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September 2002
Job cuts needed to balance school plan
Posted Monday, September 30, 2002
A dozen custodians will losetheir jobs as a result of the budget cuts, while eight others will see their schedules change.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Nearly a quarter of the way into the fiscal year, the School Board has brought spending in line with $268,215,988 in state and local revenue approved by the City Council.
The council is holding another $1.2 million in escrow for varsity athletics, which school officials threatened to eliminate, but now say are being restored.
In all, the board has cut $16.5 million of a $23-million deficit built into its original budget proposal of nearly $286 million last spring.
The city has made up the difference, primarily by giving the schools about $6 million of an estimated $8-million surplus from the fiscal year that ended last June 30.
But the City Council balked at giving the schools money for a $2.8- million retroactive pay increase the board had negotiated with the Providence Teachers Union and school administrators -- even though it approved three-year contracts with each union.
Council members said they couldn't support the retroactive raises for teachers who had held back on voluntary professional development and other extras last year, especially when money was tight all around.
The union had adopted a work-to-rule posture, urging its members only to perform contractually required activities, to show its displeasure with contract talks that lasted 17 months, ending only last April.
Since the City Council took final action on the budget about a month ago, the School Board has struggled with ways to free up $2.8 million to pay for the raises, which are retroactive to Sept. 1, 2001.
The casualties include one administrative position -- that of director of equity and access -- as well as two senior clerical jobs, according to Mark V. Dunham, the district's chief financial officer.
Dunham said yesterday that Jose Gonzalez, who has filled the equity position for the last three years, will become director of the Department of Language and Culture, which oversees bilingual education and English-as-a-Second Language.
Gonzalez' duties, which included recruiting minority teachers and investigating complaints of workplace discrimination, will be incorporated into the work of the human resources office.
Gonzalez succeeds Frances Mossberg, the longtime director of the Department of Language and Culture, who retired last June.
Dunham said the two senior clerks whose jobs are being eliminated will be transferred to vacant positions.
All together, the three positions account for $210,000 of $255,000 that must be cut from salaries. Benefits represent about 20 percent of overall salary figures, Dunham said.
Dunham said the district is trying to avoid layoffs in eliminating "a couple more" jobs, but he said he could not discuss them publicly, because the employees involved have not yet been notified.
A few weeks ago, Dunham calculated that the district would have to cut $500,000 from personnel costs to help balance the budget.
But he was able to reduce that figure to $255,000 as a result of an unexpected budget surplus from the last fiscal year, which rose from $250,000 to $450,000.
Gonzalez' position, meanwhile, became the second high-level administrative job to be eliminated this year because of financial pressures.
In July, the school district decided not to fill the position of executive director of student support services after Thomas Mezzanotte retired.
Mezzanotte oversaw discipline, student registration, and alternative educational programs, and was a key figure in responding to complaints from parents.
The oversight and coordination Mezzanotte provided will be sorely felt, according to School Board members and senior administrators.
The district has managed to keep educational reform going by relying on federal, state, and private money earmarked for that purpose.
For example, federal Title I for disadvantaged children will yield about $3 million for school-based math coaches who work full-time with classroom teachers in implementing new methods of teaching mathematics.
The only layoffs identified so far are 12 daytime custodians whose jobs are being eliminated to save $381,585.
A spokesman for the schools' maintenance contractor, Bob Richards, has said a total of 20 daytime jobs are being cut, but eight daytime workers will fill cleaning jobs on the swing shift or evening shift.
The laid off workers would be added to the ranks of substitute custodians until additional permanent jobs open up, Richards has said.
The reduction in daytime positions means school principals won't have as much help during school hours with operational chores, such as moving cafeteria furniture in multi-purpose rooms, according to Richards.
Dunham has said he expects school principals to complain.
"The budget is really bare bones," Mary E. McClure, vice president of the School Board, said last week.
"We all have concern about making it" without running a deficit "and what the impact is going to be" from all the cuts.
"We're fortunate right now in that we have a sense of community going forward," McClure said, alluding to last Monday's appointment of Melody A. Johnson as superintendent, a move many agree will solidify the reforms begun three years ago by former Schools Supt. Diana Lam.
