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September 2008
New Classical principal comes ready to play
Posted Friday, September 26, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — When Scott Barr walked into Classical High School as its new principal, it just felt right, like coming home.
For 16 years, he was a history teacher at Classical, the jewel in the district’s public school crown and the only public school in the city that requires an entrance exam.
In 2006, he left to become an assistant principal at Cranston High School East. It was there that Barr grew professionally and became familiar with the issues that confront principals every day, from discipline to parent outreach. During Barr’s brief tenure at Cranston East, the high school underwent a wholesale renovation that increased the school’s footprint by a third, adding new science labs.
Barr has seen education from multiple perspectives — teacher, department head, assistant principal and School Committee member. After more than a dozen years on the contentious Lincoln School Committee, Barr, who is 46 and lives in Lincoln with his wife and two children, knows how to parse his words carefully.
“When you sit on a school committee, you see the big picture,” he said during an interview. “Our discussions were very public. Even the smaller decisions were big. I had people’s lives in front of me. I had to decide whether to uphold the firing of a teacher.”
During a couple of recent public forums, several Classical parents have criticized the school administration for failing to support Classical, pointing to a decline in the rich selection of afterschool activities and a building that has seen better days. Last spring, a group of department heads met with The Journal to discuss the state of the school’s textbooks, many of which haven’t been replaced in 12 to 15 years.
On his second day on the job, Barr was reluctant to address specific challenges facing Classical, although he said none of them was insurmountable. Echoing his boss, Supt. Tom Brady, Barr said that he wants to meet with all of the school’s players before he makes any grand statements about the school.
“My job is to listen and hear their concerns,” he said.
“First, I want to visit every classroom. I want to meet my department heads, pick their brains and ask what they need. I want to ask the kids, ‘How is your experience at this school? Are you joining clubs and sports? How many of your parents went to Classical?’ ”
At Classical, the parents are vocal and active. Several of them were part of a group of people, that included teachers and administrators, who screened some 50 applicants for the principalship.
Guy V. Pirolli, Class of ’73 and president of the school’s new alumni association, was on the committee. “Scott Barr was a longtime teacher at Classical,” Pirolli said yesterday. “He knows the school’s philosophy. He understands the school’s traditions. He was a department head. He understands the budget process.”
As a member of Classical’s parent-teacher organization when he taught there, Barr could always be called on to speak with parents about the pressing issues of the day, Pirolli said.
“When you put it all together,” he said, “he was someone who could walk in here and hit the ground running.”
Barr is fond of football metaphors and said that his leadership approach is similar to that of Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick. Before their first Super Bowl victory, the Patriots came onto the field as a team rather than as individual players. Barr said that sums up his approach to running a school.
“He’s firm, but fair,” said his former boss, Cranston East Principal Sean Kelly. “Every-thing I asked him to do was always done with the highest standards. He has good management skills, good organizational skills and he is easy to talk to.”
Lauren Zurier, a parent and member of the screening committee, said Barr was held in high regard by his colleagues at Classical. She also liked the fact that Barr had acquired policy experience during his tenure on the Lincoln School Committee, where he helped draft a new teacher-evaluation process for the district.
“He was very much loved by the kids at Cranston East,” Zurier said. “Every parent I talked to really liked him a lot. He is a leader without being confrontational. And he can see both sides of a question.”
Barr began his career as a substitute teacher in Providence in 1990 and was hired full-time in 1992. Classical is where Barr cut his teeth as a teacher and where he learned to lead.
“I went from twenty-something to forty-something there,” he said. “I see my students all over the place.”
As a teenager, Barr was an offensive lineman for the Lincoln High School football team, where he said that he “blocked for the guy who got all the glory.”
As the principal of Classical, Barr sees himself in a similar role — as a team player who works with faculty and parents to move the school forward.
Providence reports dismal showing on the state’s new science assessment test
Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The city’s public school students scored abysmally on the state’s new science assessment test in large part because what’s being taught in the classroom isn’t in line with what’s being measured by the test.
Only 9 percent of 4th graders scored high enough to be deemed proficient in science, 2 percent of 8th graders and 4 percent of 11th graders. Of the 20 lowest-performing schools in the state, 17 are in Providence.
Yesterday, city school officials gave the following example of how the New England Common Assessment Program does not necessarily measure what happens in the classroom. The district teaches students about electromagnetism in fifth grade, however, children are actually tested on the subject in fourth grade.
