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September 2003
Low-rated schools tap millions in federal aid
Posted Monday, September 29, 2003
As much as $3.66 million of the school department's federal allocation for disadvantaged students could be used to pay for costs associated with the city's low-performing, non-improving schools.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The federal No Child Left Behind Act has forced the school department to set aside nearly a fifth of its $19-million federal allocation for disadvantaged students to provide tutoring and other services for children in low-performing, non-improving schools.
Besides tutoring, the $3,664,260 in set-aside money may be used to pay for extra transportation costs when parents have their children transferred from low-performing to better-performing schools.
Michael Sorum, director of assessment for the public schools, said it's possible that the entire $3.66 million might not be used, depending on the demand from parents.
Last week, the School Board authorized the school administration to spend up to $1.5 million for supplemental educational services that will be provided by five private companies that have state approval.
Children in the city's middle schools are eligible for the tutoring, for differing reasons. Parents of middle schoolers are being notified by mail this week that their children are eligible for the supplemental services.
Parents who want tutoring may choose among five private organizations approved by the state to provide services: EdSolutions, Inc.; Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc.; The Princeton Review's Instructional Courses; Blackstone Academy, and Kaplan k12 Learning Services.
Meanwhile, parents of children in six elementary schools were notified in August that they could transfer their children to better-performing schools.
The six elementary schools were obliged to offer parents the choice because the schools have been rated low-performing and have not improved for two consecutive years, according to the rules of NCLB.
The elementary schools are Alfred A. Lima, Charlotte Woods, George J. West, Anthony Carnevale, Veazie Street and Mary Fogarty, according to Sorum, the district's assessment director.
The choice option -- as well as requirements for supplemental services -- take into account preliminary results on statewide tests administered last spring in grades 4 and 8 in elementary and middle schools that receive federal Title I funds for the disadvantaged. No high schools receive Title I funds.
The test scores have not been made public, but Sorum, the district's assessment director, said he does not expect that the final figures will change the list of schools under sanction.
On Friday, Sorum said he has not received figures on the number of children in the six target elementary schools whose parents have asked for transfers.
But if parents react the same way they did during the last school year, the relative number of transfers requested is not expected to have a major impact on the elementary schools.
The "failing" school category can be misleading, Sorum said, because a low-performing school must meet 21 targets for improvement for two consecutive years to be categorized as "improving" and rid itself of any sanctions.
He said preliminary scores indicate that more than one elementary school met greater numbers of targets in 2003 than they did in 2002, including one school that achieved 20 out of 21 goals.
But those improvements don't count under No Child Left Behind.
Veazie Street was the only elementary school required to offer choice as a result of the 2002 state test results in the fourth grade. Only 11 children's parents asked to have their children transferred.
The preliminary results of the 2003 testing show that Veazie improved in all 21 targets, but it must still offer choice, according to No Child Left Behind.
In the middle grades, three schools -- DelSesto, Springfield Middle and Gilbert Stuart -- are on the low-performing, non-improving list for the second consecutive year and would have to offer choice if the district had any better-performing middle schools.
These three relatively new schools had not accumulated enough data last year to be categorized as non-improving.
Instead of choice, they will offer supplemental services, along with the rest of the city's elementary schools.
All but one of the remaining middle schools have been categorized as low-performing, non-improving for the third consecutive year, according to Sorum.
The exception, the Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School, is considered by the federal government to be in its fourth year as a non-improving school.
Perry must still offer supplemental services and must follow a corrective action plan, according to Sorum.
The federal government describes possible corrective action under NCLB as overhauling the curriculum or replacing some staff members.
Sorum did not elaborate last week on any corrective action Perry must take.
New report cards will debut in November
Posted Thursday, September 25, 2003
The new-style progress reports, for all city-run elementary schools, will measure student performance against state standards for each grade level.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- A new report card for public elementary schools is scheduled to make its debut in November, after a yearlong overhaul.
The new progress report has been transformed from a box score to a veritable digest of details -- no more letter grades -- that measure student performance against state standards for what children at each grade level should know and should be able to do.
Piloted in nine elementary schools last spring, the new report represents a shift in thinking, away from subjective letter grades and toward broader standards -- specific skills and levels of knowledge that can be observed and measured.
If the state tests measure performance according to those standards, and teachers are asked to present the curriculum to help students achieve the same standards, then the report cards should gauge how well students are doing, according to a spokesman for the administration of Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson.