McClure said there's a "positive sense" in the schools, the central administration and among members of the School Board about "focus on our academic mission."
"When we have a clear focus and a clear academic mission, dealing with restrained resources can be a lot less difficult," she said.
The schools had to cut $115,000, or 29 percent, from their discretionary budgets, but they could make the cuts where they thought the reductions would do the least harm.
That autonomy -- which enabled them to save after-school programs -- is another factor contributing to a positive attitude, McClure said.
"It's not going to be an easy year," she said, "we're also concerned about next year."
"I'm not sure we see huge differences" in revenue, McClure said. "I think it will be tough again."
As part of the budget cuts, the School Board has given up memberships to the nationwide Council of Great City Schools, an association of 60 large urban school districts, as well as the Rhode Island Association of School Committees.
Board hires Johnson as superintendent
Posted Tuesday, September 24, 2002
The School Board departs from its search policy to sign Diana Lam's top aide.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Melody A. Johnson, who oversaw the implementation of reforms introduced by former Schools Supt. Diana Lam, last night became superintendent in her own right on a groundswell of support from virtually all quarters that have a stake in the schools.
On unanimous votes, the School Board first took action to depart from its own search policy and minutes later appointed Johnson to succeed Lam, who had recruited her from San Antonio nearly three years ago.
In appointing Johnson, the board did not set a term or a salary, but agreed to negotiate a contract with her.
An audience of about 100 people, many of them teachers and administrators, greeted the board's decision with a standing ovation.
Of 31 people who spoke on Johnson's appointment, Mary Brennan, the principal of the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School at Fox Point, summed up Johnson's role in the Lam administration most succinctly:
"While Diana Lam set the sails, it's been Melody Johnson who's been steering the ship all along," Brennan said.
"It's been a very steady course, and steadiness is paramount to progress," Brennan said. "I absolutely support Melody Johnson as superintendent."
The School Board acted less than a month after Lam left to become deputy chancellor of the New York City school system, partly to reassure major foundations who have pledged a total of $30 million to Providence on the basis of reforms Lam started, especially in literacy.
But as board member Susan DeRita told the crowd, her vote was not given in exchange for grant money.
"This is all about children and what is best for them," she said, sounding a theme that was repeated countless times during comments from the audience.
She said Johnson works with others and does not try to divide them.
She is a good listener and if she disagrees, she will explain her reasons, said DeRita.
DeRita said she had "this same conversation with someone else three years ago" about good communication and it was Johnson who was listening all the time.
Without mentioning Lam by name, DeRita's remark alluded to often-heard criticism that Lam lacked the ability to communicate her vision to a broad audience, a trait that earned her enemies inside and outside the schools.
DeRita did point out that Johnson enjoys the support of the City Council, acting Mayor John Lombardi, and Democratic mayoral candidate David N. Cicilline.
The Children's First Coalition, a grass-roots group, announced that it has filed a complaint with the attorney general's office alleging that the School Board violated the state's open meetings law when it deliberated in private last week about departing from its search policy for superintendent.
Steven Fischbach, a member of the coalition, contended that the board would never get six months' notice and that it had "concocted" the emergency.
But board member Samuel L. Zurier said that School Board policy needed to have enough flexibility to adapt to circumstances.
Just as the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once said that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact, so School Board policy is not a suicide pact," Zurier said.
Board plans major cuts in budget
Posted Monday, September 23, 2002
A total of $2.8 million could be eliminated tonight from the School Department's current spending plan, including $255,000 in staffing costs.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The School Board is expected to shave its budget by $2.8 million tonight to bring it in line with $269.4 million in state and local revenue, but some details of the spending reduction are not yet known.
The final revisions call for $255,000 in job cuts, although a list of the positions to be eliminated has not yet been presented to the School Board, according to the board's vice-president, Mary E. McClure.
She said she expects to hear greater detail about the job cuts in the executive session that will precede the public meeting.
The meeting is scheduled to conclude with the nomination of Melody A. Johnson as superintendent of schools. Johnson has served as acting superintendent since the announcement Aug. 28 that Schools Supt. Diana Lam was leaving to become Deputy Chancellor of Schools in New York City.