“This is not about a student who doesn’t know the material,” Supt. Tom Brady said. “It’s about the district not preparing them to take the test. The curriculum is not aligned to prepare students to be tested on this material.”
Echoing what state education officials said yesterday, Brady said that the dismal science scores were not a surprise: “I’m not dismayed,” he said. “We’re already starting to do the things we need to improve student knowledge.”
Governor Carcieri, however, called the test results “very sobering,” and said that it is “a disgrace that such a large chunk of our youngsters have not been getting the science content they need.”
Carcieri and Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, released the results of the first statewide science achievement test at a State House news conference yesterday. The test, which was developed jointly with Vermont and New Hampshire, was administered in May to students in grades 4, 8 and 11.
In Rhode Island, about one in four students achieved proficiency in science: 36 percent in grade 4, 18 percent in grade 8 and 17 percent in grade 11.
Local school officials said there are at least three reasons why student performance is so low in Providence:
•The curriculum is not aligned with the NECAP.
The state assessment tests students in space and earth sciences but they are not taught in many high schools in the state.
According to state school officials, only half of Rhode Island’s schools have begun aligning their science curriculum with the new state assessment. They also noted that Rhode Island, unlike other states, has refused to lower the passing score to make student performance look brighter.
•Urban districts, such as Providence, have devoted most of their time and resources to boosting literacy skills, considered the foundation upon which other skills are based. Because of that focus, little attention has been paid to science, and, in fact, the curriculum has been watered down in many schools.
•The district’s science curriculum lacks rigor, especially at the high school level.
Although Providence requires three years of high school science, there is no consistent sequence of science courses at all high schools. Some high schools offer Physics First, part of a statewide science pilot program; others offer the Fundamentals of Science, a course that does not prepare students for college-level work, according to Sharon Contreras, the district’s chief academic officer.
“High schools are not focused on inquiry-based learning,” said Natalie Dunning, the district’s new supervisor of science, a position that had gone unfilled for years. With this approach, the students become the researcher and the teacher guides them to understand scientific concepts.
“We don’t want just skill-and-drill science,” Contreras said. “We want a comprehensive science program.”
The School Board recently signed a $1-million contract with the Dana Center at the University of Texas to help the district develop a sweeping new math and science curriculum for all students, and Brady said that the new science curriculum will be completed by June.
Even at Classical High School, only 20 percent of students reached proficiency. Not one student reached proficiency at the following high schools: Feinstein, Hope Arts, Mount Pleasant and the Providence Academy of International Studies.
•There hasn’t been enough teacher training in the sciences.
Science teachers have received very little training in their field. Schools have largely been responsible for their own professional development and there has been little consistency across the board, according to Contreras.
Brady said that is about to change. The district will offer 70 sessions targeted at hot science topics this year. Next week, the School Department will begin to explain how science teachers can interpret the NECAP scores.
During yesterday’s news conference, McWalters stressed that the release of the scores isn’t a one-time event, nor will it be solved by a one-time fix.
“We’re going to have to get better content, better teacher preparation and more time on task,” he said. “We will always be faced with the sixth-grader who arrives at a fourth-grade level. We can’t change that. Until we change our entire frame of reference, progress will be slow.”
Doing more of the same — offering double blocks of basic science — won’t work, McWalters said. Instead, schools have to radically rethink the way they structure time in school, from extending the school day to extending the school year.
“Even if we get the right curriculum,” he said, “even if we get teachers up to speed, this is a systemic challenge that will be with us for a generation.”
Annenberg Institute to review reports on school district
Posted Tuesday, September 23, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Tom Brady has hired the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University to review a dozen major evaluations of the School Department that have been conducted over the past several years.
The goal of this “meta-review” is to pull out eight or nine recommendations that appear in each of the studies. Brady will then convene a blue-ribbon panel that includes Mayor David N. Cicilline, Annenberg Executive Director Warren Simmons, and members of the business community, the state Department of Education and higher education.
The panel will investigate what the district needs to do to bridge the gap between where the School Department is now and where it should be. Because money is scarce, Brady said he will ask major foundations to help the district provide the staff and financial support needed to do everything from revamp the human resources department to beef up central office staff.
“It’s tapping human capital,” he said. “Suppose Brown University wanted to give us four graduate students in urban education to help us update our policies?”
