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April 2003
School grant to teach how to stretch dollars
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The School Department has received a grant of about $85,000 from the Broad Foundation to pay for a comprehensive financial analysis intended to highlight ways the district can better use its money to support children's education.
Education Resource Strategies of Dallas, Texas, will bring a fresh perspective to the district's finances and is expected to offer creative ways to make each scarce public education dollar stretch further, Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson said last week.
In outlining the scope of the project, the Dallas firm wrote that the district "appears to have significant resources to devote to improving instruction, but they are not used in ways that are most likely to improve student performance."
Education Resource Strategies, apparently taking into account all sources of funding, noted that the district spends more than $10,000 per pupil and employs approximately one teacher for every 13 students.
But "class sizes are still quite high and resources to support professional development seem hard to free," according to the firm's preliminary assessment.
The firm has already begun an analysis of the district's financial information and will send representatives to Providence in June for a more detailed inquiry, Johnson said.
According to the firm's outline, its representatives will look at spending from multiple perspectives:
The regulations, policies and contractual issues influencing spending.
The amount spent on activities aimed at improving the quality of education.
The amount of money typically available to a single school.
The degree to which money is equitably distributed among all the city's public schools.
Johnson called the work to be done the "best bang-for-the-buck analysis."
"I'm very, very confident that our money is well-budgeted and there are no concerns or questions about the money going where it's supposed to be going," she said.
Those types of questions are addressed by audits, which are performed annually by a public accounting firm, Johnson said.
But the financial analysis to be performed by the Texas firm addresses more strategic questions, she said.
For example, Johnson said, a school might decide it would rather hire an extra full-time teacher rather than draw from the district-wide pool of substitutes over the course of a year.
She pointed out that such an option would require the approval of the faculty under provisions of the contract between the city and the Providence Teachers Union.
"The other piece," she said, is to "reward people for using money well."
For example, Johnson said, if the rate of teacher attendance is higher than normal at a particular school and it does not use its allocation for substitutes in any given year, it could be allowed to keep the surplus.
She said she expects recommendations by October, in time for the start of budget preparations for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2004. An October completion date also would allow the district to use the recommendations to prepare for negotiations with the Providence Teachers Union, whose contract expires Aug. 31, 2004.
School Board approves 128 layoffs
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2003
The instrumental music program would be eliminated, as would art, technology, and elementary science teaching positions. Social workers, guidance counselors and administrators also would be let go in an effort to close an $18-million budget gap.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- What many call the worst financial crisis in the history of public education took on a personal and immediate dimension last night as the School Board approved 128 layoffs -- and other severe cuts -- to reduce the deficit in its budget proposal for the next school year.
An unhappy School Board adopted a budget proposal of $289 million, approving cuts of $10.3 million from the proposal of $299.3 million introduced by Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson two weeks ago.
The most significant phase of the budget season still lies ahead, as the city and its delegation to the General Assembly try various approaches to raise revenue.
But the board had to decide on the layoffs and other cuts last night to deliver an acceptable budget to Mayor David N. Cicilline by Thursday.
The $289-million budget represents a 7.25-percent increase -- the maximum allowed by the mayor -- from the current budget of $269.4 million.
The 128 layoffs would eliminate the district's instrumental music program and cut art, technology, and elementary science teaching positions. Social workers and guidance counselors also would be let go.
In addition, 14 administrators would be laid off, including several assistant principals and 7 in the central administration. And 20 clerical positions and other support staff in the schools and administrative offices would be eliminated.
Because employees with seniority can bump junior employees in the same job description, one of the casualties could be Nancy Owen, who led the reorganization of Feinstein High School into a model program recently featured in Education Week, the trade newspaper for elementary and secondary education.
If Owen must be let go, "you may as well shut our school," said Manette Jungels, a teacher at Feinstein.
"'This will destroy the school," she said. "The vision will be gone.
"It sounds like chaos to me, frankly," Jungels said. "I am very sad. I will do anything, if there is a way I can make a difference. "
Francine Connolly, a social worker at Central High School, gave the board a glimpse of the emotional scars that she and others help youngsters cope with every day.
She read from an essay by Nancy Brown, a sophomore at Central who made a harrowing escape from her native Liberia during the height of the civil war there.
At one point, Nancy wrote, she threw up when she saw human heads hoisted on poles "like flags."
Another day, she saw her cousins and their father thrown into a pit and burned alive. "The death of cousins and their father will be in my head forever," she wrote.
Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson said the budget cuts "seriously compromise the quality of education in the city of Providence."
"I'm ashamed at having to make these decisions," she said.
She said it was "unacceptable" to lose counseling, psychology and social-work services as well as elementary science and technology classess for an enrollment in which 85 percent of children live at or below the poverty line.
The children with the greatest need are being hurt the most, Johnson said.
And "our teachers can't be asked to do more and more with less and less," she said.
Governor Carcieri has proposed level funding state aid to the city schools, "but level isn't level when fixed costs are continuing to rise" at double-digit rates, Johnson said.
The problem will be exacerbated by expanding enrollment; an estimated 500 new high school students next fall will mean finding leased space and hiring more teachers in core subjects.
Of the total budget increase of $19.6 million, nearly three out of every four dollars can be attributed to hikes in fixed costs, according to Mark V. Dunham, the district's chief financial officer. The discretionary portion of the budget is less than 15 percent of the bottom line.
There is still a revenue gap of $18 million in the proposal the School Board is sending Cicilline, and if additional revenue cannot be found, the district will have to make even more drastic reductions, Dunham said.
The layoffs save $6.4 million, the largest portion of the $10.3 million in cuts approved last night. A retirement bonus would realize another $1.3 million in savings, Dunham said.
And the district learned yesterday its current health insurance administrator can save $1 million in costs during the next academic year, Dunham said.
The remaining cuts, ranging from $10,000 to $300,000 were divided among some dozen other areas.
Johnson told an audience of nearly 100 that "this fight is not over. We will be calling on each of you in the coming weeks and months," she said.
"I'm counting on all of us pulling together to get the funding we need to do this job."
McWalters approves Hope High redesign
Posted Monday, April 28, 2003
School and union officials must provide the education commissioner with more details on the academic program and extra teacher training.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education yesterday gave conditional approval to a Hope High School plan to divide itself into three small learning communities.
But he raised several concerns about substantial weaknesses in the plan submitted to him last month, including a lack of detail about the academic program, and insufficient involvement by the faculty, families, and community in developing the proposal.
Peter McWalters also said he needs assurances that teachers will get classroom assignments based on the needs of students, rather than teacher preference, and that the faculty will participate in a substantial amount of professional development.
In a seven-page letter to school and union officials, McWalters said his conditional approval requires monthly reporting on the school's progress in planning for three small learning communities to open in September.
The reports must include:
Much greater detail on the academic program
Documentation that parents, students, the community, and individual faculty members have broad involvement from now on in planning for the new Hope.
The percentage of teachers participating in professional development and related activities.
"It is not realistic to expect the kind of transformation at Hope High School that is envisioned in the redesign plan unless there is substantial participation" in teacher-training activities, he wrote.
McWalters, alarmed by plummeting test scores and rising drop-out and suspension rates, intervened at Hope last June.
It marks the first time he has interjected himself in a school's affairs under the authority granted him by a 6-year-old state law that says the commissioner may order change when failing schools cannot improve on their own. In directing Hope to redesign itself into three small learning communities, McWalters said he was simply giving momentum to what the faculty had been planning anyway.