On Friday, Mary Sylvia Harrison, executive director of the Rhode Island Children's Crusade, issued a statement calling for Johnson's immediate appointment to maintain confidence in the $8 million, five-year high school redesign project funded by the Carnegie Corporation.
Harrison has taken the lead in community engagement in the redesign process.
A spokeswoman for Carnegie said last week that the foundation is closely monitoring the project.
The Carnegie Corporation has made no decision to suspend or withdraw its grant, unlike the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Because of Lam's departure, the Gates Foundation has frozen the $4 million it had pledged this year as part of a $13.5-million grant for overall school improvement.
Johnson is scheduled to meet with a Gates consultant today as part of the foundation's review of the grant suspension.
Gates and other foundations are looking for leadership that will signal continued support of the reforms started by Lam, and School Board members have said they are confident Johnson can provide such direction.
Meanwhile, the only bright spot in the latest budget revisions is news that the surplus for the last fiscal year, estimated last month at $250,000, has jumped to $450,000.
That increase apparently has enabled school officials to reduce the dollar value of staff cuts, proposed in August at $500,000, and moderate the impact of the reductions in other areas.
Individual schools managed to cut a total of $115,000, or 29 percent, from their discretionary budgets while saving after-school programs, which had been on the chopping block, according to Susan F. Lusi, the acting superintendent's chief of staff.
The central administration and the School Board also had to take some hits. They include dropping its memberships in the Council of Great City Schools, a nationwide association of 60 urban school districts, and the Rhode Island Association of School Committees, Lusi said.
The losers include Upward Bound, a program that coaches talented youngsters from minority backgrounds who want to apply to competitive colleges. The school district would save $31,250 by eliminating that program.
Volunteers in Providence Schools, and the Public Education Fund, two community agencies which have been strong supporters of Lam, also would be hard hit.
VIPS, which is paid $40,000 a year by the school department, will have to scale back drastically on efforts that now result in one-on-one attention in reading for 3,000 schoolchildren, according to Terri Adelman, the agency's executive director.
The PEF is to absorb a $35,000 cut. Margaretta Edwards, the agency's executive director, has said the grant pays 80 percent of the agency's personnel costs, enabling it to maintain 40 school-business partnerships valued at $544,180 in employee time donated by partners.
As part of the organization's value, Edwards also has cited $1.4 million in grants that benefited the city's schoolchildren last year, and $25,000 in scholarships awarded annually.
The School Board abandoned the idea of saving $175,000 in busing costs by changing the starting and ending times of middle schools so that fewer buses could handle the same number of children.
A cost analysis showed that any savings in busing would have been offset by the cost of providing after-school supervision for children who had to wait for the buses to arrive at their schools, according to McClure.
Meanwhile, the School Board is scheduled to hear proposed revisions to the student-assignment plan that will increase the proportion of seats reserved for neighborhood children from 75 percent to 90 percent.
The proposed changes, to be aired at a public forum Tuesday, create an inner circle giving preference to students who live within a quarter mile of a school.
McClure said that since the student-assignment plan was adopted nearly three years ago, parents have shown a strong preference for neighborhood schools, especially at the elementary level.
Originally, the state Department of Education ruled that the schools could reserve no more than 75 percent of seats in any one school for neighborhood children out of concern that a higher concentration might affect the desegregation plan on file with the federal government.
The department's chief legal counsel, Jennifer Wood, approved the change recently, according to a department spokesman.
Lusi said she showed Wood data which indicated that reserving 90 percent of seats for neighorhood children would not affect the racial make-up of the enrollment in each building.
The proportion of students from minority backgrounds, 82 percent in June, 2000, has increased to 84 percent in June of this year, Lusi said.
The student-assignment plan seeks to respond to parental preference over several years by concentrating only on children entering kindergarten or first grade, or those moving to middle school or high school for the first time.
Board ready to name Johnson superintendent Monday
Posted Friday, September 20, 2002
The appointment will better enable the School Department to obtain a $4 million philanthropic payment that had been held up since the departure of Diana Lam.
PROVIDENCE -- The School Board is expected to appoint Melody A. Johnson as superintendent of schools Monday, in part to ensure that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation follows through on its pledge of $4 million for school reform during the current academic year.
Early last week, Gates officials told the School Department that the departure of Schools Supt. Diana Lam prompted them to suspend payments until the foundation could be assured that future leadership of the district would follow through with the programs Lam started.