When Brady worked for the District of Columbia schools, Exxon-Mobil “loaned” one of its executives to help the district transform its procurement system. The new superintendent said he believes that school districts must think in fresh ways about how to not only raise cash, but to also take advantage of the expertise of area businesses and foundations.
The School Department, for example, might consider hiring a development officer whose mission would be to regain the millions of dollars lost when the Carnegie and Wallace Foundation grants expired a couple of years ago. Perhaps, Brady said, the School Department could ask a foundation to pay for the position.
Brady doesn’t want to see the reports gather dust sitting on a shelf. The Annenberg review will be completed in roughly 30 days.
Last week, two consultants, paid for by the Broad Foundation, which trained Brady to become a superintendent, spent several days in Providence interviewing staff and reviewing documents.
Jim Huge, a former superintendent and educational consultant, is evaluating the way the central office is organized. Among the questions he will ask are, “Do we have the right positions? Are there redundancies?”
An exhaustive audit by Phi Delta Kappa International recently found that the school system doesn’t have enough administrative capacity to develop a uniform curriculum, much less evaluate how well it is taught. No job descriptions are available for 43 percent of the positions listed on the organizational chart, teachers are omitted from the table of organization and essential positions, including supervisors of guidance and math, have not been filled.
“There is not enough middle management capacity to get things done,” Brady said. “There are not enough people to drive the district’s core beliefs and organize effectively to meet those beliefs.”
Betsy Aherns, the former director of human relations for the Fairfax, Va., School Department, is evaluating the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the human resources department.
According to the PDK report, “The human resource office has been ineffective for at least eight years.”
The PDK consultants urged the district to hire an experienced human resource professional to run the office, train or replace ineffective staff and approve a list of objectives and a timetable for improving the office.
“HR is a real problem,” Brady said. “Betsy’s report will provide us with recommendations on how to realign human relations so that it’s a service provider.”
City Council members call for elected school board
Posted Friday, September 19, 2008
PROVIDENCE — City Council members were fuming last night over the revelation that the School Board violated the state Open Meetings Law when it appointed the new superintendent, Tom Brady.
Council members seized on the opportunity to slam one of their favorite targets, School Board President Mary McClure, and to propose that the city elect, rather than appoint, the School Board.
Councilman John J. Lombardi led the charge, describing the School Board as aloof, irresponsible and in dire need of change.
“It operates under its own rules and is unmoved by the criticisms of the very people it is charged to serve,” Lombardi said.
After similar comments by Councilman Luis Aponte, Councilwoman Balbina A. Young followed up by saying McClure needs to be replaced.
“She is a detriment to the progress of the educational system in Providence,” Young said.
The real problem is systemic, said Councilman Nicholas J. Narducci. Because the School Board is appointed — the only appointed school board in the state — it doesn’t have the same level of accountability that an elected body would.
“Maybe it’s time for an elected school board — so they’re accountable to somebody,” Narducci said.
— Daniel Barbarisi
Providence School Board to repeat vote to hire Brady
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — School Board President Mary McClure said she regrets breaking the Open Meetings Law, but would not change the way in which Supt. Tom Brady was hired.
“We made a mistake,” she said yesterday. “I’m not trying to make any excuses.”
The attorney general’s office found that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Law three times when it appointed Brady as superintendent in March. The agency ordered the board to appoint Brady again — this time, in public session.
The state launched an investigation into the process after Judith Reilly, a Providence resident, filed a formal complaint this summer alleging that the law had been violated.
The attorney general’s office found that the School Board should have posted its intention to discuss the selection of a new superintendent at its March 24 meeting. The agency also faulted the board for failing to disclose that it was going into closed session to discuss the superintendent’s job. The School Board did state that it was going into closed session to discuss personnel, but the attorney general said it should have been more specific. Finally, the School Board also erred when it voted to appoint Brady during a closed session.
In an interview yesterday, McClure said that the board did not intend to circumvent the Open Meetings Law, nor did it intend to mislead the public.
Then why did the School Board appoint Brady in closed session? And why didn’t the board make its decision public when it returned to public session?
“I don’t have an answer to that,” McClure said.
Around March 17, the School Board met with Mayor David N. Cicillline, who said he had asked the Council on Great City Schools and the Broad Center for superintendent candidates and they had recommended Brady. Because the board supposedly only listened to the mayor, this meeting did not constitute a board meeting and no public notice was required.
During the next week, the board interviewed Brady in pairs, according to an affidavit provided to the attorney general by Assistant City Solicitor Adrienne Southgate.