Michael Sorum, the district's assessment director, explained the need for consistency among standards, teaching methods, and assessments:
"We have this conundrum of children with wonderful report cards who aren't meeting standards," he said. "Teachers, understandably, want to reward progress and hard work, but progress and hard work don't necessarily correspond with meeting standards."
The new progress report measures some 70 benchmarks for performance in all subjects, as well as 15 criteria to describe students' behavior and attitudes toward learning, which appear under the heading "Habits of the Mind."
In addition, the report will track attendance and tell parents whether tardiness, absences or early dismissals are adversely affecting a student's academic work.
About a third of the specific standards describe skills that are developed in good readers and writers, reflecting the district's strong emphasis on literacy.
The reading and writing standards cover everything from skill in decoding difficult words to critical-thinking ability that enables a student to support his or her conclusion about a text with supporting evidence.
The scoring parallels the number system used by the state in ranking performance on standards-based examinations, with 5 signifying that the student has achieved the grade-level standard with honors.
A score of 4 means a student is at grade level for a particular standard, such as using tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data in science, or locating and analyzing relevant information in social studies.
Descending numbers correspond to declining levels of achievement, with 3 signaling that the student has nearly achieved the grade-level standard, 2 reflecting below-standard work, and 1 standing for little evidence of achievement.
In addition, the progress report employs an "NA" code, when certain standards are "not applicable at this time."
Sorum said, "Parents want to know about their children's progress and effort, and they also want to know how they shape up to the standards."
"Some of the stun factor will be that a lot of kids who might have had straight As might be getting threes and fours" -- below grade-level or nearly at grade level scores -- when their work is measured against the standards, he said.
"We have to tell parents that three or four is not failing," Sorum said.
The report card that will go home with parents in November has less information than the prototype that was tested in nine elementary schools last spring, when parents and teachers reported that the first try was a little overwhelming.
The revised document is still a work in progress, said Sorum, indicating that the team responsible for developing it is very receptive to comments from teachers and parents.
The first quarter ends Oct. 31. Parents will receive first-quarter marks during parent-teacher conferences Nov. 18 through Nov. 20.
Along with the marks, parents will receive a form asking for their feedback on the report's new design, Sorum said.
The report covers grades 1 through 6, but only in elementary schools. Many sixth graders attend middle schools; they will receive middle-school report cards, which have not changed, according to Sorum.
Kindergartners historically have received non-graded report cards, which will remain the same, said Gary Moroch, the director of elementary education.
Moroch and Sorum agree that there is still much to be done before teachers are ready to present the new report cards to parents.
On Oct. 2, the principals of the city's 25 public elementary schools will receive a briefing, complete with a copy of a slide presentation that they can use to help explain the change in marking to teachers, Moroch said.
"Leadership is critical in rolling this out," Sorum said.
"We need to have internal roll-out on this, so that a teacher doesn't say, 'The kid is getting an A and that translates to 5,' " he said.
While teachers involved in the trial run during the last school year responded positively to the new report, the feedback form was filled out by less than 5 percent of the total, Sorum said.
"I don't want to be naive," Sorum said.
"This is a change in practice," he said, and "people don't always like change."
In filling out reports for individual students, teachers will use additional documentation that spells out standards more specifically for each grade level, Sorum said. Teachers also will be able to refer to the grade-specific information in talking to parents about what each standard means, he said.
"We want [the new progress report] to be a tool of advocacy for the parents," Sorum said.
The new report will answer the question, "has my child mastered appropriate math facts for the third grade?," he said. If the child has not, the parent will be able to ask the teachers what can be done to help the child meet the standard, Sorum said.
The parent "should be an informed consumer," he said, and schools should make their expectations for children very clear.
"Ultimately, we might have a specific report card for each grade," Sorum said, "as teachers become more comfortable" with the standards-based assessment.
But change takes time, he said.
"If your goal is to go 100 miles an hour, you can't do it overnight," Sorum said.
3 city schools embark on new literacy program
Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2003
The program is part of a $350,000, three-year pilot program sponsored by the National Center for Family Literacy.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Three of the city's elementary schools are about to expand their roles, offering adult education and parental training for recent Hispanic immigrants, as well as a chance for the parents to spend time with their children in the classroom.