The problem was that the school had been in a planning loop for too many years, the commissioner has said.
The plan submitted to him last month fell short of what he expected, but McWalters said it was critical that the school now move ahead immediately to have the small learning communities up and running next September.
None of the concerns he raised in the letter should be permitted to delay implementation of the plan, McWalters wrote in a letter to Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson, Hope principal Nancy Mullen, and Phil DeCecco, president of the Providence Teachers Union.
Mullen said she was happy McWalters told Hope to move ahead. She said she was confident the school could meet all the conditions and reporting requirements McWalters set forth.
McWalters directed the administration and the Providence Teachers Union to resolve an apparent inconsistency between the plan and a union newsletter, which maintained that seniority is not affected by the redesign.
The redesign plan says the school improvement team will assign teachers in accordance with student needs rather than teacher preference, McWalters wrote.
Last month, union president Phil DeCecco contended that teacher preference would determine specific classroom assignments, once the school improvement team had divided the faculty among the three learning communities.
But yesterday, he conceded that the school improvement team will be the final arbiter on classroom assignments as well.
Meanwhile, McWalters's letter noted that the Hope redesign plan so far has "not been developed with meaningful community involvement" or with "widespread faculty input."
He said he understood the lack of programmatic detail in the plan, as well as the lack of involvement in the decision-making,
was due to the school's preparation for an accreditation visit from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
"However, this situation cannot continue," McWalters said, spelling out requirements that he get additional detail in the monthly reports on the academic program as well as the faculty and community involvement in the planning process.
Mall academy moving out of Providence Place
Posted Monday, April 28, 2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Providence Place Academy, which has never had more than about 100 students, or a permanent home, is to become a school-to-career program at Central High School, according to Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson.
The mall school, the brainchild of former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., made headlines when it opened a month after the Providence Place mall first welcomed shoppers in 1999.
But the high school program faltered from the start for a variety of reasons, not the least of which has been a lack of resources.
"We fully intend to keep this program going," Johnson said in an interview last week, but "we have a lot of work to do around the program, first of all attending to the core academic needs of the students."
At the time the mall school opened, it was widely known in the central administration that the planners hadn't had enough time to develop a full-fledged curriculum.
Johnson said the school's curriculum is "still evolving." And the mall kiosk intended to give students hands-on experience in marketing and retailing has never been profitable, she said.
"It's very, very difficult to offer students an adequate access to academics when you have such a small student population," said Johnson, who is expected to ask the School Board tonight to relocate the school to Central High School.
"We have compromised their access to electives, extracurricular activities, and more rigorous core courses," Johnson said.
Johnson said that "Central is a much more structured environment than the students have had at the city-owned Fogarty Building at 111 Fountain St., where students have been housed for nearly two years.
Johnson called the Fogarty Building an "unacceptable setting for holding school."
She said that the marketing and retailing program will fit in well as part of the Hanley Career and Technical Center, the school-to-career arm at Central.
Students said in an interview last week that they regard the school as a "family" and are very upset that it will lose its identity. Mall academy students will get "lost" at Central, they said.
"Our school is fine like it is," said Elizabeth Gordils, 16, a sophomore.
Gordils, and two other sophomores, Nanue Paye, 17, and Crystal Vasquez, 15, said they take English, history, science, and computer classes, among other courses.
They are preparing to play a stock-market game and are learning to use computer software to make presentations, the students said.
While the Fogarty Building does not have a science lab, they said, their science teacher is very inventive in compensating for the lack of facilities.
Nanue Paye said that students originally were told they would relocate next fall to the high school complex under contruction off Thurbers Avenue.
But they were subsequently told there will be no space for them at the new complex. The campus will contain two schools -- one devoted to international studies and another to science, health and technology, whose students are currently housed in the Fogarty Building along with freshmen and sophomores from the mall academy.
To learn that the mall students would go instead to Central is like "telling a little kid on his birthday that he can't have his birthday party," Paye said.
She and the other two students were unmoved by plans to divide Central High School into three smaller learning communities to better personalize each student's education.
Vasquez attended Central her freshman year because she was wait-listed at the Providence Place Academy.
She said she liked Central at the time and didn't want to transfer to the mall school at the start of her sophomore year. Now, she said, she doesn't want to go back to Central.
Johnson, the superintendent, acknowledged that "change is difficult."
The presence of the mall academy at the mall itself is limited to two classrooms and a computer lab on the riverwalk level near the parking garage that houses about 50 juniors and seniors.
Johnson said the marketing and retail program will continue to use that space as a base for juniors and seniors who have internships at the mall, and for specialized courses.
She said she hopes the district can strengthen those courses by attracting business professionals to come into the classroom as co-teachers.
The jobs of most teachers at the mall school -- a relative handful of people -- will be eliminated at the end of the school year, but those teachers will have new assignments next fall, Johnson said.
School Department plans to trim 150 jobs
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2003
The cuts are expected to come from the administrative and support side and not from the city's classrooms.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Layoffs are expected to hit the ranks of school personnel for the first time in recent memory as the School Board and city officials struggle to close a $28.3-million revenue gap in a proposed budget of $299,345,468.
Last night, the schools' chief financial officer, Mark V. Dunham, outlined cuts that would reduce the gap by $7.3 million through 150 job cuts as part of a plan to shrink the bottom line by more than $10 million.
"We'll try to stay away from direct service to the classroom," Dunham said. "We're not going to cut the math teacher."
But the administration will take a careful look at support and administrative staffs, he said.
The School Board sent out more than 600 layoff notices earlier this year to beat a March 1 deadline required by state law for notifying teachers and others that they may not be rehired in the fall.
Last year, about the same number of notices were sent out and virtually all of them, if not all, were eventually rescinded.
That won't be the case this year, Dunham told about 30 people who attended a budget hearing in the school administration building.
He could not say how many of the estimated 150 jobs would be eliminated through retirement or resignation and how many would actually involve layoffs.
Dunham and Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson said the administration would work through the weekend to firm up the list of jobs to be cut. The list is to be presented to the School Board next Monday, when the Board is expected to adopt a budget and pass it along to the office of Mayor David N. Cicilline.
The cuts Dunham outlined last night are in response to a directive from Cicilline's office that the mayor will accept budget increases of no more than 7.25 percent over current spending levels. Like schools all across the nation, Providence is being squeezed by poor revenue estimates and galloping costs in salaries and benefits. Dunham said the district faces hikes of 18 percent in health insurance, 20 percent in retirement contributions and 5 percent in salaries.
Cicilline's 7.25-percent cap means that the schools' existing budget of $269,415,993 could grow no more than $19.6 million, to a maximum of $289,015,993. That figure falls more than $10 million below the $299.3 million proposal that Johnson submitted to the School Board about 10 days ago.
Johnson's chief of staff, Susan F. Lusi, said school and city officials want to "finalize the cuts, so that the impact is known."
Delivering the bad news early, in concrete terms, could fuel the kind of passion necessary to make a forceful case to the General Assembly for more state aid to education.
The House Finance Committee is expected to have a hearing on public education next Wednesday.
"We cannot operate without an infusion of new money, " Johnson said last night.
"We are consistently asked to do more and more with less and less. The needs of our children are critical," she said.
