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December 2007
Medical Coverage/Re-certification
Posted Friday, December 21, 2007
TO: All Union Members
FROM: Steven F. Smith
DATE: December 3, 2007
On Friday, November 30, 2007 it came to my attention that based on City Ordinance #189 all city employees will be required to re-certify his or her coverage of beneficiaries for medical benefits. A letter has been mailed to you from the Providence School Department explaining what you must do to re-certify.
This letter states you have 30 days to respond. However, on November 30, 2007, I met with Mayor David Ciccilline and he agreed, at my request, to extend the deadline to 60 days due to the short notice and the possible difficulty you may have in providing the information during this busy time of year.
If your required documents are at Providence City Hall, they will be provided to you free of charge as long as you mention you need the documents to comply with City Ordinance #189.
When you return your documents to the Providence School Department, I strongly suggest you request a stamped, time-dated copy of your documents for your records.
If you cannot comply within the required timelines and foresee a problem, please contact the Union office.
Councilman to Providence superintendent: ‘I’d fire you’
Posted Friday, December 21, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — City Council members wanted to know one thing last night: How could Supt. Donnie Evans go home without knowing that every one of the city’s 25,000 students was safely home?
And they were not happy with Evans’ answer.
“You are in charge of our most valued possessions,” Councilwoman Josephine DiRuzzo told Evans. “I want to know where you were and why you didn’t know where those students were. I think you failed the parents in this city. It’s inexcusable and it’s unacceptable.”
Councilman Nicholas Narducci said, “I’d fire you. You dropped the ball. It’s your responsibility.”
Mayor David N. Cicilline yesterday suspended without pay Tomas Hanna, the deputy superintendent of operations, for his apparent failure to respond to the mounting school bus crisis. The mayor also fired Leo Messier, the city’s director of emergency management, saying that he had lost faith in Messier’s ability to manage a crisis.
The council met last night to demand answers from the city’s top police, fire and school officials as to why 60 school buses were stranded for hours on the city’s gridlocked streets last Thursday. While there were harsh words for many department heads, Evans bore the brunt of the criticism.
Evans was repeatedly asked: Why didn’t you realize that school buses were bogged down in snow and traffic, a problem that began early Thursday afternoon.
Bill Roche, contract manager for First Student, the school bus company, said last night that that he told the School Department at 12:13 p.m. that “traffic was a disaster.”
Evans said that when he left for his East Side home around 5:30 p.m., “I was assured that the youngsters were home.”
But in an interview last Friday, Evans said that at the time of his departure, about a dozen elementary schoolchildren hadn’t made it home, although a plan was in place to bring them home.
Evans said he wasn’t informed of the burgeoning school bus delays until between 7:30 and 8 p.m., when Hanna called him at home.
“It’s your responsibility,” Councilman John Igliozzi said, “Not Tomas Hanna or [spokeswoman] Kim Rose. You were at home at a time when 100 kids were on buses. You should be the most outraged of all of us.”
Evans’ response?
“I didn’t get accurate, up-to-date information from bus drivers, First Student or our staff,”
Not only was Evans unaware of the school bus problem, he said that he didn’t realize that there was a serious breakdown in communications between his operations staff and his office.
The City Council also slammed Evans for failing to close schools when forecasters had predicted an intense, fast-moving snowstorm two days in advance. Evans said the decision to open school was made early in the morning after talking with area superintendents. He said the storm hit sooner and harder than he expected and added that by 8:30 a.m., most high school and middle school students were already in school while elementary students were on their way.
Evans told the council that he is taking immediate steps to correct the communications breakdown. On Jan. 2, the School Department will open an emergency call center for parents. Meanwhile, Evans will appoint a committee of parents, students and staff to review the district’s emergency preparedness plans and the superintendent said that he will personally reexamine the roles of specific school staff during a crisis.
Evans also said that he is checking in with his top administrators at the end of each day to see if there is anything significant that he needs to know.
School Board President Mary McClure also came under fire last night for supposedly failing to do her job.