The Lima, Bailey, and D'Abate elementary schools are recruiting a total of about 70 Hispanic parents of students during the next few weeks as part of a $350,000, three-year pilot program sponsored by the National Center for Family Literacy.
The program will be financed with $3.2 million that the Toyota Foundation has given the National Center for Family Literacy to adapt a well-established program combining adult education, parenting, and children's literacy to serve immigrants struggling with a lack of both English and a formal education.
Other cities piloting the Hispanic Family Literacy Initiative are New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
The program contains four components, starting with a strong literacy curriculum in the elementary classroom, according to Janet Pichardo, facilitator for family engagement for the school district.
For the parents to work with teachers to assist their children, they will need training on the ways literacy is taught in the classroom, as well as information on ways they can reinforce the schools' message at home, Pichardo said.
She said parents will also get time to work with their children in the classroom.
Separate adult literacy classes in English will aim to help parents better assist their children and open the door to further education and better employment prospects for themselves, Pichardo said.
"It all has to be integrated to be successful," she said of the various elements of the program.
The Hispanic Family Literacy Initiative is the latest adaptation of a program that had its origins in Kentucky in the mid-1980s with a grassroots effort to break a cycle of low adult literacy and poverty handed down from one generation to another.
The program first attracted financing from the Kentucky state legislature and then attained national visibility -- and additional money -- after it received awards from the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government as one of the top 10 innovations in state and local government nationwide.
Today, there are about 6,000 family literacy programs nationwide, many of them funded through federal education law.
Sharon Darling, who organized the first family literacy programs in Kentucky, founded the National Center for Family Literacy in 1989 and still serves as its president.
"The family is so central to Hispanic culture," she said.
"Family literacy is an important way to strengthen the family. If we're not careful we will take what's so strong and make that weak," she said.
To pilot the Hispanic Family Literacy Initiative, Darling said, her organization searched for cities where the Hispanic population has at least tripled between 1980 and 2000.
With a 325-percent rise in those two decades, Providence met the statistical requirements, according to figures compiled by Darling's organization.
But Darling said the deciding factor in Providence winning its grant was the leadership of Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson and Mayor David N. Cicilline, who has promoted the concept of the city's schools as hubs for the neighborhoods that surround them.
"We were very impressed with the leadership in Providence now," Darling said in a telephone interview from her office in Louisville, Ky.
"The energy level in making something happen for families couldn't be higher," she said.
"One of our goals is to create models for other communities" with high immigrant populations, in the same way that the original programs evolved into a model for the National Center for Family Literacy, Darling said.
She said the National Center for Family Literacy has been "meticulous about having a strong evaluation program."
There are 7,000 families in the organization's database, which have been followed for as long as 10 years after they completed family literacy training, Darling said.
Among other things, the statistics show that 66 percent of the adult participants went on get additional training or education or continued working with children in schools, she said.
In Providence, the school district will rely on community agencies -- Dorcas Place, Volunteers in Providence Schools, and Ready to Learn Providence -- to bring family literacy services into the schools, Pichardo said.
She said the progress of the parents and children will be tracked over the three-year life of the demonstration project.
He'll give academic reform a new view
Posted Monday, September 22, 2003
As the School Department's new director of elementary reform initiatives, former principal Gary Moroch hopes to help teachers implement the latest instructional changes, especially in reading and writing.
BY: GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- In the last three weeks, Gary Moroch has stepped out of the principal's office at the Martin Luther King Elementary School and has joined the central administration as an experienced guide to all his former colleagues in the city's 25 elementary schools.
As director of elementary reform initiatives, his primary responsibility is to ensure that the day-to-day implementation of reforms in teaching reading and writing are true to the educational research that spawned them.
Accountability is a big part of his job.
"With the new legislation, we're all under the gun," Moroch said of No Child Left Behind, which provides for increasingly stiffer sanctions for failing schools that don't improve.
Among other things, Moroch will help school principals use data to tailor professional development among the teaching staff to address the areas where children need the most support.
"We're not talking about accountability in a punitive way," Moroch said, "but in a reflective way."
During the last four years, principals and teachers have been incorporating major changes in the ways they teach reading, writing, and, most recently, mathematics.
The reforms started with the "balanced literacy" introduced by former Schools Supt. Diana Lam four years ago.