“By splitting up the interviews so that a quorum was never reached, the School Board again avoided the public notice requirements of the Open Meetings law,” Reilly wrote in a letter to The Journal. “As long as school board members did not discuss Mr. Brady among themselves, they avoided causing a rolling or walking quorum, at least according to the attorney general’s office.”
McClure said that the board interviewed Brady in groups of two because of time and scheduling constraints. Asked if the board intentionally sidestepped the law, she said, “According to the Open Meetings Law, if you don’t have a quorum, there is no meeting.”
McClure confirmed that no other candidate was considered for the position.
At the time of the Brady appointment, several observers, including Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, criticized the board for not involving members of the public in its search for a new superintendent, as it did with previous Supt. Donnie Evans.
Yesterday, McClure said she would not have conducted the search differently, given what she knows now.
“Based on my understanding of the market, there was a very small pool of candidates,” she said. “We had consulted with two national agencies and this is who they recommended. A national search would have been very time-consuming and expensive and it seems unlikely that we would have found a better candidate.”
“Our goal was to get the best possible candidate,” she said. “The advice we got [from a previous search firm] was to keep things as confidential as possible.”
The timing of Brady’s appointment took everyone by surprise, coming a week after Evans announced his plans to resign at the end of his three-year contract. During a news conference held the day after the School Board appointed Brady, Cicilline said he had begun putting out feelers with the Broad Foundation in January, well before Evans made his decision public.
Yesterday, McClure denied that the board, which is appointed by the mayor, had been pressured into appointing Brady.
“The School Board voted unanimously to hire Tom Brady,” she said. “If we didn’t want him, we would have voted no.”
Yesterday, Cicilline, speaking through spokeswoman Karen Southern, declined to comment on the attorney general’s ruling.
On July 28, the board voted to appoint Brady again — this time in public. When asked about the need for a second vote, McClure said that the Human Resources Department couldn’t find any record of Brady’s original appointment and so voted again.
“I’m upset that we made these mistakes,” she said. “It is what it is. Now, we have to move forward.”
In its Sept. 11 letter, the attorney general’s office gave the board 10 days to indicate whether it plans to comply with the requirement to appoint Brady again. McClure said she will do whatever it takes to comply with the attorney general’s ruling, although the board has yet to set a date for the vote.
Nathan Bishop renovations on track for fall ’09
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Drive down Elmgrove Avenue these days and you will see the stately Nathan Bishop Middle School encircled by chain-link fencing, the sloping lawn replaced by mounds of dirt, the front steps missing.
The $35-million renovation of the East Side school is well under way, according to Alan Sepe, the city’s acting director of public property.
While the exterior of the three-story brick building remains largely untouched, the interior has been gutted. Construction crews are removing plumbing, electrical and heating systems, tearing out the old floors and removing the gymnasium. And they are starting to install new pipes and conduits for the electrical system. The brick exterior will be cleaned and re-pointed and a new entrance to the school will be built.
“We’re on target,” Sepe said recently. “The building will be open next fall.”
Nathan Bishop was slated to be closed because of declining enrollments and chronically low test scores until a group of East side parents lobbied hard to keep the school open. Former Supt. Donnie Evans appointed a parent-led study committee to come up with a design for the new school and, last summer, a design firm called Architecture Involution recommended a wholesale renovation of the building.
The consultants recommended restoration rather than new construction because recent changes in school construction regulations allow a larger volume of square footage if the project involves a restoration rather than new construction. The additional space means that the school can keep its existing auditorium and retain additional rooms for teacher planning and and allow for wider hallways.
With a restoration, the consultants said that there is a greater likelihood that the school will open in the fall of 2009 because groups such as the Providence Preservation Society will look more favorably on a restored Nathan Bishop. Renovation will also allow the architects to restore many of the building’s original features, including skylights that will flood the building with natural light.
The new Nathan Bishop calls for 10 classrooms on each floor, with two teams of 100 students per floor. Each of the building’s three floors will house one grade, for a maximum of 750 students, although area parents are hoping for a smaller population.
The plan also calls for a two-story library and media center on the second and third floors but leaves the school with two separate gymnasiums of 3,000-square-feet each. Virtually every surface will be touched, the architects said: windows will be replaced, brass and marble surfaces will be restored and the grounds will undergo extensive landscaping.
The East Side Public Education Coalition, the parents’ group, has recommended that Nathan Bishop offer student advisories, team teaching and an advanced academic curriculum open to all students.