"These are the times we should be putting more in and not less. The last thing we should be doing as a nation is compromising the quality of education," she said.
If education is truly a priority, Johnson said, now is the time to demonstrate that commitment.
Dunham, meanwhile warned that if the city doesn't get extra revenue, he will have to find additional ways to cut the budget in the coming months.
Besides eliminating jobs, Dunham said, he hopes the district will be able to offer retirement incentives that will realize $1.3 million in savings on salaries.
An additional $1 million could be saved if the there is a change in the administrator that runs the city's health insurance benefit plan, he said.
Phil DeCecco, president of the Providence Teachers Union, pointed out that any such change must be approved by the union membership.
Dunham proposed eliminating 5 new special education teaching positions, for a savings of $250,000, and freezing the pay of non-union employees to gain another $125,000.
Dunham also would cut $300,000 from varsity athletics, shrinking the breadth and depth of the program but not eliminating it.
Other proposed reductions are:
$120,000 from testing
$75,000 from security guards
$30,000 in overtime
$50,000 from the city's custodial and maintenance contract
$50,000 from hiring substitute school clerks.
Providence boy, 13, charged with having pistol at school
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2003
Though the gun was unloaded, the youth is being held at the Rhode Island Training School.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- A 13-year-old, seventh-grade boy who showed fellow students an unloaded handgun was taken into police custody at the Samuel L. Bridgham Middle School yesterday morning after teachers were alerted.
The police found a .32-caliber semi-automatic handgun in the boy's backpack, according to Lt. Paul Kennedy, director of the Youth Services Bureau. No ammunition was found, he said.
At a news conference late in the afternoon, Kennedy said the boy had been charged with possession of a firearm on school grounds and has been sent to the Rhode Island Training School until he appears in Family Court today.
Kennedy said the police do not yet know where the boy got the gun or what he intended to do with it.
"That will be the focus of our questioning," he said. "We're not going to let it go."
When he was taken into custody, the boy was "confused. He was frightened," Kennedy said.
"We're concerned about his safety and his state of mind," he said.
He declined to say how the gun came to the attention of school officials, but in an earlier news conference yesterday, Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson said the boy showed it to some classmates who in turn told a trusted teacher.
She commended the teacher, whom she said did not want to be publicly identified, for creating a safe environment where children felt comfortable confiding in him.
While the gun was not loaded and no one was injured, the fact that a youngster brought a weapon to school sends a signal that adults need to be more vigilant in preventing children from having access to weapons, Johnson said. Kennedy, meanwhile, said the police were called at 10:30 a.m. and had the youngster in custody within minutes of their arrival.
He said he believes incidents similar to yesterday's have occurred in the past, but he cannot recall a gun being confiscated in a school in the five years he has directed the Youth Services Bureau.
In January, a Mount Pleasant High School student fired a shot into the ceiling of the cafeteria and ran out of the building. In that incident as well, students cooperated with the police, who arrested the student at his home.
The incident in January marked the first time that a gun had been discharged inside a school building.
It prompted the Police Department to reorganize and expand its school-based officers to allow for a full-time police presence in each of the city's high schools.
Four other officers have been dividing their time among the city's middle schools for the last several weeks, but on Monday they began full-time assignments at the Perry, Roger Williams, Bishop and Stuart middle schools, Johnson said.
They will respond to other middle schools on an as-needed basis until additional school-resource officers are added to the force, she said. The police are seeking an outside grant to put the police in additional middle schools.
School budget sessions slated
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Health insurance is the main portion of the $28-million deficit but the mayor may still be able to raise revenues to offset the total impact.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Members of the School Board, which glumly received a bare-bones budget of $299.3 million last week, will host public information sessions on the schools' financial picture today at 5 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 p.m.
The proposal contains a built-in deficit of $28.3 million, or 9.5 percent of the total, which will have to be eliminated one way or another -- by increasing revenue or cutting expenses.
Even if the district came up with $28.3 million tomorrow, the district still will have trouble simply "opening the doors" next fall with the same level of service for a slightly expanded enrollment, McClure said.
One reason the district expects to tread water at best during the next fiscal year is an 18-percent jump in the cost of health insurance premiums.
Health insurance, when combined with salary increases and hikes in the costs of other benefits, eats up $22 million, or all but $6.3 million of the built-in deficit.
McClure, who has kept a close watch on spending in her four years on the School Board, predicted the board would submit a budget with a revenue gap.
"How much of a gap I'm not sure," McClure said, indicating that the district's chief financial officer, Mark V. Dunham, is already trying to close the $28.3 million hole.
But any cuts will be painful.
Last year, McClure said, "we chopped a lot of money from maintenance and tools of the trade," the educational supplies allotted to schools, "and started with that as our base" this year.
"We're not going to be able to shave money off existing things," she said. "We're going to have to do major surgery."
The board is expected to act next Monday, its last regularly scheduled meeting before a May 1 deadline for submitting the proposal to the office of Mayor David N. Cicilline.
But the May 1 deadline is artificial.
The most meaningful budget decisions in the last few years have been made in late spring and well into the summer, after the state and local revenue pumps have been primed as much as possible.
Mayor David N. Cicilline has wasted no time in the first 100-odd days of his administration in trying to find money, especially in the face of an overall prospective deficit of $59 million in next year's city budget, including the schools' share of $28.3 million.
This week, Cicilline is expected to have introduced in the General Assembly a bill requiring the five colleges and universities in the city to pay a fee that would be calculated either by head count or as a percentage of tuition, room and board.
His negotiations with the colleges for voluntary cash payments have been unsuccessful so far, as has his request that the city's unions voluntarily renegotiate raises.
Cicilline has said he wants the city to be able to tax the sale of meals and beverages or the fees charged by commercial parking lots and garages, two measures that would require state approval.
Alternatively, the state should give the city a larger share of the hotel tax than it now receives, Cicilline has said.
He has said the city needs both additional tax revenue from the state and an increase in aid to education to balance the books. He won't say yet whether he proposes raising property taxes.
The information sessions on the school budget today and tomorrow will be in the School Board room on the third floor of the school administration building at 797 Westminster St.
Few parents take advantage of options for school choice
Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2003
04/15/2003
BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer
Fourteen public schools in Rhode Island have been declared in need of improvement but only a handful of parents have taken the federal government up on its offer and demanded that their children be moved to better schools.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, any low-performing Title I school that has not made progress on state tests two years in a row must offer parents a choice of schools within that district. Title I refers to schools where large numbers of students are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches, a key poverty indicator.
Rhode Island's response to school choice mirrors what is happening nationally: parents are not pulling their children from low-performing schools -- even though the law offers a free bus ride to better schools as an incentive.
Some observers say that's because there are few alternatives. In urban districts, the high-performing schools are either nonexistent or full. In smaller districts, there may be only one middle school or high school.
For example, in Central Falls, the Calcutt Middle School is a "choice school," but it's the only middle school in the district. In Providence, there are six middle schools, all of which are low-performing and nonimproving.
At the Kevin K. Coleman Elementary School, in Woonsocket, where 13 students chose to transfer to other schools, none of those parents decided to move their children for academic reasons, according to principal George Nasuti. Nasuti said he met with the parents of every child who elected to transfer.
"It became a popularity contest," he said last week. "The schools they chose were newer, more modern schools that have a history of being more suburban, with a higher socioeconomic status.