Balanced literacy was designed to allow time for teaching all aspects of reading and writing necessary for children to gain not only basic understanding but also to develop skills in analysis and critical thinking.
Lam, now chief academic officer for the public schools in New York, is taking heat from critics who say balanced literacy is nothing more than a discredited "whole language" approach that pays no attention to sounding out words, or phonics.
During Lam's years here, there was similar criticism from teachers and parents who said that for many children, balanced literacy did not offer enough emphasis on decoding words through phonics.
In the last year, the approach to phonics has been fine-tuned to address children's individual needs, Moroch indicated.
For the first time last year, incoming kindergartners were given an assessment intended to measure their awareness of the way different sounds in spoken language carried different meanings.
The test is used as a tool to suggest how much emphasis phonics should get for each child, he said, and schools have been given additional materials to boost their phonics instruction.
The district's new approach to mathematics includes Math Matters, a long-term comprehensive professional development program that aims to deepen elementary teachers' understanding of mathematics. The training also incorporates classroom management and instructional techniques for presenting math through a variety of activities rather than relying exclusively on traditional paper-pencil methods.
A complementary approach called Investigations asks children to develop critical thinking by looking at multiple ways of solving a problem.
"We're looking away from the way most people were taught math," Moroch said.
Moroch said he aims to foster the kinds of connections that will help the elementary schools become a cohesive group, where there is "no miscommunication and we all speak the same language."
Everyone will "understand what the expectations are; what the superintendent's major goals are this year," he said.
Moroch said he hopes to let elementary school principals know he is available if they need help, particularly in the case of four new administrators who have become principals this academic year: Mary Kay Schnare at Robert F. Kennedy, Deborah Bessette at Flynn, Nanci Fitzhugh at Veazie Street and Deborah Ruggieri at Martin Luther King.
Except for Schnare, who most recently worked as the district's director of instructional planning and support, all the new principals are recent graduates of the district's Aspiring Principals program.
The "grow-your-own" program, which combines academic requirements with on-the-job apprenticeships, has helped fill the ranks of middle management at a time when the increasing demands and pressures on school principals have reduced the number of applications for these positions.
There are few graduates of the first round of Aspiring Principals who have not yet been placed, Moroch said, and a second class is now in training.
"My goal is to be in schools as often as I can," Moroch said.
"The only way to know the work is to see the work," he said. "The only way to know you're in a good classroom environment is to be there."
"Visibility is one of the most important aspects of this job," he said.
Changing role cited in record turnover for city principals
Posted Thursday, September 18, 2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- In the last five years, roughly two in three public school administrators in Providence have either retired or left the district, according to the executive secretary of their professional association.
Steve Kane said yesterday the unprecedented turnover stems from a bulge in the number of people eligible to retire, as well as a change in the role of the school principal that has made the job much tougher, especially in an urban area.
While part of the turnover comes from retirements that would normally occur, some people have left earlier than they otherwise might have, fearing that retirement benefits might be diminished in future years, Kane said.
Since Kane retired five years ago as principal of the Martin Luther King Elementary School, he said, the job of school principal has become much more difficult.
"It's a rewarding job," he said, but it's a "big job."
"I admire the people who do it now," said Kane, who fills administrative vacancies temporarily.
"Principals a few years ago were more administrators of buildings and systems, rather than educators," he said.
"You were hired because of your administrative and managerial skills. If you needed help in terms of the educational part, you relied on outside experts or [curriculum] supervisors."
Since former Schools Supt. Diana Lam came to Providence in 1999, school principals -- as well as assistant principals -- have undergone extensive training intended to become academic leaders in their buildings.
But the changing expectations for administrators are not unique to Providence, Kane said.
Similar demands have been put on school administrators across the country, with the advent of high-stakes testing in various forms, most recently the omnipresent federal No Child Left Behind Act.
And the pressure to improve is particularly intense in urban areas, where scores tend to be the lowest.
Kane said that "you have to not only raise test scores, but there are a lot more reporting functions that go along with it."
At the same time, he said, the management and budgetary problems principals historically have dealt with have grown.
"Teachers are looking at it and saying, 'Do I need this reponsibility for not a whole lot more money?' " Kane said.
Twenty years ago, he said, each entry-level administrative position, generally an assistant principal's job, drew about 25 to 30 applications.
Right now, there are three assistant-principal vacancies and a total of 10 applicants for them, Kane said.