State orders city to reappoint school superintendent
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The attorney general’s office has found that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Law when it appointed Tom Brady as superintendent in March and ordered the board to appoint Brady for a third time.
The attorney general’s office issued the order after reviewing a complaint filed by Judith Reilly of Providence. Yesterday, Reilly said that she is pleased with the order and looks forward to learning more about what transpired during those closed sessions.
The finding also sheds light on the last-minute decision-making that led to Brady’s appointment on March 24 during a closed-door meeting of the School Board — a week after then-Supt. Donnie Evans announced that he would not seek to have his contract renewed.
Around March 17, Mayor David N. Cicilline met with members of the School Board and told them about his efforts to find a replacement for Evans. Cicilline explained that he had asked both the Broad Foundation and the Council on Great City Schools to recommend possible candidates for superintendent and both groups recommended Brady.
At that meeting, Cicilline encouraged board members to meet with Brady and consider him a serious candidate, according to an affidavit by Adrienne Southgate, a deputy city solicitor.
“Over the next week, in pairs, members of the [School Board] interviewed Brady,” Southgate wrote. “No more than two [board members] participated in any interview. At various times, the mayor’s chief of staff and his liaison to the Providence School Department were present.”
On March 24, the School Board held a regular public meeting that included a closed session for personnel matters. After the open portion of the meeting was over, the board went back into closed-door session.
The board, during this session, voted 9-0 to appoint Brady as the next superintendent, according to Southgate’s affidavit. School Board member Maila Touray moved to appoint Brady as superintendent and the motion was seconded by Ronnie Young.
The minutes of the closed session “shed almost no light on what transpired during the course of either closed session,” Southgate writes. School Board President Mary McClure’s notes simply state, “Brady contract — approved 3/24/08.”
“I think the people will be interested to know how brief the discussion was,” Reilly said, “and that it seems like it was done in less than 30 minutes.”
The board never indicated that it was going into a closed session to discuss the possible appointment of a superintendent, nor did it publicly announce its vote afterward in public session, according to Special Assistant Attorney General Adam J. Sholes.
It wasn’t until four months later — July 28 — that the board voted to appoint Brady in open session. And Reilly said that that vote may have been prompted by a ruling that found that the Cumberland School Committee violated the Open Meetings Law by voting in closed session to give a raise to its superintendent.
In Providence, the attorney general’s office found that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Law in three areas:
•The agenda of the March 24 meeting failed to disclose that a new superintendent might be appointed.
In a 2005 case involving the town of East Greenwich, the state Supreme Court found that a meeting notice “reasonably must describe the purpose of the meeting or the action proposed to be taken.”
•The School Board voted to appoint Brady in executive session.
Rhode Island law allows discussions of job performance to be held in closed session, but the actual vote must be taken in open session.
•The board violated the law when it voted in closed session to invoke the “exceptional circumstances” clause, which allows the board to appoint a superintendent without first conducting a search. This clause was used to appoint Melody Johnson as superintendent several years ago.
Despite these violations of the Open Meetings Law, the attorney general’s office decided not to impose a fine:
“We have been provided no facts that suggest that the board willfully or knowingly violated the Open Meetings Act,” the office wrote. “However, this finding serves as notice to the School Board that its actions violated the Open Meetings Act and may serve as evidence of a willful or knowing violation in any future similar case.”
Because the Brady vote occurred in closed session and was never publicly disclosed in open session, the attorney general’s office ordered the board to take a new vote on Brady. If the School Board does not comply with this order, the state may take legal action.
Meanwhile, Reilly said she has written a letter to Brady explaining that her complaint is not directed at him, nor is she calling for the appointment of a new superintendent.
“This is about the process,” she said. “It’s not personal.”
Several School Board members, including Philip Gould, Touray and Katherine McKenzie, declined to comment on the ruling because they hadn’t had the opportunity to read it yesterday.
McClure, in a prepared statement, said it was never the board’s intent to circumvent the Open Meetings Law.
“Our focus was on trying to conduct business in the most open and transparent manner,” she wrote. “We will accept the attorney general’s findings and will immediately take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation.”
Mayor David N. Cicilline did not return phone calls.
School superintendent promises new registration system
Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Tom Brady said he wants to revamp the school registration process and promised that a new system will be ready by January.
