without breaking stride, Heywood calls on individual students to gauge whether that child understands the question. The lesson is highly scripted and every component is broken into the smallest possible pieces.
Welcome to direct instruction, a controversial, and, some argue, highly effective way of teaching students who are struggling readers. Because the program’s goal is to accelerate student achievement as quickly as possible, the teacher spends most of the time on fast-paced, teacher-led instruction.
Direct instruction has its roots in phonics or skill-based instruction, a bottom-up approach that starts with the basic parts of words and moves toward reading as a whole. First, lessons begin with sounding out letters, followed by combinations of letters. Proponents of phonics instruction say that children are better able to decode words after learning how to decode sounds and letter groups.
This year, Providence is piloting direct instruction in seven elementary schools, most of which have failed to make adequate yearly progress for four or five years under the No Child Left Behind law.
Last year, an independent consultant hired by Supt. Donnie Evans to evaluate the district’s reading program concluded that schools weren’t providing systematic instruction. In fact, the consultants said that many teachers lacked the expertise needed to address their students’ limited reading skills.
The study also found that 41 percent of students in grades 4 through 10 scored below basic levels on the Stanford 10 reading test, and it reported that those numbers only got worse as students grew older.
Faced with that data, plus pressure from the state Department of Education to improve student performance in the district’s lowest-performing schools, Evans decided to try a phonics or skill-based approach to reading — direct instruction
The majority of Providence elementary schools are still using balanced literacy, a program introduced by then-Supt. Diana Lam that emphasizes reading comprehension or deciphering the meaning of words. Although this model also uses phonics instruction, it holds to a theory that students learn best by reading real literature rather than the basal readers used in most phonics programs.
Paula Shannon, the district’s acting elementary supervisor, said that direct instruction was chosen because it has the longest history of research supporting the program’s effectiveness.
A 1977 study, Project Follow-Through, compared the achievement of high-poverty students receiving direct instruction with students in other experimental programs. Direct instruction students outperformed students in every other program on every academic measure. Follow-up studies also showed that students taught this way in the early grades experienced lasting benefits, according to a report by the American Federation of Teachers.
Direct instruction, Shannon said, has also been proven to accelerate learning, which is especially important to urban districts like Providence, where significant numbers of students are reading one and two grades below their age level.
Finally, this program is tightly scripted, which means that a second-grade reader at Carl Lauro Elementary School is learning the same thing as a child at Kizirian. This is particularly important in a city like Providence, where children move from one school to another.
“It leaves nothing to chance,” Shannon said. “The teachers’ job is to practice their delivery. It’s like being an actor.”
But the program’s inflexibility is just what critics deplore.
“Teachers are jumping through hoops,” said Roger Eldridge, interim dean of the Feinstein School of Education at Rhode Island College. “What teachers really need is more professional development, not all of these off-the-shelf books.”
Critics like Eldridge say that direct instruction dumbs-down reading instruction, playing to students with the weakest reading skills. By focusing so much on skill-and-drill, they also say that it takes the fun out of reading and deprives students of reading real literature.
Finally, opponents say that this approach also strips teachers of their freedom to innovate, turning them into little more than lesson-delivery systems.
Debbie Ruggieri, the principal at Kizirian Elementary School, couldn’t disagree more. Providence teachers can’t assume that children will enter kindergarten and first grade with the knowledge of basic sounds, something that their more affluent peers have probably mastered. In suburban districts, it’s not unusual for first graders to know how to read; most know their alphabet.
Children who fail to master the basic components of reading will continue to fall behind, Ruggieri said, adding that poor readers often wind up acting out and ultimately, dropping out of school.
“We can always get creative later on,” she said. “First, we want them to be successful. What good is being creative if half the class can’t read?”
The beauty of direct instruction, supporters say, is that students are grouped based by reading ability, not age, so struggling readers don’t get frustrated because they can’t keep up, and skilled readers aren’t bored because they’re grouped with children of similar competency.
Students are not only tested before they begin the program, but they are continuously tested during the semester to measure their progress. In fact, every 5 to 10 minutes, the teacher performs mini-tests that monitor how individual students are doing.
“I love it,” said Pat King, a second-grade teacher at Kizirian. “I’ve already seen such progress. The kids really know what they are doing. There’s no guesswork on our part.”