“Do you plan on re-upping Dr. Evans’ contract?” Igliozzi said. Evans’ contract expires next December. After hedging, McClure said that yes, she would renew the superintendent’s contract.
The City Council session continued late into the night, with testimony expected from Police Chief Dean Esserman and other administration officials.
Classical cracks top 500 in magazine’s ranking of high schools
Posted Friday, December 7, 2007
PROVIDENCE — Classical High School has been deemed a Silver Medal winner by U.S. News & World Report in its America’s Best High School rankings.
The designation means that among the 18,700 high schools surveyed by the magazine, Classical placed within the top 500 schools using criteria that measure school preparedness upon graduation. Classical is the only public high school in Providence that requires prospective students to pass an entrance examination.
Rankings were based on criteria including general math and reading scores and the test scores of disadvantaged students.
According to the magazine, the measurements were designed by the data research company School Evaluation Services and were intended to measure not only how the entire student body performed, but how well the school served disadvantaged populations, such as minority students and students living in poverty.
The magazine said its research was based on “the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college.”
Superintendent gets earful from parents
Posted Wednesday, December 5, 2007
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Parents didn’t mince words last night when Supt. Donnie Evans asked them what they thought of the city’s schools, especially the School Department’s success in communicating with families.
A woman said her two Muslim exchange students were kept out of school for three weeks because the School Department insisted that they be vaccinated, which is prohibited by their religion. Another parent said that his child’s elementary school was out of control. A mother said the school choice policy is needlessly confusing.
More than 100 parents turned out at Adelaide Avenue High School last night to hear what Evans had to say about the district’s efforts to reach out to families and to share their experiences with the Providence schools.
Parents, especially those with special needs children, expressed frustration with their inability to reach the right person to get their child the help that they need. Some said they were treated rudely when they went to register their children. Others complained about the lack of district and school support for parent-teacher organizations. And Pedro DeJesus said that his child’s school is not safe:
“My son’s school is out of control,” he told Evans. “You have kids running all over the place and the principal doesn’t want to hear it. It’s terrible. Kids are swearing and cussing. We need you to visit our school.”
Evans took responsibility for the situation and thanked the parent for bringing it to his attention:
“If a school is out of control,” Evans said, “I need to know about it right away. You do not have to tolerate this. I want your child to feel safe.”
Louise Tillinghast said that she didn’t want to wake up in the morning and read that there was a gun at her child’s school. She wanted to know why she wasn’t contacted by letter or by phone as soon as the incident happened. Evans said that the school sent a letter to parents the following day.
Osiris Harrell, an outspoken critic of the school system, asked why parent-teacher conferences were abolished at Anthony Carnevale and West Broadway elementary schools. He said that his daughter’s grades had dropped, but he didn’t find out about it until he saw her report card.
“I asked why we hadn’t been invited to the school and I was told that there weren’t any parent-teacher conferences,” he said. “But that wasn’t communicated to us.”
Evans said that this was news to him and said that he strongly supports parent-teacher get-togethers. When he asked for a show of hands, a number of parents indicated that their schools no longer have opportunities for parents to meet with their children’s teachers.
Another parent, Daynah Gist, said she has been thwarted in her attempts to get services for her child.
“It’s like going through a maze to get the cheese,” she said. “I leave all of these voice mails and I don’t hear back from anyone. How do you navigate the system without feeling stonewalled?”
Evans repeatedly heard that parents had difficulty getting answers to their questions. He heard that parents are sometimes treated without respect and that parents don’t have enough information about the school choice policy and school registration. He heard that the school Web site was difficult to navigate and that the policy handbook wasn’t clear.
In response, Evans said the district is working on making its schools, policies and staff more accessible to families. The department, he said, is in the middle of revamping its Web site to make it more user-friendly; it’s creating a blog where the public can e-mail the superintendent and he can respond. And Evans promised that the district will provide more translation services at meetings such as this one. Last night’s meeting was translated into four languages, including Laotian and Khmer.
“We know we have a confidence problem in the city and statewide,” Evans told the crowd. “Our job is to improve that situation.”
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