"If the number of applicants is down, the number of choices the superintendent has is also diminished," Kane said.
One of the consequences of the decline in interest in public school administration has been that "institutional memory" has become an increasingly rare commodity, Kane said.
As an experienced elementary school principal, he said, he gets more calls from administrators about practical managerial problems than he does about contractual issues.
(Rhode Island school administrators do not have collective bargaining rights but the city has agreed to have contractual arrangements with Providence administrators around working conditions and salaries, which are linked to increases negotiated with teachers.)
The declining interest in public school administration was recognized during Lam's tenure, when the district inaugurated a program to train its own future school administrators with a combination of on-the-job experience and traditional academic work.
Since then, most of the first class of graduates have been placed in administrative jobs in recent months, and training of the second class is under way.
Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson has also appointed experienced administrators, Gary Moroch and Frances Gallo, as directors of elementary and middle-level education, respectively.
Moroch and Gallo are expected to lead efforts to improve education at the elementary and middle-school levels, as well as serve as resources to school administrators needing help. Their counterpart at the high school level has not yet been named.
After-school programs confront busing cut
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Some child-care programs add staff to deal with the change, and say it may drive the costs to parents up.
By GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
"There's not a thing we have cut that is not having somebody upset; transportation, athletics, music, and social workers." Schools Supt. Meloday A. Johnson
PROVIDENCE -- Parents and child-care providers are scrambling to work around School Department budget cuts that have ended bus transportation to after-school programs.
At the Jewish Community Center on Elmgrove Avenue, for example, the after-school child-care staff had been accustomed to greeting a bus from the Martin Luther King Elementary School outside its front door.
But since the second week of school, a staff member has been walking several blocks to the official bus stop, at Elmgrove Avenue and Fosdyke Street, to escort students back to the community center.
The service has meant adding staff, since other child-care workers are already assigned to greet buses from other schools that still drop off students at the Jewish Community Center, according to Evelyn Seigle.
"I don't know if we'll be able to this all year" without increasing costs to parents, said Seigle, a spokeswoman for the JCC after-school programs for elementary school children and pre-teens.
The Jewish Community Center does not have vans available to pick up children at their schools.
But even facilities that have their own transportation are struggling with new logistics that have sometimes proved unmanageable.
Belinda Francis, director of school-age services at the Urban League, said the organizations' vans have always picked up some children at their schools, but the change in the School Department's rules for after-school transportation has meant that the vans have too many stops to make in the allotted time.
Typically, the Urban League has had two vans on the road after school to pick up students on the South Side, she said.
But now there are seven stops to make all over the city, she said.
And the schools "are upset if we're more than ten minutes late," she said.
The after-school child-care staff of three has been expanded to five to put enough vans on the road to meet the time limits set by the schools, Francis said, and sometimes she also pitches in.
When the Urban League was unable to pick up a child at the Windmill Street Elementary School one day, school officials asked a mother to leave work to get her youngster, according to Francis.
Because the Urban League couldn't promise to get to Windmill consistently within 10 minutes after classes end, that youngster had to be dropped from the League's after-school program, she said.
She said the added staff necessary to provide transportation may contribute to increased costs to parents who can least afford it.
At the Joslin Community Center, there are only two children affected by the change in transportation -- the children of the child-care program's head teacher, Lauri MacCauley.
McCauley said she must leave work in mid-afternoon, travel across town to the Windmill Street school, and return to work with her children in tow.
Mayor David N. Cicilline recognized the value of high-quality after-school programs during his election campaign, when he pledged to open the public schools to the community.
Some public schools serve as hosts for after-school programs that provide children structure and focus during the late afternoon, which research has shown to be prime time for idle youngsters to get into trouble, especially as they advance toward the teenage years.
But Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson yesterday said that the budgetary constraints which narrow the district's after-school transportation options are unavoidable.
In the past, explained district spokewoman Maria Tocco, the school transportation office would simply add buses to accommodate requests for after-school drop-offs at child care centers.
Accomodating those requests has contributed to a 10-percent annual increase in transportation costs, which now stand at $11 million a year, Johnson said.
Such galloping growth in the cost of busing can not be permitted in a year when the district has had to cut $11 million in expenses to balance the budget, she said.
And the budget was so lean to start with that the schools couldn't cut costs without affecting services, Johnson said.