“It spells everything out,” Heywood said, pointing to a three-inch-thick binder. “Before, I’d be up in the book room, looking for lesson plans. With this, it’s all right here.”
Although Evans hopes to expand the practice of direct instruction next year, the district is still looking for core reading program for the majority of elementary school students who are reading at grade level. Reading Street is being tried out at Kennedy Elementary School while Imagine It is being piloted at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School.
“In the next three years, we want one of these to be our core reading program,” Shannon said, adding that direct instruction will be used primarily for struggling readers.
Hearing opens on size change for special education classes
Posted Thursday, November 8, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — On the same day that the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education held a public hearing on whether to lift the limit on the size of special education classes statewide, the regents heard testimony on the issue from the Providence Teachers Union and a representative of the state commissioner of education.
The union and the parents of two special education students sued Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, and Supt. Donnie Evans after McWalters allowed Providence to increase the class size for mild to moderate special education students from 10 to 12. The suit says that this move will actually harm, not help, students.
“There isn’t a shred of evidence that increasing class size has any educational value,” the union’s lawyer, Marc Gursky, said yesterday. “It’s crystal clear that this was motivated by money.”
Last month, Superior Court Judge Allen P. Rubine denied the union’s request for a preliminary injunction to restore the original class size until the matter was resolved in court. Instead, Rubine ordered the union to make its case before the regents, which sets statewide education policy.
Although he heard arguments from both parties, Rubine did not answer the central question raised by the union: Does the state education commissioner have the legal authority to alter the state special education laws?
According to Gursky, the state’s special education laws are protected from interference from outside parties by the Caruolo Act, a state law that enables a school board to challenge a city or town’s education appropriation in court.
But Deputy Commissioner David Abbott contended yesterday that the General Assembly, in the 1990s, granted the commissioner sweeping authority over school personnel, programs and finances in those school districts that consistently fail to meet state achievement standards. The statute is called progressive support and intervention.
“The record in Providence has not been very good,” Abbott said. “Special education [test scores] have been very low. Clearly, the current class size hasn’t met [the state’s] goals.”
According to Abbott, McWalters didn’t stop after increasing class size. In a letter to Evans, the commissioner imposed a strict set of conditions for what Providence must do to improve special education, from placing a highly qualified teacher in every classroom to making sure that students are no longer taught in sub-standard classroom space.
At yesterday’s hearing before three regents, Gary Grove, Amy Berreta and Karin Forbes, the lawyers for both parties cast the commissioner’s decision in precedent-setting terms.
According to Abbott, “Doing anything less than upholding the commissioner’s decision will send a message to the entire state that we are not serious about student achievement.”
But Gursky called McWalters’ ruling “a horribly dangerous decision by a commissioner.”
“You should be very concerned that a future commissioner, simply by waving his wand, could make a decision by the Board of Regents go away,” Gursky said. “People ought to be very concerned about that concentration of power. I urge you to find that the commissioner did not have the authority to change class size.”
Abbott said the ultimate question is whether the regents agree with the commissioner’s decision. Doesn’t the Department of Education, he asked, have the power to pursue new educational strategies if the old ones aren’t working?
“Mr. Abbott says that class size limits weren’t working,” Gursky said. “But you’ll search in vain to find any reference to that from the commissioner. On the contrary, he makes it clear that if there were unlimited resources, he’d have both [smaller classes and the conditions].”
According to Gursky, the entire decision-making process was flawed: Evans made the decision in August, three weeks before the beginning of classes, leaving little or no time to prepare teachers or staff.
“The commissioner made a judgment without attending any of the hearings or listening to the witnesses,” Gursky said, adding that “the decision should have been made by you.”
But Abbott said that the union’s argument is really about preserving teachers’ jobs: “You have to balance the interests of students against the interests of teachers.”
The regents postponed acting on the appeal until Dec. 27, which will give them the opportunity to review the documents submitted by both parties. The three regents will then make a recommendation to the full board.
Debate continues over the need to close West Broadway school
Posted Wednesday, November 7, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
David Finney says West Broadway Elementary School can be renovated for less than the cost of a new building.
The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch
PROVIDENCE — A public school is more than the sum of its square footage. Its value lies in the role it plays in the neighborhood.
That certainly was the message put forth by David R. Finney, president of Design Partnership of Cambridge, Mass., who discussed the reasons why Providence should renovate rather than replace the West Broadway Elementary School and Mount Pleasant High School.