"Not one person said, 'My child is not doing well in your school,' " he said. "They reacted to the negative publicity without asking why."
Moreover, he said none of the students who left were having trouble academically. In fact, Nasuti said, each child was expected to reach proficiency on the latest round of state assessments.
This flies in the face of what No Child Left Behind intended, which was to give low-performing students from poverty schools a chance to succeed by attending a better school. The ultimate irony, Nasuti said, is that his school is able to offer more services, from reading coaches to guidance counselors, precisely because it is a high-poverty school.
Meanwhile, Nasuti said the school's designation as a school in need of improvement has been devastating to faculty and staff, many of whom have taught there for more than 20 years.
Nasuti and other principals said it's not fair to judge a school by one set of criteria -- state assessments -- because urban schools have so many complicated social, emotional and behavioral issues to resolve before children are able to learn.
"You are not going to get high-poverty kids to perform as well as middle-class kids, at least not until students and parents are held accountable," he said.
Nasuti said he must now spend $25,000 of his Title I dollars busing students to the schools of their choice -- money that could be better spent providing literacy and other services.
Richard Pickett, principal of the Social Street Elementary School, in Woonsocket, said No Child Left Behind was nothing short of a disaster:
"We know how to improve schools," he said. "It requires dedicated teachers, involved parents, stability and strong leadership. The question is, are schools willing to support the kinds of programs that would truly improve these schools?"
Although Social Street has all the earmarks of a low-performing school -- high poverty, a high percentgage of single-family households and a transient school population -- only one student there left to attend a brand-new school.
"How about when you leave school on a Thursday and wake up to read that your school is in choice?" Pickett said. "The news came as a shock to us because the state Department of Education thought we had another year to show improvement."
Pickett and others said that No Child Left Behind uses a blunt instrument -- state tests -- to evaluate the health of a complex system.
Principals said that schools are being held accountable for students who have been enrolled for only a short period of time -- a few months or even weeks. Of the 80 students at the Social Street School eligible to take the fourth-grade test, Pickett said only 13 have attended the school since first grade.
"Are those our kids?" he said. "Are we responsible for their success or failure?"
Starting this year, however, the state will only count a student's test scores toward the school's overall ranking if he or she has been enrolled in that school for a year.
Critics say No Child Left Behind is a thinly veiled attempt to open the door to private school vouchers. Colorado last week became the first state to make vouchers available to public school students.
"The way I would expect this to work is the more thoughtful parents would use choice," Pickett said, "leaving the less thoughtful parents behind. What's left? Low-performing schools with the lowest socioeconomic classes?"
Why there hasn't been an exodus of students out of low-performing schools is anyone's guess. Some say it reflects the loyalty parents feel toward their neighborhood schools. Others say it's because parents are poorly informed about their options, while cynics blame it on apathy.
In Rhode Island, the connections between schools and the surrounding communities run deep. Parents remember sitting in the same classrooms and playing on the same fields as their children.
Principal Richard D'Agostino believes this to be true in Oakland Beach Elementary School in Warwick, where only two children out of 550 -- both newcomers -- decided to transfer.
"Parents truly believe that the school is here for them and their children," D'Agostino said. "This is my 13th year here. You know them, and they know you."
Echoing the feelings of his colleagues, D'Agostino said that he found his school's designation as in need of improvement "deeply upsetting," although it was comforting that several parents wrote letters of support to the local newspaper.
D'Agostino also expressed frustration with the way the state calculates school improvement -- by using overlapping sets of averages instead of yearly comparisons.
At Oakland Beach School, fourth graders improved on every one of the 13 subtests in English Language Arts and math. D'Agostino said scores increased by more than 15 percent in both subjects, while the percentage of students in the lowest-performing category dropped by 17 percent.
"How can you say we are nonimproving when every single subtest increased?" D'Agostino said. "The tests don't give the whole picture."
Because test scores are averaged, one-year jumps do not give schools the bump they need to move out of the low-performing category.
However, the Department of Education says it adopted rolling averages because research has shown that there can be wide yearly fluctuations in scores that have little to do with what's going on in the classroom.
To address those concerns, the state has asked the U.S. Department of Education to allow schools to choose whether they want to calculate student performance based on year-to-year scores or overlapping averages.
Although the negative publicity has been demoralizing, some schools have used it to galvanize parents and staff to become more self-critical.
After the test results were in, the Ella Risk School in Central Falls decided to abandon the "Success for All" reading program, replacing it with one whose curriculum was more in line with state standards.
The school has also reached out to parents, inviting them into the classroom and holding after-school meetings to show them how to help their children at home. The building is also developing all sorts of parent-child learning activities for the fall.
So far, the school's efforts have paid off: not one child has transferred out of Ella Risk this winter.
"I feel we have a partnership with parents," said principal Lora Kosten. "We've worked hard to build that. They recognize that we want what's best for their children."
Proposed school budget has $28-million deficit
Posted Monday, April 14, 2003
04/14/2003
BY KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- As expected, the school department's proposed budget for the next fiscal year is starting out with a built-in deficit of $28.3 million, or 9.5 percent, on a bottom line of $299,345,468.
City officials predicted that scenario in February, when Governor Carcieri proposed level-funding state aid to the city schools. About $22 million of the expanded costs comes from contractually binding raises in salaries and benefits, with benefits alone representing about $11 million of the $22-million increase.
The proposed budget would barely provide for the existing level of services to an expanding enrollment that is expected to include 500 more high school students than the schools can now house.
The district projects about $3 million in extra costs to educate those students. It is searching for temporary, leased quarters to house them. They will require about 20 additional teachers, more books, and other materials. There are now some 27,000 students enrolled in the city's public schools..
Professional development and other expenses associated with school reform will be borne entirely by funds from the federal governement, restricted state aid, and private sources -- a pool of money totalling about $47 million.
Combined with the proposed state and local budget, the overall spending plan would total $347,320,044, Dunham said.
Dunham previewed the budget at a workshop last Thursday and will formally present it to the full School Board tonight.
Dunham calls the proposal a "budget estimate," because it is due in the mayor's office May 1, long before the schools will have an accurate bead on revenue.
In an interview Friday, Dunham said the hard work will come in the late spring or summer, after the schools learn how much money they will actually get from the state and city.
The $299.3-million proposal represents an increase of 11.1 percent, or $29,929,475 over the current state and local allocation of $269,415,993. Of that overall $29.9-million increase, $21.8 million, or 73 percent, comes from pay raises and double-digit increases in health insurance.
While the average salary increase is 5 percent, the cost of health insurance is expected to jump 18 percent, Dunham said.
Dunham said 96.5 percent of the district's expenses are fixed by labor and service contracts, state mandates, or health and safety requirements.
Less than $10 million in the budget represents discretionary spending, and if it were all cut, there would still be a $20-million deficit.
The budget proposal contains no layoffs, but positions in nonteaching areas, like business and technology, are being eliminated through attrition, Dunham said.
Because the district has already tapped federal and private funds for such expenses as instructional coaches who bring professional development to the classroom, there is virtually no place to go to preserve educational reforms, Dunham said.
If the schools cannot secure any extra revenue and are forced to eliminate all the $28.3-million deficit by cutting expenses, it will be "devastating" to the education of the city's schoolchildren, he said.