Although complaints have reportedly declined this year, Brady said the department needs work and that the district is not taking care of parents in a prompt and effective way. The School Department, he said, will revive the student registration complaint committee to investigate how to make the registration process less difficult for families.
“Are we getting the word out to all parents in time?” he said. “The parking at the registration center [on Prairie Avenue in South Providence] is horrible. Maybe we should be looking at satellite centers to make it easier to register.”
To date, Providence has enrolled 22,855 students, 800 students fewer than in June, but considerably more than earlier estimates. Last month, school officials said that enrollment had declined by 1,700 students, although they anticipated that those numbers would bounce back after school began. At the time, school officials speculated that the state’s lagging economy, coupled with the foreclosure crisis, might be contributing to the decline of enrollments in Providence and Central Falls. Immigration advocates worried that the dip was linked to Governor Carcieri’s recent crackdown on undocumented aliens.
Brady, in a 10-page report to the School Board on Monday, said that the opening of school was the smoothest in recent memory, adding that there were only 52 teacher vacancies on the first day of class, down from 81 the previous year and there were only 10 teachers with emergency certification, down from 19 last year.
He also said that 95 percent of the district’s 9,924 school buses ran on time. When asked how this rate compared with last year’s, Brady said there wasn’t any previous data but said that the district would keep track of the information from now on.
A lack of technology has long plagued the school district and continues to be an issue, but Brady had good news to report on that front: Internet bandwidth has been upgraded at 28 schools for greater speed and access; Central High School now has wireless Internet access, and a new server that houses the student information system’s database has been installed.
Brady also noted that maintenance projects have been completed at 30 schools, including 19 roof repairs, 8 fire code upgrades, the installation of security cameras at 3 schools and the refinishing of 3 gym floors and 3 auditoriums. The summer institute, which offered nearly 300 workshops to teachers and staff, was singled out for praise. Brady reported that teachers completed almost 24,000 hours of professional development and said that the most popular session was a mandatory class on how to improve parent engagement. This was the first time that the School Department has offered an intensive summer training program, which teachers could use to satisfy the 38 hours of professional development required by their work contract.
Secondary math teachers also worked with the Dana Center of the University of Texas, Austin, to conduct a “gap analysis,” which looks at where the district is in terms of middle and high school curriculum and where it should be. The School Board on Monday hired the Dana Center to help the district develop a systemwide math and science curriculum for kindergarten through grade 12.
Brady brings special guest on school tour
Posted Friday, September 5, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Charles N. Fortes Academy is a piece of living history, its hallways lined with photographs and stories that describe the consecutive wave of immigrants who settled in Providence, worked in its mills and created its ethnic enclaves.
Yesterday, Supt. Tom Brady invited U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin to tour the school, in a renovated factory on Daboll Street in the West End, as part of their first official meeting, one of many that the new superintendent has been holding with parents, teachers and elected officials.
Brady told Langevin that he has already settled into his new job and that the real work has begun. An independent audit commissioned by former Supt. Donnie Evans last month provided the district with a brutally honest critique of what’s wrong with the system, including a finding that instructional shortcomings in reading and math have a serious impact on minority students, who represent more than 70 percent of public school enrollment, and the lack of a core curriculum at the middle and high school levels.
According to Brady, the report has also provided the School Department with a 200-page blueprint on how to move forward.
Brady, who has already visited 41 schools, said that the elementary schools are on track in terms of uniform literacy and math curricula, but said that the middle schools need a lot of work. The School Department is working on developing a standard curriculum for middle school students.
Langevin asked what Brady thought of a controversial new state regulation that, starting in 2012, makes state achievement tests count for a third of a student’s graduation requirements in English and math.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Brady said. “It’s difficult when you have multiple high schools doing different things, but we’ve identified the problem.”
Langevin mentioned that the federal No Child Left Behind law is up for reauthorization by Congress this year and added that the law, which has not been popular with many Democrats, needs some fine-tuning. Brady agreed.
“I like the law’s accountability,” Brady said yesterday. “But reaching 100 percent [proficiency] is not a standard. It’s distressing to see a school miss [making adequate yearly progress] because six children were absent. Suddenly, it becomes a failing school. That troubles me.”
During a brief tour of the school complex, which includes the Alfred Lima Elementary School, Langevin visited a second-grade bilingual education class and was told how difficult it is to find qualified bilingual education teachers.
He spent some time in a sixth-grade class where the students were learning about plate tectonics and the evolution of the continents from a single land mass into separate bodies.