Johnson, who was Lam's deputy superintendent for 2 1/2 years in Providence and was formerly part of Lam's cabinet in San Antonio, has been largely responsible for implementing Lam's ideas.
A spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation told the Journal late last week that it had not made a decision to suspend payments in the wake of Lam's move to New York City.
Yesterday, however, a School Department spokeswoman said that $4 million allocated by Gates for the current academic year has not yet been received by its local fiscal agent, the Rhode Island Foundation.
The payment, due at the end of August, was part of an overall five-year, $13.5-million commitment to school reform in Providence made by Gates in 2000.
Because Gates has not released the money, the city's 50 schools have been told they may not commit any portion of this year's grant until further notice, according to Susan F. Lusi, chief of staff to Johnson, who is acting superintendent.
"It's a very serious thing to notify our schools not to spend the money, when the schools need this money for professional development," said Lusi.
"Our view" of the suspension "was that this was a shortsighted decision on the foundation's part," Lusi said.
"That's when discussions ensued," she said.
The discussions have led to a prompt review of the grant. On Monday, Johnson will meet with a senior adviser to the Gates Foundation, Tony Wagner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Wagner is an expert on leadership issues in urban school reform.
Johnson now will be able to tell Wagner that she has been nominated as superintendent.
School Board members earlier this week had discussed offering her a contract for two years, possibly with an option to renew for a third.
The resolution that will go before the Board on Monday sets the stage for contract negotiations for a term not to exceed three years. No salary is mentioned.
The resolution notes that Johnson "has worked diligently and successfully to conceive and implement the reforms undertaken during the last three years and is therefore the best person to continue that work."
It also says that since Johnson was named acting superintendent Aug. 28, she has "shown the ability to continue the reform agenda and to gain the support of key stakeholders in the process."
The swift action, coming less than a month after Lam's departure, is necessary to ensure "continuity of leadership" to ensure that private funding is not interrupted and to keep the schools focused on important reforms, according to the resolution.
It says that "significant damage" would occur in the current year's academic programs if the grant money paying for reforms was suspended for any length of time.
The same rationale is used in a separate resolution intended to justify emergency adoption of a revised policy for selecting a new superintendent without a search.
The proposed policy requires that at least six of nine members, a two-thirds majority, find that there are "exceptional circumstances" warranting an appointment without a search.
The exceptional circumstances, which include the departure of a superintendent with less than six months' notice, must be spelled out before the search is omitted, according to the proposed policy.
Acting chief: School effort will continue
Posted Tuesday, September 17, 2002
The acting superintendent says Diana Lam's legacy will continue after her departure to New York.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Melody A. Johnson tells teachers at the Feinstein Elementary School on Broad Street that they are pushing school reform from the bottom up.
She reminds them what has been said about Providence at the national level: that the city had accomplished in two years what had taken seven years in the public schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
"The kids are non-negotiable and the teachers are the program," she said.
"The agenda is still the agenda," she said. "We haven't missed a single beat since the day school started."
For the first time, teachers are working with comprehensive guides that show them what, when, and how to teach in language arts, math and science, building on changes introduced during the last three years.
Johnson, deputy superintendent to Diana Lam for almost all but six months of Lam's tenure, had about a day's notice that her boss was leaving Providence
Three weeks ago, Lam accepted an offer from New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein to become his second-in-command.
Within hours of the announcement, the School Board named Johnson acting superintendent, sending a message that it would not waver in its commitment to the reforms started by Lam.
Johnson was an official of the state education agency in Texas in the mid-1990s when she met Lam, then superintendent in San Antonio.
"I told her 'These things have to change in your school district,' " Johnson recalled.
"And after an hour she said, 'Why don't you come and change them yourself?' " Johnson recalled, laughing.
Johnson accepted the challenge, becoming a member of Lam's inner circle in San Antonio.
Six months after Lam moved to Providence, she recruited Johnson from San Antonio as deputy superintendent.
Once again, she was lured by the challenge, Johnson said. "There was an overwhelming need and desire to make the changes" in the city schools, she said.
And she was excited about working with researcher Lauren Resnick, whose Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh had been hired to guide the reform efforts. Johnson had followed Resnick's research for many years, she said.