National alliance praises methods used in schools
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2003
04/10/2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The Learning First Alliance, a nationwide coalition of educational organizations, has cited the city's public schools as one of five districts across the country to have adopted successful strategies for improving the quality of public education.
The others range in size from Minneapolis, with 47,500 students and 128 schools, to the Kent County system in Maryland, which has 2,800 students in 8 schools. Providence has about 27,000 students in 50 schools.
Also included in the study were the Aldine Independent School District in Houston and the Chula Vista schools in California.
Overall, the five districts demonstrated improved academic achievement across grades, subjects and ethnic groups, according to the study, which was entitled "Beyond Islands of Excellence: What Districts Can do to Improve Instruction and Achievement in All Schools."
In the Aldine Independent School Distict in Texas, for example, the achievement gap on statewide tests between black and white students closed to a 2-point difference between 1998 and 2002.
In Minneapolis, the percentage of black fifth graders who passed that state's reading test rose from 14 percent to 33 percent during the four years in which the data was collected.
Providence was cited for a 12-point increase in fourth grade scores on the state's New Standards English Language Arts Reference Exam.
The report said districts that had implemented reform efforts over longer periods of time showed clearer improvement than others, such as Providence, where the changes are now only 3 1/2 years old.
The lessons learned in the five communities are especially important as states and local school districts try to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, according to Judy Wurtzel, executive director of the Learning First Alliance.
"We cannot continue to point to heroic principals and extraordinary teachers to carry the burden of improving achievement for all children," she said in a statement.
"Ensuring the success of all children requires systemwide approaches that support teachers and principals," Wurtzel said.
"The districts in our study put in place strategies that touch every school and every child," she said.
The study found several common characteristics among the five districts, starting with the political will to acknowledge poor academic performance and to seek ways to improve it.
In addition, the study said, the districts all:
Focused intensively on academics, replacing fragmented approaches with coherent strategies.
Eliminated traditional teacher workshops and put into place comprehensive approaches to expanding the instructional skills of both school principals and teachers.
Made decisions based on multiple sets of test scores and other data rather than on "instinct."
Shared the task of school reform, rather than making it the responsibility of one professional group.
Approached change as a long-term effort, requiring patience, hard work, and consistent support.
Providence was cited for introducing a consistent, well-articulated philosophy as the foundation for training both teachers and school principals.
The philosophy is spelled out in nine "Principles of Learning" developed by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.
Former Schools Supt. Diana Lam brought the Institute for Learning to Providence in 1999, first to train principals as instructional leaders, a significant shift from their traditional role as building managers.
The principles of learning are based on the premise that intelligence is an expandable product of effort rather than an innate, fixed ability.
And each principle of learning was translated into concrete instructional practices in training sessions attended by school principals and teachers.
The report cited the role of the Providence Teachers Union as a key partner of the school administration in launching reforms, particularly in the creation of resident teacher-trainers called literacy or instructional coaches. The coaches, teachers themselves, learned how to provide support to classroom teachers by demonstrating lessons, observing classes, and giving advice.
School principals, meanwhile, learned to visit classrooms in "walkthroughs" specially scripted to seek evidence that teachers were applying the principles of learning.
According to the report, "Some teachers, accustomed to privacy in their classrooms, objected to principal walkthroughs and refused to extend invitations to coaches" to work with them in their classrooms.
Teachers complained to the union, which in turn took the membership concerns to the central administration.
The administration responded by inviting union leaders to participate in the walkthroughs and the training given to coaches, and in so doing won union support.
"Convinced that the observations were both non-evaluative and a useful instructional support for teachers," the report said, "union leaders got the word out to members that the union supported the strategies, and the leaders encouraged teachers to welcome them."
The report said it is too early to say with certainty that coaches are responsible for gains in academic achievement, but teachers and principals both praised the coaches' work.
Providence was singled out for using multi-million-dollar grants from private foundations to train the instructional coaches and teams of classroom teachers who have agreed to take the lead in demonstrating reforms in their buildings.
Leaders of the Learning First Alliance will use the lessons learned by the five districts to inform other communities about effective district-wide reforms, according to the report.
The dozen members of the Learning First Alliance include professional organizations for chief state education officers, school administrators, and school boards, as well as labor unions, and others.
Schools, groups win $700,000 to improve learning ski
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2003
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04/07/2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Eleven of the city's public schools and three community agencies have won more than $700,000 in competitive grants awarded by the state Department of Education through provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act.
The city's allotment is nearly a quarter of the $3 million in federal funds allocated by the state to improve the education of disadvantaged students and help their parents support school efforts.
Feinstein High School and the Robert L. Bailey IV Elementary School each have won federally-funded competitive grants of about $100,000 for comprehensive school reform.
In addition, Bailey and nine other elementary schools have attracted $30,000 each for improving reading and writing skills in fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students.
The Public Education Fund has been awarded $163,246 to expand its community school initiative in the Olneyville area from the existing program at the William D'Abate Elementary School to the Christopher DelSesto Middle School.
Dorcas Place, the adult-literacy center, garnered $37,000 for adult education, and the Providence Housing Authority was awarded $17,000 for adult education.
Feinstein, reorganized as a self-governing school nearly two years ago, will use its money to train teachers and encourage parents to be more active in the life of the school, according to school spokesman K.C. Perry.
The grant will pay for a consultant who will lead teachers in daily classroom practice of strategies intended to help boost the reading and writing skills of students whose abilities fall at least two years below grade level.
Perry said about three out of every four ninth graders fall into that category when they come to Feinstein.
The consultant will work not only with English teachers, but in social studies, math, and science as well, since literacy is key to success in all academic disciplines.
Another aspect of professional development funded by the grant will address the process of analyzing the academic program to identify areas needing improvement and then devising specific strategies to address those deficiencies, Perry said.
He said the $100,000 grant also will pay for training parents on ways they can support their children academically as well as ways they can become involved in the governing of the school.
Feinstein hopes to create a family-friendly Web site where parents can monitor their children's progress, not only through digital report cards but through assessments on all school assignments throughout the year, Perry said.
Like Feinstein, the Bailey elementary school will use its grant to focus both on academics and parent involvement. A third component will address school discipline.
The academic piece will incorporate flexible scheduling and faculty training in grouping and regrouping children according to specific tasks to enable youngsters to gain greater depth in various subjects than wouldn't be possible otherwise.
A class might be divided in half, for example, with one portion remaining with the classroom teacher and the other going to an "extension center" in another part of the school for academic reinforcement.
Teachers will receive training in classroom-management strategies that reward positive behavior in an effort to prevent discipline problems.
And Bailey will use the school's family center, staffed by Americorps volunteers working through Parents Making a Difference, to intensify its efforts to help parents understand how they can help their children at home, according to the grant proposal.
The grant of $163,246 to the Public Education Fund will allow its community-schools initiative to established a "balanced menu" of opportunities for youngsters to expand their education and development.
Students will be able to choose among opportunities in community service and other experience-based learning, as well as recreation and academic reinforcement, according to the grant proposal.
There will be homework help, family-literacy workshops aimed at parents, a summer camp for students moving from elementary to middle school; a student-leadership inititive, and an opportunity to work on an outdoor science curriculum involving the Woonasquatucket River.
In addition, PEF will work with the Joslin and Nickerson community centers to provide recreational and creative activities at the middle school.
