|
|
|
|
December 2004
Preschoolers sought for city program
Posted Thursday, December 23, 2004
The School Department aims to integrate special-needs youngsters into classrooms with 4-year-olds who do not have special needs.
BY KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The School Department is seeking 4-year-olds to fill 50 seats in its preschool program.
The program starts on Jan. 18, according to Paula Jo Gaines, facilitator for the early childhood program.
The program is designed to place children with special needs in a regular classroom, Gaines said.
While the number of seats for special-needs children are filled, school officials are looking for 4-year-olds who do not have special needs to participate.
In the past, school officials did not cast a net to find children to enroll in the program.
However, they have a new strategy that aims to alert parents about the opportunity for their child participate in the free program.
"It's something that many parents haven't known about," Gaines said. "So we're trying to get the word out there [for] 3- and 4-year-olds without disabilities."
If school officials receive more than 50 applications, as they expect, they will schedule a lottery to determine which students will attend, Gaines said.
The school district has preschool classrooms at Anthony Carnevale, Charles Fortes and Alfred Lima, Vartan Gregorian, Pleasant View and West Broadway elementary schools. Some of the programs are half-day; others are full-day.
Gaines said Schools Supt. Melody Johnson wants to establish preschool classrooms at every elementary school.
"It's not that there aren't childcare slots" in private or community-based programs, Gaines said. But the in-school classrooms provide more options for parents who may be looking for only half-day programs or who have children who attend the school.
School districts must provide screening to determine whether a child has special needs before they reach kindergarten.
The School Department is holding another screening today at the Berkshire Head Start Center, 99 Berkshire St. from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for 3- to 5-year-olds.
For information on the screening or the preschool program, call (401) 278-2881.
Hope plan under scrutiny
Posted Thursday, December 9, 2004
On the second day of a hearing into a possible takeover of the school, the state looks for assurances that Providence school officials can deliver on a plan to improve Hope High.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- No sooner had Providence school officials finished presenting ways they intend to fix Hope High School than the top lawyer for the state Department of Education put them on notice that the plan does not pass muster on at least one important point -- the daily schedule.
And Commissioner of Education Peter McWalters, noting Hope High's dropout rate above 50 percent, raised questions about how school officials plan to keep Hope students interested in attending school long enough for them to get the improved education the School Department is promising.
So went the second day of a hearing at which Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson, her top administrators, and the president of the Providence Teachers Union urged McWalters to leave Hope under local control while teachers and administrators work on reform, for another 2 1/2 years.
McWalters called the hearing to gather information he will use in deciding in whether to take over the East Side school, where he first intervened in June 2002, saying that Hope, one of the city's three large comprehensive high schools, had been stuck in the planning phase of reform for years and needed to move forward.
On the opening day of the hearing Tuesday, the Department of Education presented a chronology of state intervention in Providence and at Hope that suggested the school department repeatedly fell short of meeting McWalters' requirements.
As an assurance that the School Department could deliver on its latest school-improvement plan, Johnson and union president Steven F. Smith relied heavily on an agreement included in the most recent teachers' contract that sets up a local union-management committee to intervene in troubled schools.
Before the day ended, it was clear that Jennifer L. Wood, the chief legal counsel at the Department of Education, was looking for other kinds of assurances. She asked very specific questions about what is in the local plan, developed by the union-management committee.
The plan would forgo any changes to Hope during the current school year, to allow it to stabilize after a series of up-and-down changes dating to last spring.
Over the next two school years, Johnson said, it would address criteria McWalters has spelled out for Hope to improve instruction, involve parents in the school and guarantee students advisers.
Wood suggested that the plan cannot pass McWalters' scrutiny unless it is amended to show the next school year's schedule -- an important mechanism that has enormous implications for the quality of life for the entire school community.
McWalters said that as the hearing continues today, there will be an "extended interrogatory" intended to determine "whether the plan on paper is deliverable."
He said that there "intentionally will be questions that . . . test the capacity, the depth and the strength of the partnership" between the teachers' union and the Johnson administration.
"We have to be accountable to the students of Hope High School," McWalters said.
As the hearing officer, McWalters said, he did not intend to be an aggressive interrogator, but he couldn't help throwing out some general impressions.
While Johnson and her administrators emphasized strategies to improve teaching to develop the skills and knowledge spelled out in state standards, McWalters indicated that Hope must also develop ways to keep youngsters interested enough to stay in school.