Professionally, Lam and Johnson acted as the other's alter ego for the next 2 1/2 years.
"You cannot be a good number one if you do not have a good number two," said Johnson.
That's one of the things Johnson says she has learned as one of 25 students from across the nation in an intensive training program for urban superintendents sponsored by the Eli Broad Foundation of Los Angeles.
Philosophically, Johnson said, she and Lam "have always been in agreement on what needs to be done."
"I wouldn't be here if we didn't have that same intense and passionate commitment about the same thing," Johnson said.
"For good or bad, we are both workaholics," Johnson said.
"Work is not work; it is a passion," she said.
Lam let her "do what I'm best at . . . taking the big picture down to here," Johnson said, cupping her hands together to suggest the way she has translated Lam's vision into concrete change at the classroom level.
Lam, never a detail-oriented person, "had to have the national connections" to attract multimillion grants from national foundations, she said.
Without private resources, the district could not have moved forward on education reform, Johnson said.
She said her move to Providence in February 2000 was "a good match at that time."
But following Lam to New York is "not on my radar screen right now," Johnson said.
"I'm very commited to Providence, and very committed to the people who have killed themselves to get on track," she said.
In her role as the chief of implementation, Johnson said, she is "more deeply connected to the people" in Providence than Lam was.
"I'm more bound to them," she said.
Lam has already told her she could come to New York, Johnson said, but, "I couldn't imagine walking away this year. There's too much of myself invested here right now," Johnson said.
At the same time, Johnson defended Lam against widespread criticism over her abrupt departure.
"It's unfortunate that it came of the heels of her recommitting to stay," said Johnson. In an opinion piece published in mid-July in the Sunday Journal, Lam said she had decided to turn her back on overtures from Portland, Ore., and had rededicated herself to the work ahead in Providence.
When her New York appointment was made public Aug. 28, "a lot of people felt betrayed," Johnson said.
"The emotions ran the gamut from tremendous sadness to anger," she said.
But the job offer from Klein -- after a 45-minute telephone interview -- was just as much a surprise to Lam as it was to everyone else, Johnson said.
"In all the times I've worked with Diana, she's never sought a job. The jobs seek her," Johnson said.
"It's the nature of who she is. It's why she made it here in the first place. Talented people always have opportunity," Johnson said.
"My philosophy is that I'd rather have the best and brightest and most competent people around me and lose them rather than the other way," she said.
When they get promoted or leave, said Johnson, there are always other talented people to take their place.
Johnson would not speculate about her own future beyond the end of this school year.
Johnson, 52, faces the same kind of retirement issues as Lam, who is not eligible to collect a pension in any of the four states in which she has served as superintendent.
The lack of reciprocal retirement plans among states ends up increasing salaries at a time when there is a "huge shortage of superintendents" nationwide, Johnson said.
If educators are "not vested in a state, then they will continue to leave for more money," she said. "That is their retirement."
Johnson said that superintendents with high salaries "might get $250,000, but they save $50,000 to $75,000 of that" and use it to set up their own retirement plan. She did not specifically mention Lam, who went to New York for $250,000 -- the same salary as Chancellor Klein.
Johnson is eligible for a pension in Texas, where she has worked most of her life, but only if she returns.
The school year ahead will be a pivotal one for Providence and for Johnson, who is expected to complete the highly regarded training program of the Broad Foundation next June.
By finishing the Broad program, a series of intensive, five-day conclaves backed up by lots of on-the-job "homework" in Providence, Johnson will be well positioned for a job as a school superintendent next fall.
It's too soon to tell who might make her an offer.
Schools hire chief of human resources
Posted Thursday, September 12, 2002
Donald Zimmerman, a consultant who analyzed how the office should be reorganized, was hired quietly last month as interim chief for $2,500 a week.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Consultant Donald Zimmerman has been hired to lead the School Department's struggling human resources office temporarily while a permanent chief is sought.
Reform of the human resources office -- a key element in determining the quality of teachers in the classroom -- eluded former Schools Supt. Diana Lam for the three years she worked in Providence.
Lam, who in 1999 called the schools an "employment agency" that put the needs of children last, took a job as second-in-command of the New York City schools about two weeks ago.