With future unclear, morale at Hanley career center low
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2003
04/09/2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Uncertainty about the future of the Hanley Career and Technical Center, the school-to-career arm of Central High School, clouds the morale of teachers and students, judging from comments made at a public forum on youth and education last week.
Five people -- who teach automotive repair, electrical installation, food preparation, computer technology, and carpentry -- have received layoff notices for the end of the current school year.
They are in the same company as more than 600 teachers, nearly a third of the faculty district-wide, who have received pink slips.
And school officials say the layoff notices are mostly a precautionary measure, forced on Rhode Island school districts by a state law that requires them to notify teachers by March 1 of each year if they cannot guarantee them a job the following September.
About the same number received layoff notices last year, and virtually all, if not all of them, were rehired.
Cheryl King, the district's chief academic officer, says she's not sure that the concerns of the teachers at Hanley stem solely from the layoff notices.
She said she will meet with them April 24 to listen to what they have to say.
As a part of Central High, Hanley is inevitably part of the same redesign process going on in all the city's high schools.
Mike Cabral, who teaches automotive repair, told Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson and Mayor David N. Cicilline at the public forum last week that there are "several programs as of right now that don't exist next year."
He is among the five teachers at Hanley who have received layoff notices.
It is difficult "for teachers to stand in front of students and say there is no program next year," Cabral told Cicilline and Johnson. "Morale is very low."
Cabral and Ray Cassola, who teaches electrical installation, raised questions about Hanley's visibility in the community, suggesting that the public does not understand the breadth and depth of the courses it offers.
Cassola said Hanley "is not a trade school."
Students earn all the credits they need to attend a four-year college, he said.
Cassola and Cabral could not be reached for further comment.
And Phil DeCecco, president of the Providence Teachers Union and a guidance counselor at Hanley, also declined comment, saying he was uncomfortable about making any public statement before the administration has a chance to respond to the teachers' concerns at the April 24 meeting.
Among the five teachers at Hanley who received layoff notices, only in Cassola's case was declining enrollment cited as a reason, according to Susan F. Lusi, Johnson's chief of staff.
In three other cases, the teachers are not fully certified -- an especially sensitive issue in light of demands for "highly qualified teachers" made by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Lusi said.
The other layoff notice is connected to seniority provisions in the contract between the city and the Providence Teachers Union, Lusi said.
If a program reorganization could result in a layoff, notices must go not only to the teacher in that position but to anyone up the seniority ladder who might be "bumped" by the most senior faculty member with bidding rights, Lusi said.
Lusi was asked how the district could send out more than 600 layoff notices when it expects an increase in enrollment next fall.
The city is now looking for property it can lease to house about 450 more high school students than it had anticipated for next fall.
Lusi said the main reason for the large number of layoffs is that the March 1 deadline for letting teachers know the district's intentions comes way ahead of the final budget for the following school year.
"We mean to be fiscally prudent, laying off many more" than the number of positions that might be eliminated, she said.
Teachers from Hanley are not the only ones who have expressed alarm over the potential layoffs.
Among the groups affected are about 20 licensed mental-health professionals who staff family support services in 10 elementary schools, acting as crisis intervention teams for families with children in their respective sites.
A contract provision guaranteeing those positions will be eliminated during the next school year, in accordance with the most recent negotiations between the city and the teachers' union.
Contract appendices spelling out other programs also will disappear next fall, but that doesn't mean the jobs needed to make them run will be eliminated, Lusi said.
"The superintendent has said on numerous occasions that we deeply regret we have to go through this, but if we don't send people letters prior to March 1, our hands are tied for balancing the budget," Lusi said.
Those who have received layoff notices include:
213 substitute teachers.
159 possibly affected by program reorganization.
4 athletic directors and 67 coaches.
56 teachers with emergency or provisional certificates.
96 teachers hired after last year's summertime job fair, where classroom assignments are given out according to bidding rights allocated by seniority.
16 affected by seniority provisions.
7 substitutes returning from unpaid leaves.
Educators focus on school respect
Posted Thursday, April 3, 2003
Brown University President Ruth Simmons is among those in attendance. She has been visiting public schools in Providence to get an idea of what Brown can do to foster better relations between teachers and students.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- An elementary school student is suspended for three days before his mother finds out he hasn't been attending classes.
A teacher tells a middle school student, "Get your ass out of my class."
And one teacher shows the movie Men in Black instead of teaching.
Students, parents, and others brought those images to a public forum on youth and education last night which drew about 300 people to the Springfield Street Middle School.
The event was hosted by Mayor David N. Cicilline, Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson, and Brown University President Ruth Simmons, who said she listened to one speaker after another with both sadness and hope.
Simmons said she was "heartbroken" to hear repeatedly about student suspensions, as well as problems with special education, "because it says what we are feeling about a community. It says what is wrong."
What's right about the city is its youth, said Simmons, and the schools must do everything they can to support the potential in each child.
"I don't think learning can take place unless there's mutual respect," Simmons said, urging young people "to show respect for each other, parents and teachers."
And it's "unforgivable for a teacher to curse at students, if it happens, unforgiveable.
"I don't think we can do our job if we don't make every single child matter," Simmons said, recalling how she felt when she began her "magical" experience in a rural Texas school as a young child.
"I always say when I go into schools that to be a teacher, you must be an actor," she said, behaving as though everything is possible even in discouraging circumstances.
Simmons said she has been visiting public schools in Providence to get an idea of what Brown can do to help establish mutual respect where each student and teacher matters.
Rosa de Castillo, education coordinator for the Washington Park Community Center, set the tone for the evening when she told the story of the mother who dropped her son off in front of the Broad Street Elementary School each day, for three days, before she found out he had been suspended.
The mother did not speak English, de Castillo said, and when she did attempt to speak to school officials the atmosphere was not very welcoming.
"I am very concerned about the line of communication between the school and parents," she said.
Disciplinary procedures vary from one school to another, and the punishment does not always fit the offense, she said, calling for a uniform policy throughout the city.
Aretha Brown said her son Russell has been suspended so frequently from the Springfield Middle School that he has attended only 8 of the last 20 school days.
And she lost her job at the Brown Faculty Club because of the number of times the school called her to come and pick him up, Brown said.
The schools need an in-school program that actively engages students rather than sending them home on suspension.
The existing in-house suspension has space for about eight students who sit in a room with no windows and have no interactions with teachers, she said.
"It's not a solution," Brown said.
A program such as the one Brown described carries budgetary implications that were not lost on Cicilline.
The mayor reminded the audience that Governor Carcieri has proposed level-funding for the city schools, which will need $28 million more next fall just to provide the same services it has now to more students.
"We need you to make sure the legislature hears that we need more resources in the city," he told the audience.
Angelo Adams, who has attended both the Esek Hopkins and Roger Williams middle schools, said he has sat through Men in Black during the school day.
And he identified himself as the student who was cursed to by a teacher who wanted him to leave the classroom.
Teachers should be held responsible for their behavior in the same way as students, Adams said.
Johnson, the superintendent, said that "home-school connections are an absolute priority for us."
"There is righteous anger among citizens, parents and youth of the community," she said.
The school system is in the process of drafting a strategic plan for community engagement and soon will hire an additional staff person to help with that effort, she said.
Hope dodges failing grade
Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2003
An accreditation group avoids putting the beleaguered high school on probation, but warns that it must improve during the next two years.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Hope High School, already under state scrutiny for its failure to serve poor urban youth, has received accreditation with a warning from the prestigious New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
Hope principal Nancy Mullen said yesterday that she was notified by telephone that Hope faces adverse action from the association unless it makes a concerted effort to improve during the next two years.