More than three-quarters of Hope's students fail to make the grade in English, and four-fifths fail to show proficiency in math.
McWalters said the existing academies at Hope did not match his vision of small schools engaged in active partnerships with outside organizations -- associations, for example, that would invite professional artists into the arts school on a daily basis.
And he said the plan didn't help him understand how the advisories would be implemented.
Wood zeroed in on a portion of the plan's timeline that asks McWalters to give the School Department until February -- past the commissioner's Jan. 31 deadline for deciding on a Hope takeover -- to firm up a daily schedule for the next school year.
The schedule has been a key element in a rift between the Hope faculty and the superintendent that has blocked reform plans from moving forward.
Because the schedule is the element that "derailed" plans in the past, Wood said, "our expectation is that there may be some further amendment offered" before McWalters makes his decision.
Responding to a question from Wood, Johnson said that labor leaders and central-office administrators on the union-management school intervention committee would decide on a master schedule for the 2005-2006 school year. She did not explain how the committee would try to get the Hope faculty to support it.
The plan Johnson discussed yesterday was not developed in concert with the Hope faculty, which had voted for a daily advisory period of about one hour.
Yesterday's plan contained an advisory period of 30 minutes a week, along with various options for scheduling that period, as well instructional time and planning time for teachers.
The nature of the advisory period has been a source of friction between Hope teachers and Johnson since last spring.
Although the plan Johnson presented did not acknowledge the faculty's version of the advisory period, she said it did incorporate other features of reform plans that teachers adopted last spring.
In fact, she said, many facets of those plans are now being implemented, including common planning time for teachers, extensive professional development, and after-school tutoring and recreational activities for students.
These are all features McWalters has required, Johnson pointed out.
Johnson and her staff took the position that -- because implementing wholesale improvements in large high schools nationwide usually takes about five years -- Hope is "on track" or even ahead of schedule, and should not be expected to fully implement McWalters' requirements until the 2006-2007 school year.
But the timeline did not take into account that, when McWalters first intervened at Hope in 2002, the school had already been planning to break down into small schools -- for the previous four years. In fact, it had launched pilot academies in September 2001.
The hearing is to continue today at 9:30 a.m. at the Department of Education, in Room 501 of the Shepard building, downtown.
Students join William Cooley family
Posted Wednesday, December 8, 2004
BY KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Three decades ago, when Wayne J. Montague was just a kid, his grandfather took him to a city ward committee meeting.
The puzzled youngster wondered why: He didn't know the issues and he had nothing to say.
He didn't have to say anything, his grandfather told him before issuing a sage piece of advice:
"Listen. It's more important to listen than to talk."
Montague, now an assistant principal at the Gilbert Stuart School, recalled the story yesterday at a dedication ceremony honoring his grandfather, the late William B. Cooley Sr. who died in 1991.
City and school officials, state legislators, friends and relatives of Cooley and students gathered at the Health & Science Technology Academy yesterday morning to pay homage to the truck driver, community activist and humanitarian for whom their school was renamed.
The two-year-old school off Thurbers Avenue is now known as William B. Cooley Sr. High School.
It is one of two high schools in the Juanita Sanchez complex.
The name is especially befitting, according to speakers and city officials who spoke about Cooley, a man known personally to many and in legendary terms to others.
Born in Lynn, Mass., Cooley grew up in the Roger Williams public housing complex that once stood where the schools are located.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he served as tenants association president for the complex and represented the more than 700 families who lived there.
Cooley worked as a truck driver and was a member of the Teamsters union and was a commissioner of the Providence Housing Authority, according to City Councilwoman Balbina Young, who suggested that the building be dedicated in his memory.
Young told the audience that she made the suggestion at the urging of directors of the Roger Williams Day Care Center, which was among the first tenant-sponsored daycares in the country.
Cooley was a founder of the daycare center, which has grown to become "one of the best in the country," Young said.
Known for his integrity, honesty, reliability and accountability, Cooley also served as director of the Talent Search program at Rhode Island College before retiring in 1976, and as a member of the committee that developed the community health centers program, a network of health-care centers in the city.
Mayor David N. Cicilline said Cooley is remembered as a "strong advocate for quality education for all people" who "devoted his heart and soul to the people of this city."
Councilman Luis Aponte, who represents the ward that includes the school, said Cooley "was a pioneer for community improvement and for helping to foster neighborhoods that were open, friendly, safe and enjoyable."