Zimmerman's appointment was not made public when it became effective more than a month ago.
Temporary appointments do not require the approval of the School Board, according to Susan F. Lusi, chief of staff to acting Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson.
Lusi said Lam turned to Zimmerman after the city Board of Contract and Supply twice refused to authorize $25,000 for a search firm to recruit candidates for the top human resources position.
The Board of Contract and Supply was reluctant to act -- even though the money would come from state revenue that could not be spent on anything else -- as long as the School Department's budget remained up in the air, Lusi said.
She said the board finally approved the $25,000, which is a portion of school reform funds held by the state Department of Education, after the City Council approved the school budget late last month.
The actual search is expected to take six months, Lusi said, while Zimmerman's appointment runs until mid-October. She did not say how the School Department plans to run human resources after Zimmerman's appointment expires.
Zimmerman, a consultant with Willmott & Associates of Cranston, was retained last February to analyze recommendations on reorganizing human resources that had been made the previous year by the Council of Great City Schools, which found the office lacking staff, training, and professional expertise.
The chief recommendation of the Council of Great City Schools was that the School Department hire someone with a professional background in personnel who would serve as a "visionary change agent and leader" for the human resources office.
Among other things, Zimmerman recommended that the human resources chief supervise three middle managers.
One would focus on benefits and record-keeping, one would handle employee relations including labor negotiations, and the third would concentrate on employee recruiting and retention, as well as the assignment of substitute teachers.
Of the three positions, Lusi said, only the third has been filled. Steve Provenzo, former principal at the Roger Williams Middle School, was recently assigned to head the recruiting arm of the human resources office.
Lusi said she saw no conflict that Zimmerman was hired to start a reorganization that he planned.
On the contrary, she said, she saw it as "good business."
"It makes no sense to hire someone who knew nothing" about the human resources office for the interim position, Lusi said.
Zimmerman has a strong background in human resources and has "done all the homework," she said.
Asked whether she thought Zimmerman's interim appointment gave him an unfair advantage over other candidates, Lusi said that "you could make that argument for any job in which there is a person inside."
She said that being a "known quantity" can work for or against a particular candidate, depending on the situation.
She said Zimmerman is being paid $2,500 a week for a minimum of 30 hours work from money set aside to pay the new human resources chief.
The allocation, $130,000 plus the cost of benefits, would be enough to cover Zimmerman's services for a year, Lusi said.
She said Zimmerman is spending much of his time representing the School Department on plans to computerize human resources operations citywide beginning Jan. 1.
"With any of these computerized systems, whenever there's a big transition, unless you do the work up front, it can be a disaster," she said.
Zimmerman also has prepared training for principals on the proper way to document complaints about the job performance of those they supervise, according to Lusi.
"All those things, if not handled properly, can go very much awry," she said.
Also on Zimmerman's agenda is training for the human resources staff on personnel practices and an employee handbook for the 4,000 employees of the School Department, Lusi said.
Johnson: Make math a priority
Posted Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Acting Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson says while mathematics is the new focus, the emphasis on reading and writing will continue.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- A new mathematics program, delayed by labor-management tensions during the last academic year, will be fully implemented during the next nine months.
Math was at the top of the academic priority list unveiled last night by Melody A. Johnson at her first School Board meeting as acting superintendent.
At the same time, she made it clear that the drive to improve reading and writing skills, the cornerstone of the administration of former Schools Supt. Diana Lam, will continue.
Like Lam, whose departure for New York City was announced just two weeks ago, Johnson faced questions over hiring practices.
And Johnson's commitment to stay in Providence was questioned by grass-roots activists who called for a search committee that would include parents and the community -- segments of the population they say were excluded by the group that brought in Lam three years ago.
The mathematics program, for which the district purchased $1 million worth of books, was to have begun in the second semester in secondary schools.
But a work-to-rule posture taken by the Providence Teachers Union through the end of April cut into the voluntary professional development Lam and Johnson had counted on to launch the program.
Work to rule, in which teachers refrained from voluntary activities, ended after the teachers ratified a new three-year contract.
Johnson, meanwhile, also said an "intense focus" on literacy will continue, receiving some fine-tuning to meet the needs of students who enter adolescence without basic reading skills.