"There's not a thing we have cut that is not having somebody upset; transportation, athletics, music, and social workers," Johnson said.
"Since school started, the impact of that reality is sinking in," she said, but the mayor and the City Council have done a good job of minimizing the adverse effects.
Some people do not see it that way. Kathleen Kroessler, who sends her child to the Jewish Community Center after school, said she did not receive notice of the change in transportation until Sept. 5, four days before it was to go into effect.
She said it is ironic that about that time she also received a letter from Johnson about a "new partnership" between parents and the schools.
As a taxpayer, Kroessler said, she didn't expect the schools to transport children "all over the city to accommodate every child-care alternative," but she did expect more than a weekend and two working days' notice "for such a major policy change."
The JCC's Seigle said that all 15 children from the Martin Luther King school who get off the bus at Fosdyke Street and Elmgrove Avenue are escorted to the center.
In separate interviews, she and Kroessler said they couldn't understand why the bus stop simply couldn't be changed. Seigle said many of the children who are dropped off at Fosdyke Street are kindergarteners who will have a difficult time making their way even a short distance during winter weather.
But Johnson, the superintendent, said the bus stop could not be changed without adding time to the bus run.
The School Department's bus contractor, First Student, is fined by the school district for every late run it makes.
Smoke evacuates school in Fox Point
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2003
The Vartan Gregorian Elementary School principal says regular fire drills helped get the 350 students out of the building smoothly.
By AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer
"The lesson is to make sure we're prepared, we're ready." Principal Anthony DeAngelis.
PROVIDENCE -- Smoldering curtains in a little-used storage closet forced hundreds of schoolchildren and their teachers to evacuate the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School in Fox Point yesterday.
There was smoke, sucked into the air vents and billowing through the school, but no fire, said Battalion Fire Chief Manny Costa. The firefighters quickly found the smoking black drapes that were laying against an exposed light bulb that had been left on, he said.
The first lunch period had started, just before noon, when a custodian noticed the smell of smoke and told Principal Anthony DeAngelis. They investigated and smelled smoke in the kitchen area, and the principal pulled the fire alarm.
Teachers and staff ushered the 350 children outside to a nearby field, and everyone had been evacuated before the firefighters arrived, DeAngelis said. Because of the smoke, he decided to postpone last night's Open House and have the children bused to Nathan Bishop Middle School for lunch and the rest of their lessons.
The school regularly holds fire drills, to prepare for an emergency, and yesterday's evacuation went off without any problems, DeAngelis said.
"The lesson is to make sure we're prepared, we're ready," he said.
Federal grant will help update school libraries
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2003
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Through the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government has awarded Providence $142,153 to improve school libraries during the current school year.
With an initial $250,000 grant last year, the latest award raises the total the city schools have received from NCLB's Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program to $392,153.
The School Library Program, the first program since 1981 to provide direct federal funding to school libraries, was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed.
In a statement, Reed said that the new grant program has also awarded $288,987 to Newport and $190,350 to Woonsocket this year.
In all, the program is providing $12.5 million to schools nationwide to purchase new books and resource materials, expand after-school hours, train library media specialists and help school librarians work with teachers and students.
The program aims to help improve the reading and writing skills and academic achievement of students by giving them access to up-to-date technology and materials in their school libraries, as well providing training to school library media specialists.
In Providence, the School Department will expand its literacy efforts in libraries to 18 middle and high schools, according to U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, who also issued a statement announcing the grant awards in Rhode Island.
"We all know that no matter what field you choose to enter, reading comprehension and literacy skills are critical to one's success,," Kennedy said.
Reed said that the new Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program fills a gap in federal funding that dates back more than 20 years.
With states and local school districts cutting their own contributions to libraries to address other critical needs, school libraries have been stuck with outdated materials that contain statistical and factual inaccuracies or offensive stereotypes of various ethnic groups, Reed said.
Meanwhile, the city schools received a $10,000 grant from the philanthropic arm of Johnson Controls Inc., to purchase science kits for 1,000 middle-school students to complement the district's new science curriculum, which focuses on answering scientific questions through inquiry and experimentation.
The kits, developed from the results of national research, provide stimulating activities, materials for investigations, and reading and writing opportunities.
A Johnson Controls representative, Leo McNeil, said at a news conference yesterday that the areas of study addressed by the science kits complement the "real-world" work the company does for the School Department and the city in aiming to reduce energy and water consumption in classrooms and offices.