Aponte hopes the name will help inspire a new generation of community leaders and raise awareness about the importance of community service.
Another grandson, Emmanuel Barros, said Cooley spent his life pushing for opportunity and making sure that people of all races had access to it. He urged the students to challenge themselves academically and make the most of their education.
"Be a leader, not a follower," Barros said.
The activist's daughter, Vanessa Cooley, reminded the students that before it became an education complex, the site housed the Roger Williams housing complex.
Cooley lived in a unit that sat near what is now the school cafeteria, she said. In fact, she noted, the students were sitting where Cooley's living room might have been.
By having their school named after him, they are "part of the Cooley family," she said.
Speakers heralded the South Side neighborhood as a place where Cooley worked with fellow activists Charlotte Woods and Al Carrington to make their community and the city a better place.
"Some called it the ghetto, some called it the 'hood," Montague said. "We called it a home."
School named for late activist
Posted Tuesday, December 7, 2004
PROVIDENCE -- One of the two high schools in the Juanita Sanchez Complex is to be dedicated to the late William B. Cooley Sr., a South Providence community leader, this morning.
City Council Majority Leader Luis A. Aponte, D-Ward 10, council President Pro Tempore Balbina A. Young, D-Ward 11, and high school principal Scott Sutherland are expected to preside.
The dedication is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the school, which is known as the Health & Science Technology High School, at 182 Thurbers Ave.
The school, which opened in 2002, houses more than 350 students. Its counterpart in the complex is the Providence Academy of International Studies.
Cooley, who died in 1991 at age 74, was a community advocate who worked to improve education and the circumstances for young people. He was president of the Roger Williams Tenant Association, helped to found Roger Williams Day Care Center and was active in the former Model Cities urban renewal program.
"We are pleased to honor the life of a great contributor to our urban neighborhoods by naming the Health & Science Technology School for William Cooley," Aponte said in a statement.
"This dedication will also help remind young people of the value and significance of community service."
The program is scheduled to include remarks by Cooley's family and friends, Mayor David N. Cicilline, council President John J. Lombardi, Aponte, Young and Schools Supt. Melody Johnson.
Hearings will decide state's role at Hope High
Posted Monday, December 6, 2004
The Providence School Department's challenge is to convince the state commissioner of education that he doesn't have to take over the school.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- On Tuesday, the state commissioner of education will convene a high-stakes hearing on Hope High School, setting the stage for a test of his ability to bring about change at failing public schools in Rhode Island.
Hope is a place of much promise -- embodied in talented young people such as the actors who performed at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August -- and a place of great disappointment, where less than half the students graduate and those who do often speak of their experience in terms of survival.
Two and a half years ago, Commissioner Peter McWalters invited himself to the decision-making table at Hope High School, for the first time exercising authority granted him by the General Assembly to breach the high wall of municipal control of the public schools.
At the time, McWalters pledged that if he didn't get results, he would use his legislative authority and the courts, if necessary, to enforce his orders.
Until now, he has positioned himself at the side of the decision-making table, telling school officials what he wants and waiting and watching while they have tried to solve their own problems. That approach hasn't worked.
While test scores rose last spring, about three-quarters of the junior class had not achieved standards for basic reading comprehension. And four-fifths of the 11th graders tested were not proficient in mathematical computation.
Furthermore, the dropout rate, which had been at about 44 or 45 percent in 2002 and 2003, surged above the halfway mark, to about 52 percent last June.
McWalters says that the students of Hope High School can't wait any longer for change.
With the opening of the hearing at noon on Tuesday, in the fifth-floor conference room in the Shepard building downtown, McWalters will move to the head of the table.
So far, four sessions of the hearing have been scheduled for this week and next, with the promise of more to come, including at least one on a weekend or on a weekday evening.
The so-called "show-cause" hearings will be conducted much like a trial, with lawyers for the state and the School Department each presenting witnesses.
The burden will be on the School Department to convince McWalters that he should not take over Hope High School, the city's largest.
A takeover would mean that McWalters -- not the city -- would decide how Hope will operate and who gets to work there.
If that happens, the Providence Teachers Union would ask its lawyers to determine whether a legal challenge is warranted over the 1997 law that spells out McWalters' authority to provide a progressive degree of "support and intervention" at public schools that don't adequately perform.