Long-term subs caught in schools’ financial squeeze
Posted Wednesday, September 3, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — More than 70 long-term substitute teachers will not be recalled this fall unless the Providence Teachers Union agrees to a compromise plan that calls for rehiring the substitutes at a lower salary.
Long-term substitutes typically receive layoff notices in late February or early March, before a dead-line set by state law, but the notices usually are rescinded over the summer after the school budget has been approved by the School Board and the City Council.
Last month, however, about 75 long-term substitutes began hearing rumors that they wouldn’t be recalled if they were on step 5 or higher on the 10-step salary scale. Substitutes with considerable seniority were furious because they weren’t notified sooner, while others were upset that substitutes with much less teaching experience were rehired instead of them.
Long-term substitutes are paid union-scale salaries and receive full medical benefits. Many of them have been teaching in the district for years and have come to depend on the work. While some substitutes move from one classroom to another, others fill in for teachers who are out on year-long maternity leaves or sabbaticals.
At an Aug. 22 meeting, the Providence Teachers Union told long-term subs that they had a choice: all substitutes with more than four years of teaching experience would lose their jobs or the teachers could work for $100 per diem until a new contract is ratified.
According to the union’s Web site, once a contract is approved, the substitutes would receive retroactive salaries equal to the difference between the per-diem sum and the fourth-step salary.
“At this time, the Providence School Department is prepared to offer [long-term substitutes] who have not been recalled . . . the opportunity to begin substituting next week at the per diem rate of $100,” a letter from the union leadership says. “Once the tentative agreement is ratified by all parties [the School Board, membership and City Council], substitute teachers serving per-diems will be appointed as [long-term substitutes] retroactive to his or her first day of work.”
Yesterday, representatives from the school district’s human resources department began asking substitutes if they wanted to return on a per-diem basis, according to a letter from union leadership posted on the union’s Web site.
Both the union and the school administration have been tight-lipped about the issue, citing the confidentiality of contract negotiations. Steve Smith, union president, confirmed that the fate of long-term substitutes has been part of ongoing contract negotiations with Supt. Tom Brady, and that the union met with the substitutes on Aug. 22.
Although Smith said he appreciates the substitutes’ frustration, he stressed that there are no recall rights for substitutes in the existing contract; substitutes can’t assume that they have job security.
“When a long-term sub is hired, he or she receives a one-year appointment,” Smith said yesterday. “The district never agrees to more than that.”
According to Smith, the union is trying to work out a settlement that protects the pool of substitutes. He would not disclose details of the proposed compromise.
School spokeswoman Kim Rose confirmed that the department is recalling some long-term substitutes at a per diem rate of $100, but declined to say anything further about the proposed agreement:
“At this point, we’re in negotiations, so I can’t confirm anything,” she said. “But we are making the educational needs of students our top priority.”
Ann Morin, a long-term substitute and an elementary school teacher, has 36 years of experience in the classroom and was hired by the district in February 2006.
Under the proposed agreement, Morin would take a 34-percent pay cut, earning $44,275 a year instead of $67,000.
“This is frustrating and demoralizing,” Morin said. “It’s a waste. I’m a great teacher and here I am, sitting on the shelf. Some of the subs are the breadwinners in their families and this is what they will be making? One hundred dollars a day?”
Meanwhile, Morin and other substitutes say they are scrambling to find teaching jobs long after most districts have hired their staff.
“I want my own room,” she said. “I want to teach. This is what I do, and my career is on hold.”
New principal brings fresh approach
Posted Tuesday, September 2, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
“This staff has so far surpassed my expectations,” says Brent Kermen, the new principal at the William D’Abate Elementary School. “These teachers personify a collective commitment to education.”
PROVIDENCE — Brent Kermen doesn’t let a child walk past him without giving him a handshake or a high-five.
“How’s it going, handsome?” says Kermen, principal of the William D’Abate Elementary School near Manton Avenue.
Kermen is in front of the school every morning, greeting students and parents with a smile and a few cheery words to begin the day. As a new principal, he says, it’s important to be visible so parents can connect a face with a name.
“I have to put myself out there for them to judge,” he says. “Every kid that passes by looks me up and down.”
Kermen has big shoes to fill. Lucille Furia, who retired in June, spent 39 years at D’Abate, the past 13 as principal. In a district where principals rarely stay at one school for very long, Furia was nothing short of an institution. And, because of her longevity, the school has one of the most stable communities of teachers in the district.