And she said the high schools "have to look beyond the academic portion" of their program and address the social and emotional development of youth as part of their mission.
Johnson touched on a plan for Patricia Martinez, facilitator for family and community engagement, to "move forward in a thoughtful manner this year on public engagement."
But Johnson also withdrew from the agenda -- without explanation -- the appointment of 10 people as community and family specialists who would work under Martinez's direction.
Hamlet Lopez, one of the 10 nominees, asked School Board members for an explanation for the withdrawal of the appointments by the next board meeting on Sept. 23.
The candidates for the liaison positions are "linked to the community," he said.
Likewise, he said, speaking in Spanish, school reforms have to be "linked to the community" in order to succeed.
Theodore Johnson, a teacher at the Feinstein High School, challenged the School Board to ensure that people appointed to administrative positions are the best qualified and reflect the students they serve.
While classroom instruction helps young people realize their dreams, young people in Providence need to see positive adult role models who come from the same backgrounds they do, he said.
"I don't think we do a good job of that in Providence," he said.
The school district has a large minority population, but "very few minority educators are in positions of leadership," said Theodore Johnson, who is black.
Johnson said five or six minority educators -- at least one of which he knew had excellent qualifications -- applied for an assistant principal's position at Esek Hopkins but were not selected.
The job went to Marc Catone, a teacher in city since 1992, who is white.
But the School Board appointed a black man, John O. Craig, as assistant principal at Mount Pleasant High School. He had been in that position in a temporary capacity since January.
School Board member Leonard Lopes, a Cape Verdean of African descent, said he agreed that people of color should be role models for youngsters from the same backgrounds.
At the same time, he said, the acting superintendent "does her due diligence in selecting candidates."
"I want to make it clear that while I'm on the board all candidates will be scrutinized," Lopes said.
In nominating Craig, Johnson, the acting superintendent, said he is the type of administrator his coworkers seek out. He has done good work with children with special needs and had an excellent reputation in his previous administrative job in Johnston.
She said Catone has taught gifted students and those in special education and has received raves from parents.
Teaching vacancies continuing to decline
Posted Monday, September 9, 2002
Recruiting teachers on the Internet and not requiring them to live in Providence increase the pool of candidates.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- It used to be that all one had to do to get a teaching job in Providence was put in 135 days of substitute teaching and get added to a waiting list for a permanent position.
Even after the guarantee of a job for longtime substitutes was removed in 1995, much of the hiring continued to be done from that pool -- even though human resources staff members reported they were unsatisfied with the overall quality of the applicants.
But in the last year, several factors have come together to broaden the candidate pool and raise the bar for employment.
Most important have been the elimination of a municipal residency requirement for teachers and the use of the Internet as a recruiting tool.
As a result, the school year started with only 41 teachers holding emergency certificates in traditionally hard-to-fill areas, 15 fewer than last year, according to Stephen Provenzo, human resources administrator.
Those hard-to-fill areas are bilingual special education, physics, chemistry, elementary bilingual education, secondary special education, library sciences and mathematics, Provenzo said.
Long-term substitutes have filled 17 other vacancies, Provenzo said. The substitutes are all certified teachers, but not necessarily in the subject they are teaching.
Last year at this time, there were roughly 40 long-term substitutes in classrooms.
The number of vacancies at the start of the school year, well over 100 a few years ago, appears to have been falling at the start of each term, although precise figures on the decline were not available Friday.
There were 36 vacancies when schools opened Aug. 27, all but four of them materializing in the last few weeks -- after a districtwide job fair in which teachers bid on new assignments on the basis of seniority.
Sixteen of those vacancies have already been filled.
There were 2,261 teaching positions in the system at the end of the last school year, but it could not be immediately determined how many positions have been added over the summer.
Provenzo and human resources staffers Sharon Gleckman and Peggy Tindall said the General Assembly's prohibition on municipal residency requirements for teachers, enacted last year, helped the district fill some vacancies that otherwise would have gone begging.
The elimination of the residency requirement enabled the School Department to post vacant jobs and to solicit applications on its Web site, important features for drawing applications from out of state.
Provenzo said he made sure to maintain telephone contact with promising out-of-state candidates who had questions about moving to Providence, helping to persuade two New York teachers to relocate.