As Paul Vorro, the union's executive director, put it recently, McWalters "may have the authority" to take over Hope, but the law has "never been tested."
McWalters is expected to reach a decision by Jan. 31 that will apply to the 2005-2006 school year.
In documents submitted to McWalters in mid-November, Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson and the teachers' union ask the commissioner for an additional 2 1/2 years, through the end of the 2005-2006 academic year, to put into place all the elements of reform that McWalters has spelled out for them.
McWalters already has given Hope 2 1/2 years to comply with a detailed order built around breaking the student body of 1,500 students into smaller schools.
The requirements of his order embody a belief that adolescents learn better in smaller schools.
Key to McWalters' vision is school autonomy, in keeping with a rationale that the adults closest to the students can make more informed decisions about their education than officials further removed.
McWalters has stipulated that each small school should have the authority to select and assign teachers according to the needs of students rather than traditional methods, which rely on a combination of seniority and faculty preference.
In addition, each small school should have:
A faculty adviser for each student, in accordance with regulations adopted by the state Board of Regents.
A wholesale change in methods of instruction so that classroom activities develop the skills and knowledge required by state standards for each grade and each subject.
Afterschool instructional opportunities for students.
Guarantees of teacher training and common planning time that go beyond requirements in other schools so faculty can work together to devise and carry out a high-quality curriculum.
Tutoring or other instructional opportunities for students after school.
Meaningful student, parent and community participation in decision making at each small school
An explicit agreement to each of the elements by each teacher as a condition of remaining at Hope.
TO BE SURE, Hope has not stood still since the faculty filed into a small basement auditorium one day after school in June 2002 to hear McWalters speak.
By June 2003, with a take-charge, no-nonsense Nancy Mullen as principal and with McWalters keeping track of who attended teacher training, about 20 people -- one-fifth the faculty -- had either retired or moved to other schools. Those who stayed signed statements of commitment to work toward McWalters' vision for a new Hope High School.
In the fall of 2003, the three small learning communities opened their doors -- academies of about 500 students each centered on the arts, information technology or leadership.
Each small school worked to build a sense of identity, and teachers volunteered their time to draft plans to address the remaining deficiencies.
In May, as McWalters anticipated receiving those plans from Hope, he sounded optimistic.
Until then, McWalters said, change at Hope had primarily concerned "organization and stability, better attendance, quicker intervention around discipline, fewer incidents attracting large attention."
That was to be expected, he said.
But in the next round of plans -- for the academic year now under way -- he wanted to see measures that would address improvements in the classroom.
"It's time to see more evidence of the instructional component, and less about organization," he said.
IN THE SPACE of a few weeks between the end of May and the middle of June, a fragile trust was broken between the Johnson administration and Hope's faculty, who must inevitably do the heavy lifting in any program of wholesale change.
Teachers overwhelmingly approved plans for self-governance and received word of conditional approval from a labor-management committee, tentatively clearing the way for their proposals to go to McWalters.
But Johnson said she could not agree to continue one feature: a daily advisory period of nearly an hour and a half she has characterized as a "waste of time."
Here lies the heart of a dispute between teachers and the superintendent that kept the teacher plans out of McWalters' hands and triggered the commissioner's countdown to the show-cause hearing.
Teachers said that Johnson's refusal to endorse plans that represented the faculty's hard work and best intentions made a sham of school autonomy.
If the superintendent had objected to the way the advisory period was organized, they said, she should have made her feelings known early on in the planning process.
Johnson says she had questioned the daily advisory period very early on -- before it was implemented in fall 2003 -- because it had no curriculum. "I'm sorry that wasn't communicated back to the level of the people doing the planning," she said last week.
But after a year's experiment in which the advisory period had turned into a study hall in many classrooms, Johnson said, she could "not sign off on it" for a second term.
Teachers, in turn, have twice refused to sign off on alternative plans. Along with once-a-week advisory periods, the alternate plans opened the door to bigger student caseloads and more outside preparation time than is required of teachers in other high schools, according to union officials.
BOTH JOHNSON and union officials reject the notion that the fact the hearing is being held signals failure at the local level.
Earlier last week, Johnson said of reform at Hope: "It's not that people are not trying to make it work. It's a monster with everybody having an opinion on how this should work.
"The fact that things didn't happen, I can understand," she said, in reviewing the course of events at Hope since last spring.
"But here we are," she said.
In recent weeks, Johnson and the leadership of the teachers' union has crafted a joint proposal that lays out 2 1/2 more years of reform.