“This staff has so far surpassed my expectations,” says Kermen, who is 37 and lives in Cranston. “These teachers personify a collective commitment to education.”
Kermen cut his teeth as an administrator in Newport, where he was assistant principal of Thompson Middle School. One of his biggest accomplishments there was developing a guide to help teachers prepare students for the state assessments.
Kermen represents the new breed of principals, who see themselves as instructional leaders, not simply school disciplinarians. After the morning bell rings, he pops into one class after another to make sure that students and teachers are engaged in honest work.
Friday is only the fourth day of school, but Kermen, who spent four years in the Marines, including a tour in the Gulf war, has already begun to identify the “alphas,” the children who are natural leaders.
During lunch, he points to a fifth-grade girl who looks far older than her peers, an adolescent trapped in an elementary school. She sits facing away from her classmates, a look of supreme boredom on her face. Kermen nods his head and predicts that she will turn out to be one of the leaders, the student that the other fifth-grade girls look up to.
“You can learn more in the lunchroom about who’s who on the social ladder,” he says, “than any place else.”
Details matter to Kermen. He notices that teachers flock to the teachers’ room for their lunch break, which means that they enjoy each others’ company.
He also notices that each of the three lunch periods runs like clockwork. The students queue up for lunch, sit down right away and throw away their trash before lining up to return to class. Although the noise level is high, it is not deafening and there is no fooling around. When lunch is over, the gym teacher blows a whistle and students automatically put their heads down and stop talking.
Kermen shakes his head and smiles. This order is the result of years of consistent leadership on the part of the principal and staff. The children know what it is expected of them and they model that behavior for the newcomers, especially the kindergarten students.
“The teachers here are so welcoming, so nurturing,” he says. “Lucille deserves a lot of credit.”
During the third lunch, a fifth-grade girl buries her head in her hands and starts crying. A teacher assistant tells Kermen that one of the boys said something nasty about the girl’s looks. Kermen asks the boy to apologize, and then pulls the girl aside.
“You know,” he tells her, “I don’t think he meant to be mean. Sometimes, when a boy says something like that to a girl, it really means he likes her. But if anyone does that to you again, tell me about it or your teacher. Are you OK? All right, let’s have a good afternoon.”
An urban principal wears many hats: cheerleader, disciplinarian, data guru, master teacher and social worker. Sometimes, the principal also has to be a clerk of the works.
When Kermen arrived at D’Abate shortly before school started, he found a building in turmoil. Construction crews were installing sprinklers and there were wires hanging everywhere and a thick layer of dust on every surface. Meanwhile, the courtyard was littered with broken glass and graffiti.
Kermen got on the phone to central office. He called the building’s union representative. For the two or three days before school started, maintenance teams worked double shifts to clean up the building.
“I had everyone down here,” he says. “Central office was outstanding.”
Since this is Kermen’s first year, the district has assigned a veteran administrator to be his mentor, Mary Brennan, a retired principal hailed for turning around Vartan Gregorian Elementary School on the East Side.
Brennan has given Kermen the kind of advice that only a veteran of a school district knows about, like how to get the buses there on time and who to call when a parent is late picking up his child.
But even in the best-run schools, plans can go awry, as they did on Friday, when a little boy bolted from the classroom and was caught running down the hallway. It seems that his mother had promised him that he would attend the same school as his big sister and when he wound at D’Abate, he had a meltdown. This was the second day in a row that the boy had tried to run away.
Kermen tried to calm him down.
“Lunch is coming up,” he said to the tearful child. “You can buy me an ice cream.”
Kermen called the school social worker and the district’s director of special education and explained that the child needed a more secure setting. In the meantime, he made sure that the teacher had a walkie-talkie in case the boy tried to make another run for it.
All too often, Kermen says, something at home sets the child off and that emotional upheaval travels with the child to the classroom.
“As a child, my family moved from Central Falls to Newport,” Kermen says, “and I remember like it was yesterday what it was like to be the new kid in school.”
In Providence, it isn’t unusual for students to move a half-dozen times by the time they reach high school. Sometimes, the family moves from Providence to Pawtucket to Central Falls, depending on the availability of affordable housing. All these changes add another level of anxiety to what is often a fraught moment anyway — the first day of school.
Bring it on, Kermen says. He is ready for the baddest boy, the toughest fifth-grader, because this is what he was meant to do.
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