Provenzo said that since he joined the human resources office last year, he has tried to respond to the needs of each school, drawing on his experience as former principal of the Roger Williams Middle School.
He said job interviews have been conducted at the schools where the vacancies exist, and his office has given school administrators autonomy to hire teachers.
Until now, that kind of latitude in hiring has been given to only a few schools in the district.
Provenzo said he has tried to standardize the hiring process, adding a section on job interviews to the administrative procedures handbook.
Until then, he said there had been no written guidelines for conducting job interviews.
For the first time, newly hired teachers were offered an orientation day about a week before school started, he said. A total of 72 teachers attended a program designed by the Providence Teachers Union and the administration.
He said the entire human resources staff helped improve the hiring process, alluding to a report earlier this year by the Council of the Great City Schools that was highly critical of the department.
The report distressed the office staff, who said they were being blamed for problems over which they had no control and were not given recognition for their efforts.
Lam's $250,000 pay will match boss
Posted Wednesday, September 4, 2002
In Providence, officials were working on an overall compensation offer that did not approach Lam's salary in New York.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Diana Lam, winding down her three-year tenure as superintendent of schools here, confirmed yesterday that she will make $250,000 as the second-in-command of the New York City school system.
Lam's salary will be the same as her boss, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, a lawyer and former publishing executive who is expected to rely on Lam to provide the academic expertise necessary to improve education for 1.1 million schoolchildren in the nation's largest school system.
Lam also will make more than former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was paid $195,000 last year. Giuliani's successor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, accepts only a token $1 salary.
Klein spokesman Tom Antenen said Lam's salary reflects the fact that she is "in demand."
Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, agrees with that assessment.
While Lam's $250,000 salary in New York is "high," he said, there are "superintendents in small districts in Texas making that kind of money."
And a smattering of school chiefs around the country are making $300,000 or more. They include Eric Smith, of Ann Arundel County, Maryland, and Dallas Supt. Mike Moses.
"It sounds like what they're trying to do in New York is have an outside and inside superintendent, with the chancellor being the public face, and Diana running the district on a day-to-day basis," Houston said.
The fact that Lam's salary will equal Klein's suggests that Klein recognizes he is not an educator and is willing to give Lam the latitude she will need to make academic changes.
He said Klein was hired for "political reasons, which is not necessarily a bad thing."
"I suspect Klein's job will be to protect the system from external politics" while Lam changes education, Houston said.
"She'll have her work cut out for her there," he said, calling New York the "Mount Everest" of urban education.
"Over the last several years, there's been an increasing shortage of qualified people, particularly for the urban districts," Houston said.
"There's been an upswing in salaries because of that," he said.
But superintendents' salaries still fall far short of compensation levels in the private sector, he said.
Houston said he believes New York officials "did what they felt they had to do" to hire Lam away from Providence. Lam earned $170,430 in Providence last year.
Portland, Ore., recently offered Lam an overall compensation package that exceeded the $250,000 salary, Lam confirmed yesterday.
But Lam turned Portland down in late July, saying her choice had more to do with a good fit in Providence; a diverse student body that made the work more challenging and grant money that would enable reform to continue despite budgetary constraints.
Providence could not compete financially with New York, according to Mary McClure, vice president of the School Board.
She said the School Board's overall proposed compensation offer did not approach Lam's $250,000 salary in New York, contrary to statements Klein's spokesman made in New York late last week.
Richard Hoag, CEO of Providence Washington Insurance Co., had announced he would try to raise money in the private sector for a retirement package to induce Lam to stay in Providence.
But that effort, had it gotten under way, would not have pushed Lam's overall compensation to $250,000, Hoag said yesterday.
Apart from her work as superintendent, Lam also made an undisclosed amount as an adjunct professor of education at Brown University.
Yesterday, Antenen said Lam's salary will be her only compensation -- at least for the time being.
Lam has headed four school districts in four states the last dozen years and has not been able to transfer her employer's pension contributions from one place to another -- a problem faced by a minority of itinerant school administrators nationwide.
Lam, 54, said yesterday that she will be vested in the New York City pension system in five years, half the time that would have been necessary for her to become eligible for a pension in Rhode Island.
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