Submitted to McWalters the week before Thanksgiving, the contents of the joint proposal are certain to be explored in testimony during the hearing.
Vorro, the executive director of the teachers union, said, "We thought that in submitting the joint proposal, there wouldn't be a need for a show-cause hearing.
"We honestly believe that the teachers and the superintendent, working with the joint committee [a labor-management group focusing on school intervention] are the people who can do the job," Vorro said.
Hope High School intervention -- A timeline
June 2000: The Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (RIDE) begins formal intervention in Providence under the authority of the state's Progressive Support and Intervention.
April 2000 to present: RIDE conducts regular meetings with the School Department to provide support to the district in its efforts to improve student performance.
February 2002: RIDE releases its first list of school-performance categories; Hope High School categorized as "low performing, not improving," missing all targets.
April 2002: RIDE and School Department continue face-to-face meetings to discuss low-performing schools.
June 2002: As a result of these meetings, RIDE and the School Department agree that RIDE will intervene directly in Hope, as three years of progressive support have not had the impact of reversing downward trends in student performance and other indicators. Education Commissioner Peter McWalters orders Hope to continue its ongoing process of reorganizing into at least three small learning communities. He orders the School Department to submit a redesign for Hope by February 2003.
December 2002: RIDE releases second list of school-performance categories. Hope is again listed as "low performing, not improving."
February 2003: McWalters receives redesign plan from School Department and Hope; he sends plan back for major revisions.
March 2003: Plan resubmitted and provisionally accepted by McWalters. He gives Hope clearance to open in September 2003 as three small learning communities, but raises significant issues regarding professional development, teaching assignments and other topics. McWalters requires monthly reports on plan implementation.
October 2003: RIDE releases first classifications under federal No Child Left Behind Act provisions; Hope classified as school "in need of improvement, insufficient progress."
January 2004: Governor Carcieri visits Hope High School and pledges $600,000 to continue reform efforts at Hope and provide additional money for other urban high schools.
June 2004: McWalters issues an Order of Reconstitution for Hope and a show-cause order, at which the School Department must demonstrate why Hope should remain in operation as currently constituted. He orders numerous changes regarding staffing, student advisories and professional development at the school. He freezes the $600,000 earmarked for Hope and asks for a detailed operating budget for the school immediately and a corrective action plan by July.
August 2004: Providence Schools Supt. Melody Johnson provides a draft corrective action plan to McWalters, but the plan has not been approved by the faculty union. The district requests an opportunity to submit a plan after seeking faculty and union approval. McWalters agrees to this request and demands a more detailed plan.
November 2004: Johnson informs McWalters that the School Department and the Providence Teachers Union cannot agree on a corrective action plan. McWalters says he will proceed with show-cause hearings. The School Department subsequently submits a plan agreed to by district management and the union but the plan lacks faculty approval.
December 2004: Show-cause hearings to review submitted plan and determine its adequacy. The purpose of the hearings is to decide whether the school will operate in 2005-2006 under the submitted plan or will be reconstituted to operate under criteria determined by the commissioner. The criteria would be based upon plans submitted by the district and upon testimony from various Hope High School constituencies, including students and their families, to be received during the hearing.
Will new plan for Hope fly with McWalters?
Posted Thursday, December 2, 2004
Although the superintendent and head of the teachers union have come to terms on a strategy to improve the underperforming high school, the decision ultimately rests with the state commissioner of education.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The superintendent of schools and the Providence Teachers Union have come to a partial agreement over the way to carry out improvements at the beleaguered Hope High School.
But it remains to be seen whether their ideas have sway with the man who counts -- Peter McWalters, state commis
sioner of elementary and secondary education.
At noon on Tuesday, McWalters will hold a show-cause hearing on Hope, the first to be held under provisions of a school accountability law enacted in 1997 that gave the commissioner the authority to intervene at failing schools.
McWalters intervened at Hope two years ago. Until now, he has relied on the faculty and administration at Hope to come up with their own plans for improving the school.
In July, McWalters set the wheels in motion for Tuesday's hearing, after faculty plans for reform failed to get past Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson and to McWalters' desk.
While he refused then to get involved in disagreements between Johnson and the teachers, he said that Hope's students couldn't wait any longer for change.
Johnson has submitted to McWalters a union-management agreement, along with a succession of reform plans generated in each of the three small learning communities at Hope. The documents will serve as a road map for testimony that McWalters will weigh in deciding whether to take over the school.