Accreditation with a warning is one step above probation, Mullen said.
Hope, with an enrollment of more than 1,500 students, is operating under a similar mandate from the state commissioner of education, who has authority to intervene in failing schools.
Commissioner Peter McWalters last year ordered Hope to break itself down into smaller units better able to give personal attention to each student. McWalters also asked for a "substantial commmitment" to teacher training.
Mullen, appointed principal about two weeks before McWalters formally intervened last June, said she was pleased that, under the circumstances, the national organization granted accreditation in the first place.
When an accreditation team visited Hope last October, Mullen was just five months into her charge to turn the school around. At the time, there was talk among the faculty that Hope might come away with probation, rather than accreditation.
The NEASC is a private organization with a voluntary membership that pledges a commitment to self-improvement. Although the association has no effect on a school's legal authority to award diplomas, its rating carries a great deal of clout in New England, much more than sister organizations in other regions of the country.
The observations of the team that visited Hope last fall were consistent with the findings that prompted McWalters to intervene last June.
While McWalters relied on statistics -- plummeting test scores and an escalating dropout rate -- accreditation officials reported on a wealth of personal observations.
The visiting team noted huge gaps between Hope's stated mission -- to foster the critical thinking, creativity, and self-discipline necessary to turn out students who are independent, lifelong learners -- and the day-to-day reality of school life.
"It was evident that some students are not challenged and that their levels of competence in English expression or numeracy, for example, are not high," the report said, consolidating observations of officials who shadowed students as part of their visit.
"Daily classroom learning does not consistently relate to the mission; and there are no assurances that a graduate of Hope High School has been given the opportunity to master the expectations for learning," the visiting committee concluded in a recently released report.
The association found fault with both the quality of instruction and the resources made available to the school.
Four years ago, the district launched a program of professional development intended to link instruction with state performance standards that emphasize the skills of critical thinking.
But for a variety of reasons, those new approaches have not reached the classrooms at Hope in consistent fashion, the report said.
The accreditation team acknowledged recent attempts to change teaching, especially the introduction last fall of instructional guides that attempt to link teachers' daily classroom practice to the state standards.
But teachers in academic areas that have no guides "were functioning to a large extent, independently," the visitors found.
"Because of this, student learning lacks consistency and depth," according to the report.
The new instructional guides connect content, teaching strategies, and standards in a general way, but they are no substitute for a detailed curriculum, the visiting team said.
"It is not clear that all the pieces are in place to make possible the writing of a detailed, coherent curriculum for all disciplines and for the new small-learning communities," according to the report.
The deficiencies concerned a dearth of financial resources as well as a need for the faculty to become more actively engaged in improving the quality of classroom instruction, the association said.
The lack of resources means that Paul Safir, a senior who gets around in a wheelchair, has been unable to attend class consistently because of an unreliable elevator.
Safir estimates he has missed 20 days of classes in the basement and on the second and third floors of the building because of elevator problems.
Budgetary considerations also have affected attendance at Hope, the team concluded.
A School Board decision in the early 1990s expanded the walk zone for high school students to three miles. That means that most of Hope's student body is ineligible for bus transportation and must cross Route 95 from the west side of the city to get to school.
The policy should be changed, the team wrote, noting that average attendance at Hope stands at about 75 percent.
The visiting committee said Hope has been shortchanged on textbooks, other instructional materials, and computer technology from the fall of 1998 through the end of the school year in 2001.
In that three-year period, Hope received nearly a third fewer textbooks and other instructional materials than other high schools in the city, according to the association, which relied on figures provided by the state.
Other state calculations show that in terms of computer technology, Hope has garnered about 75 cents on the dollar when it is compared with other high schools in Providence.
The association noted that Mullen is attempting to rectify the inequities.
Brown University recently donated 30 computers for a lab dedicated to graphic design -- one where Safir happens to be a student.
On order are more than 20 computers for the school library, where accreditation officials indicated technology and printed materials are so out of date that students cannot complete research papers.
In addition, Mullen has put in for about 90 computers through a private school-improvement grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"The lack of appropriate expenditures for computer supplies, materials and textbooks for each and every student seriously impacts instructional effectiveness, and subsequently, student performance and achievement," the visiting team said.
Cicilline reversing fire-safety neglect
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2003
The mayor is pushing a timeline for repairs to Providence's schools, where some problems have existed for decades.
BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Some fire code violations at the city's public schools have outlasted the fire marshals and inspectors themselves.
Like the gymnasium at Alan Shawn Feinstein Elementary School on Broad Street with only one exit -- a problem first cited in 1978. Or the third-floor art room in another school with an exit leading to a closet, a code violation that has persisted for years. Then there are the corridors, maintenance areas and boiler rooms without fire doors. And the empty or missing fire extinguishers.
School and building officials have complained about a lack of funds to bring the schools up to fire code. The fire marshal says trying to get any cooperation in the past was "horrible."
But now, there is a timeline to get the code problems at 20 of the 55 schools fixed immediately -- monitored by City Hall. The problem schools were listed in inspection reports now two years old.
"I am, and the School Department is, serious about getting the work done," Mayor David N. Cicilline said. "I can't explain why it took two years [before], but it won't take two years on my watch."
Cicilline and his acting director of administration, John Simmons, met last month with city Fire Marshal David Costa to discuss a timeline for repairs. Robert DeRobbio, the School Department's executive director of support services and operations, drew up a repair plan soon after the deadly fire at The Station in West Warwick.
After the fire marshal approved the timeline, Cicilline directed Simmons to obtain weekly updates through the year to make sure the schools are complying with fire codes.
There are problems outside the plan. The fire marshal discovered Friday that, despite his orders, students at Windmill School were still using the third-floor art room with an exit that ends in a closet.
The room was immediately vacated. When the mayor learned about it, he directed Supt. Melody A. Johnson to find out why the room was allowed to remain open despite the fire marshal's concerns.
"The message is clear from me," Cicilline said. "We will ensure we will stay on schedule to make sure all the classrooms are safe, and any rooms that are not safe are not used."
By coincidence, the timeline was written the same day that the fire inspector for the schools gave up his state certification.
Charles Lawrence, who was the leading school inspector on and off for 10 years, said he was frustrated by the lack of progress and worried about liability if a fire swept through one of the buildings.
"When adults in a nightclub can't get out of a fire, how can we expect elementary school kids to get out?" Lawrence said.
Last fall, he pressed to criminally prosecute the School Department for not correcting the code violations over the last two years. As he contacted the state fire marshal's office about the two most serious cases -- Central High School and Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School -- the School Department hastily appealed for variances with the state Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review.
The fire board set some conditions and gave the schools deadlines to get the work done. Lawrence said he reinspected Central and Perry after the deadlines and found some work still unfinished, as well as new problems. That did it, Lawrence said. He turned in his certification card and handed Costa a letter, saying the reasons for giving up the inspector's work were "too numerous to mention."
"I like to do work and see results," Lawrence said. "It hit me that no matter what I do, they're not going to fix these buildings."
Fire marshals in Providence have complained about the same violations over the years and find new problems annually. The difficulty has been pinning down responsibility -- the schools, the city's public property department, or the private maintenance company for the schools.