“History is about preserving buildings that have a place in society,” Finney told about 50 residents who gathered last night at the former West Broadway Elementary School. “It’s about keeping the iconic elements of a city’s past.”
The Providence Preservation Society hired Finney to compare the cost of preserving two historic school buildings — a small elementary school and a large high school — versus the cost of replacing them. The district decided to commission the study after DeJONG Inc., in its sweeping school facilities report, recommended replacing approximately 20 of the city’s 42 school buildings.
The School Board has already approved the first phase of DeJONG’s proposed $800-million school facilities plan, which calls for rebuilding West Broadway and replacing Mount Pleasant High School with two smaller schools.
It came as no surprise that last night’s crowd was staunchly in the renovation camp, at least as far as West Broadway Elementary School goes. Last year, Supt. Donnie Evans’ decision to close the popular neighborhood school provoked outrage from parents, neighbors and preservationists. A handful of parents appealed the decision, but the state Department of Education supported the School Board’s vote to close it. This year, West Broadway is being used to house students from Central High School and the adjacent Hanley Career & Technical Center while renovations are taking place at those schools.
Using the DeJONG education specifications as a starting point, Finney said that it would actually cost slightly less money to renovate the West Broadway school. His plan calls for building an addition between the building and the gymnasium to provide elevator access to all floors, which would make the school handicapped accessible. Plans also include an addition to provide more pre-kindergarten space.
“This would be functionally equivalent to new construction,” he told the audience, adding that the school would have all the modern conveniences for a price similar to new construction.
A new West Broadway would cost an estimated $19.6 million, Finney said, whereas renovation would cost $18.1 million to $19.7 million, depending on the magnitude of the work. Finney also said that the new construction estimate does not include the cost of demolition or site acquisition, which could be substantial.
“I’m comfortable,” he said, “saying this building can be renovated for below the cost of a new building.”
(Finney made a similar pitch on behalf of Mount Pleasant, although, because of its size, it would be far more costly to bring that building up to par. A renovated Mount Pleasant would cost between $75.5 million and $83.9 million, whereas new construction would cost about $80.6 million, he said.)
It was obvious that Finney was preaching to the converted. Neighbors have long argued that West Broadway anchors the neighborhood of lovely antique homes, populated by artists and young families. Parents have praised the school for providing the kind of welcoming environment where children thrive and parents feel like contributors, not outsiders.
Although West Broadway students and staff have been relocated to Springfield Middle School across town, several parents are still smarting over the original decision to close the elementary school.
“I’m tired of seeing my kids crying because they miss the school so much,” said one parent, Maria Rodriguez. “How did we go from a fire violation to wholesale renovation?”
Janet Keller, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, said that two separate but parallel developments were unfurling last year. First, the city commissioned DeJONG to evaluate all of the school buildings. Later, Evans was told that West Broadway violated the fire code because it did not provide a separate means of egress for its younger students. Evans said he had no choice but to close the school, but the neighborhood association hired an architect who said that the egress problem could be resolved for a relatively small amount of money.
During a series of public hearings, parents complained about the lack of public input in the decision to shutter the school. In response to those concerns, Evans appointed a committee of parents, neighbors and elected officials to study what should be done with the school in the future; that group will make a recommendation to Evans before the end of the year.
“The School Department said that this was an old building and a dangerous building. But if they can preserve Brown University, why can’t they preserve this one?” one parent, Elsa Casado, said. “I’m happy that you are here and helping us as parents.”
But City Councilman John Lombardi worried that last night’s discussion would introduce a feeling of false hope in those who want to preserve the elementary school.
“Where do we go from here?” he said. “We made the case before and it fell on deaf ears.”
State Sen. Paul Jabour, D-Providence, said the next step is for the West Broadway study committee to bring Finney’s plan to Evans and the School Board. But he cautioned that it will be tough to convince the legislature to support a project of this magnitude, especially because the state is struggling to fix a multimillion dollar deficit, one that isn’t expected to go away any time soon.
Finney concluded by pointing out that there are two questions: whether to close West Broadway, and where the school stands in the context of the larger school facilities master plan.
“From what I know, it’s possible to fix the egress issue,” he said. “You don’t need to spend $19 million to open the school.”
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