Mayor David N. Cicilline accepted the award yesterday outside the Roger Williams Middle School, one of the schools that will benefit from the grant.
"My hope is that this grant will help excite interest in the sciences among our youth," Cicilline said in a statement, noting that the demand for well-trained scientists and engineers is growing in a competitive, global market.
Revamped student councils to have more say
Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2003
On Monday, students will get candidate application forms. Elections are set for Sept. 30.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Historically, student councils in the city's high schools have been largely relegated to planning proms and other social events, just as the bane of existence for most parent-teacher organizations used to be the bake sales and school festivals.
But just as school officials say they want parents more actively involved in the schools, so they say they want students to feel like they have a say in their own education.
While the traditional student councils will remain intact, Schools Supt. Melody A. Johnson has given formal approval to a new layer of student government that is expected to speak its mind about the quality of education high school students receive.
In a hands-on democratic process, each school will have a five-member student council, with each officer elected by the entire student body, according to Jonny Skye Njie, youth opportunities facilitator for the school district.
On Monday, students will get candidate application forms, which require endorsements from teachers and parents, and rules for conducting positive campaigns. Elections will occur Sept. 30, Skye Njie said.
The 50 elected officials -- 5 from each of the city's 10 public high schools -- will receive leadership training before they set their agendas for the year, Skye Njie said.
The student councils are expected to deal with a wide range of specific issues, Skye Njie said, "but they're all built on advocacy."
The leadership training will emphasize listening as a starting point for bringing together young people around common needs, she said.
"We're hopeful that the student government officers will feel a sense of responsibility . . . in assessing the needs of the schools and crafting solutions," Skye Njie said.
The student councils are expected to deal with some issues unique to their buildings and to work together to find common ground for urging the district to shift policies and procedures to benefit youth, Skye Njie said.
The leadership training, faculty advisors and other combined expenses of all the student councils -- an estimated $35,000 -- will be financed through the five-year, $8-million grant for high school redesign awarded by the Carnegie Corporation nearly three years ago.
The Carnegie grant requires the district to devote some of its resources to developing the social and emotional growth of adolescents outside the classroom.
But even if that were not the case, Johnson said yesterday she would have still called for establishing representative student government throughout the district.
The idea came from Johnson's work with her first student advisory council, when she learned that some schools didn't even have student councils. The councils that did exist were made up of representatives of the various classes, but none had any members elected by the entire student body.
Johnson said she spent many hours during the last school year talking to high school students, finding that the common thread running through all their comments was a sense of disenfranchisement.
By the end of the year, however, she said the members of her advisory council "truly got a sense of leadership and how hard it is."
"It's not about being popular, but doing the right thing," Johnson said.
The student councils are expected to work on concerns expressed by students in the first two years of the high school redesign effort.
She said the concerns of youth all address three categories; the quality of classroom education, the physical environments of the schools, and human relationships in the schools.
The student government initiative, Skye Njie said, is an "opporunity to plant a seed and come along for the ride."
Data specialist hired for city schools
Posted Tuesday, September 9, 2003
Jon E. Mickelson, who worked in the Boston schools, will earn $72,800 in a position created to deal with the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- The School Board last night hired a data specialist with the Boston Public Schools as facilitator for accountability, the last of three federally funded positions that have been added recently to the Office of Assessment to cope with the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Jon E. Mickelson, a measurement specialist in the office of Research, Assessment and Evaluation in the Boston schools for the last 16 years, will make $72,800 per year.
Meanwhile, the director of assessment and accountability, Michael Sorum, reviewed federal privacy acts pertaining to students and their families, indicating that they supercede one particular requirement of No Child Left Behind.
The federal law requires school districts to give contact information for students to military recruiters, but Sorum said parents can prohibit the release of all information about their children to anyone.
Last year, 6,500 families refused the release of information about their children, Sorum said.
Parents are asked to sign a new form at the beginning of each school year signaling whether they want to keep personal information about their children private.
The board formally reappointed four cross-country coaches at Mount Pleasant, Classical, and Hope High Schools in light of a $30,000 pldge from the CVS Downtown 5K, which was held on Sunday. The cross-country teams had been cut as a result of a shortage of funds, which prompted each high school to scale back varsity athletics by 25 percent.