"It's been an ongoing problem for quite some time, and until recently, the last six months, it's been tough to get things accomplished there," Costa said.
DeRobbio, and Alan Sepe, the city director for public property, blamed the violations on the wear and tear of the buildings. "Many of the issues that seem to be simple ones have been repaired, and some have been broken as quickly as they were repaired," DeRobbio said.
But that doesn't excuse all the problems, Lawrence said.
"When someone builds a classroom in a corridor, that has nothing to do with the kids. When you don't have working generators, how do you blame the kids for that?" Lawrence said. "When you're not inspecting sprinkler systems, how do you blame the kids for that?"
According to the timeline, repairs are scheduled to be completed weekly, with nearly all finished by April 21, DeRobbio said.
The panic bars on doors are fixed, he said. Door closures have been ordered. The flammable material that lined corridor walls has been taken down. New or refilled fire extinguishers have been mounted in the corridors. Fire suppression systems were installed in the kitchens at Nathan Bishop Middle School and Veazie Street School.
Repairs to the emergency lights at Mount Pleasant High School will be finished in a few weeks. Fire-door problems at a number of schools should be corrected this summer through a bond, Sepe said. The city is getting bids to install sprinkler systems at Nathan Bishop and Laurel Hill Avenue School, DeRobbio said.
All but one of the emergency generators -- some of which were inoperaable for some time -- have been replaced or repaired, DeRobbio said. Central High's generator will be replaced this summer; until then, the state fire board says the school can only be used during the daytime. The department has appealed to the state fire board for a variance to continue using the Feinstein School gym.
Fire inspectors are checking on the progress. They visited Central High last week and found minor problems that were corrected in a day. They are reinspecting Perry Middle School this week. "If the schools meet the timeline, I'll be thrilled," Costa said. "If they don't meet it, I'm going to take it to the state fire marshal and have them prosecuted."
But court action is a rarely used weapon, Costa admitted. Usually, violations can be fixed in the time it takes to bring someone to court, he said.
"Will the schools ever be 100 percent in compliance with the code? Probably never, because there are a lot of kids in the schools and things get broken," Costa said.
The school inspections are going on without the inspector who drew attention to them last fall.
After Lawrence turned in his certification, he was transferred out of the fire prevention bureau. Costa said Lawrence could no longer do his job without the inspector's credentials, much less serve as a supervisor of others enforcing the code. But because there were no openings in other posts for a lieutenant, Lawrence was bumped down a rank.
Lawrence filed a grievance through the union. "This is unheard of," said David Peters, president of Local 799. "You're demoting someone, and there's no crime committed. There's no violation."
The busy fire prevention office is now spreading the school work among the remaining inspectors.
Meanwhile, Lawrence is now a firefighter. "Running into a burning building is less stressful than inspecting them," he said.
Parents seen as integral to school
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2003
The School Department is urged to develop a plan for community engagement that includes parent orientation for all grades, especially for new parents with young children.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Engaging parents in their children's education should become an integral part of each school's operation rather than an add-on initiative coming from the central administration of the city's school district.
That's one of the main points that community organizer Asata Tigrai said she made when she was invited to speak recently to officials of the administration of Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson on community engagement -- what all agree is an essential, if elusive, component of school reform.
Tigrai is director of Project Basic, a grass-roots organization that assists community groups organize and get involved in community issues.
She said she advised Johnson's administration that parent engagement should begin at a "school level," with clerks, school administrators and teachers learning to be friendlier, more professional, and more engaging to parents and the community.
School employees in all positions should be "sensitized" regarding the treatment of parents and students, and teachers' professional development should include anti-racism and anti-discrimination training, Tigrai said in a recent letter to Johnson.
Tigrai is known as a vocal critic of the School Board and school administration outside her post as director of Project Basic.
But she said she did represent Project Basic in the meeting with school administrators, and she wrote Johnson a letter summarizing the substance of the session in order to put her positive recommendations "on the record."
"They are always saying people are not giving them constructive criticism," Tigrai said.
Susan F. Lusi, Johnson's chief of staff, said that administrators who attended the meeting considered it a "productive and positive exchange of ideas."
Tigrai recommended that the School Department develop a comprehensive plan for community engagement that includes parent orientation for all grade levels, especially for new parents with young children.
"Traditionally, the Providence School Department has relied on the armchair approach to community outreach and contact, which has led to [a] low level of parent participation," Tigrai said.
The School Department should consider "neighborhood outreach workers who would be working on the streets and not in the office," Tigrai said.
Lusi said that Kim Rose, the district's new director of governmental relations and public engagement, will work on a comprehensive strategic plan for involving the community in the schools.
Tigrai's suggestions regarding the plan, as well as more outreach and more printed materials, are "things we know we need," Lusi said.
Less than a year ago, the School Department was poised to hire about eight community outreach workers, but Lusi said the appointments were delayed because all members of the screening committee did not participate in each candidate interview.
Rather than have appointments clouded by questions about the interview process, Lusi said, the search was begun all over again.
And the situation was further complicated by the fact that Patricia Martinez, the district's facilitator for family and community partnerships, left her post for a similar position with Governor Carcieri, Lusi said.
Martinez, who provided direct service to schools, did not have the opportunity to step back and devise a strategic plan, Lusi said.
Rose was hired to do strategic planning in conjunction with an administrative reorganization Johnson put forward shortly after she was named superintendent last fall.
Working with Rose is a new facilitator for family and community partnerships, Kai Cameron. A second facilitator's position is vacant, Lusi said.
Lusi said that "we look forward to working with Ms. Tigrai and others in the community as the work progresses."
Community engagement, intended to be an integral part of a citywide effort to redesign the city's high schools, is funded through a $8-million, five-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
In that context, Tigrai said that it appears there is a "very, very low presence of parents or community groups participating in the redesign of schools. And student participation appears "minimal," she said.
The Rhode Island Children's Crusade has been designated as the lead agency for community engagement in the Carnegie-funded high school redesign process.
Last spring, it sponsored "study circles" involving parents, students, and community members that were intended to delineate the issues involved in improving the city's high schools.
Tigrai said she understood the study circles had ended, but Ann Clanton of the Children's Crusade said they had never been intended to continue indefinitely. Instead, they had given way to additional conversations among small groups of parents that were hosted in private homes, Clanton said.
And a new round of study circles will occur in May in the city's high schools, as recommended by the initial study circle participants last spring, Clanton said.
She also said the Children's Crusade is planning a youth conference on high school redesign before the school year ends.
"We're doing things all the time," she said.
Nevertheless, the commissioner of elementary and secondary education expressed concern about a lack of parent and student involvement in the state-mandated reorganization of Hope High School when he received the first draft of Hope's reorganization plan in January.
The commissioner, Peter McWalters, subsequently indicated he intends to accept the plan, saying that it would be more constructive in the long run to build on the progress Hope is making rather than introducing a higher level of state intervention.
The plan authorizes a number of committees inviting parent, student, and community participation on various aspects of school life. These committees would be set up to advise Hope's school improvement team, the governing board of the school.
While McWalters has received the plan, the reorganization cannot move forward until the proposal is formally approved by the school district's labor-management committee on self-governance -- something that has not yet occurred.
That committee met last week for the second time without approving the plan since the proposal was endorsed by the Hope faculty by a 4-1 margin. A third meeting is scheduled this week.
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