The hearing puts the burden on the School Department to convince McWalters to decide against a takeover.
The agreement asks for more time -- two and a half years -- to achieve requirements McWalters sought to have in place at Hope during this school year.
McWalters stipulated that each of three small academies at Hope -- information technology, the arts, and leadership -- be able to select and assign teachers based on student need.
The plan has provisions for allowing each small school to choose and assign its own teachers as vacancies arise, but it urges McWalters to allow the current faculty to choose whether they remain at Hope or go to another school at the end of the school year.
A letter Johnson submitted with the documents makes it clear that she and union leaders want to prevent a takeover in which teachers would be forced to reapply for their jobs.
"Once you determine the final plan you wish to have implemented at Hope, we would like each teacher to have an opportunity to review the future vision and expectations and make an informed decision as to his or her level of commitment and desire to remain," the letter said.
If McWalters strips Hope teachers of the right to choose whether to stay or go to another school, the Providence Teachers Union has signaled that it will eye a legal challenge to his authority under the school accountability law.
McWalters will announce his decision by Dec. 31 for the 2005-2006 academic year at Hope, leaving plenty of time for preparations.
The documents Johnson submitted show that she and the union have been unable to agree on a daily schedule for the school -- ostensibly a technical issue -- but one that has broad implications for activity in the classroom.
The daily schedule has been at the center of differences that have prevented reform plans from moving forward since last spring, and the superintendent and the union asked McWalters to give them more time -- until February -- to agree on a schedule for the next school year.
The agreement represents a "synthesis of ideas" and suggestions from teachers at Hope, union leaders, district administrators, Johnson wrote McWalters.
But the agreement does not have the express approval of the rank-and file teachers, unlike plans that emanated from Hope last spring.
Johnson has presented McWalters with five scheduling options allowing for various configurations of class time, planning time for teachers, and time for students to meet with teacher-advisors.
Common planning time allows teachers to coordinate their instruction in a way that reinforces important academic skills and makes the subject matter more interesting to students.
And the length of class periods can either limit or enhance the depth to which an instructor can delve into particular subject matter.
Teaching in 85- or 90-minute blocks allows teachers to explore a topic in greater depth but often requires retraining for instructors who are used to traditional 45- to 50-minute classes.
One downside of such block scheduling is that classes meet every other day, and some students have said they would retain more material if their classes met daily.
McWalters has made it clear that the schedule for Hope must have time for students to develop meaningful relationships with adult advisers, in accordance with regulations adopted by the state Board of Regents.
Four of the five scheduling options provide for advisory time of at least 30 minutes once a week. Some of the options have more frequent advisory periods.
Hope had daily advisory periods last year with very mixed results. The faculties of the three learning communities voted to continue them, but Johnson said too many advisory periods had turned into study halls and that students would be better served by instruction time.
The current schedule replaces the advisory periods with class time.
The documents also acknowledge the need for an overall school principal, or campus director, in charge of the building, in addition to directors and assistant principals for each of the three small academies.
The most recent principal at Hope, Nancy Mullen, had a two-year contract that expired in June. She retired and has not been replaced.
Johnson assigned a leadership support team of retired administrators to Hope.
Since the school year began, teachers have not always been clear on who's in charge, according to Paul Vorro, executive director of the Providence Teachers Union.
The agreement submitted to McWalters notes that the building needs a "go-to" official who can make a decision on issues involving the entire building.
The campus director, who would be hired for the start of the 2005-2006 school year, would be responsible for operations and work with the directors of the learning communities on professional development, according to the agreement.
The director would convene meetings of a campus coordinating council, a new governing unit intended to ensure good communication among the learning communities.
The agreement calls for a type of teacher-leader who blends the traditional role of the department head with one in which teachers open their classrooms for observation or coach their colleagues on good instruction practices.
New departmental teacher leaders would replace department heads in English, math, science and social studies next fall.
They would be required to teach model classrooms open to other teachers for three out of six class periods and coach other teachers for up to two additional periods.
Other parts of the plan address teachers' concerns that they would be required to prepare for more classes and be assigned more students than their colleagues in other high schools.
The agreement would keep the number of students at about 130 per teacher, and would give teachers time during the school day to prepare for advisory periods.
Teachers are given time during the school day to prepare for academic classes.
|
|