Also, the board endorsed three contracts, including $85,000 from a National Science Foundation grant to the East Bay Educational Collaborative for science materials and curriculum development in science.
A total of $15,000 from federal special education funds will go to "Learning Strategies and Brain Gym" for work with guidance counselors and special-education teachers. The organization will help the teachers and guidance counselors teach test-taking strategies to students with disabilities or behavioral problems.
Dominic Spera will receive $28,000 federal in school-to-work funds to work with high schools and middle schools on developing career education programs.
Frances Gallo, director of middle-level education, announced that the first of a series of public forums on the city's middle schools will be held next Tuesday, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., at the Nathanael Greene Middle School.
School officials want to hear the public's perception of the city's middle schools so they can make improvements, she said.
City hopes to save money with pay hike
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2003
The city will pay some substitute teachers $100 a day, in an effort to entice them to work more days, instead of relying on higher-paid teachers.
By GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Wruter
PROVIDENCE -- In a year of greater-than-ever urgency to save a buck, the School Department has modified its approach to hiring substitute teachers in a plan it hopes will save about $560,000.
The change involves a greater reliance on the lowest-paid substitutes along with a boost in pay -- from $55 to $100 a day -- to make the job more attractive.
The School Board last week approved the pay hike, despite doubts raised last month by Phil DeCecco, the now-retired president of the Providence Teachers Union, that the added money would attract more of the casual substitutes, who are free to say on any given day they are called that they are unable to work.
Money alone will not bring substitutes to the public schools in Providence, DeCecco told the School Board last month when the pay raise was discussed.
The bulk of substitute coverage for Providence teachers comes from a significantly higher-paid category of teachers who agree in advance to be available for work any time they are called. These teachers are paid at a daily rate equivalent to salaries they would be paid were they full-time teachers, based on their level of experience.
For example, a recent college graduate with no experience would receive about $175 as a substitute. That is the per-diem rate of a first-year teacher, who will receive a total salary of $33,026 during the current school year.
For many years, Providence was able to attract substitute teachers at low rates of pay because they were eventually guaranteed permanent positions. The city's contract with the Providence Teachers Union required the district to hire from the list of substitutes.
After that contractual provision was eliminated in the mid 1990s, the higher-paid category of substitutes was created.
In the past, up to 225 substitutes with health benefits have been hired at the beginning of the school year, committing the School Department to cover the cost of their health insurance as well as their daily pay, according to the number of days they work.
But Mark V. Dunham, the district's chief financial officer, last month proposed limiting the number in the high-paid substitute pool to 196 and relying on $100-per-day teachers with no benefits to fill the remaining places.
He said he wanted to try the new arrangement as an experiment until December.
According to the teachers' contract, the district is required to have 225 substitute teachers on call, but the way it recruits and pays them is up to the school administration and the School Board.
Paul Vorro, executive director of the Providence Teachers Union, said earlier this week that the union will monitor the situation closely to determine whether the district can continue to live up to its contractual obligation.
Like DeCecco, Vorro expressed doubt that the new arrangement will work. Vorro said $100 is the highest rate in the state, but other communities offer up to $85 and call substitutes the night before they are needed.
A teacher assured of a job the next day is likely to take a job that pays less than the top rate, rather than take the chance of being called by Providence in the morning, Vorro said.
In some cases, he said, substitute teachers are not called until 7:30 a.m. the day they are needed.
Efforts to reach Dunham this week were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the School Board has made several administrative appointments during the last month.
Carolyn Mauer, who has been filling in for chief grantwriter Sara Goldreich for nearly a year, was appointed to that position at a salary of $52,000. Goldreich left Providence last year to work for former Schools Supt. Diana Lam, who became chief academic officer in the New York City schools.
Angela Bertoldi, a School Department clerk since 1997, was appointed assessment specialist for adequate yearly progress at a salary of $49,500.
Abraham Williams, a teacher's assistant for the last 2 1/2 years, was appointed data media specialist at a salary of $35,000.
Both positions are new, financed by federal funds. The jobs are geared toward handling the sophisticated data analysis and interpretation required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, according to Michael Sorum, the district's director of assessment.
Meanwhile, Yaviri Grosso was named public and parent information specialist at a salary of $36,000. Grosso will work on a new parent newsletter and other publications, according to Grosso's supervisor, Maria Tocco, facilitator for media relations and services.
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