Correction: City Council Education Committee meeting day

I mis-typed the day of the City Council’s Education Committee’s first meeting date in a post below. April 3 is the correct date, but it is TUESDAY, not Thursday.
By the way, you can probably keep tabs on this committee’s activities by signing up for Cliff’s e-newsletter at www.cliffwood06.com

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ESPEC’s first birthday

In the last days of March, 2006, the closing of Nathan Bishop was announced. Our Citizenspeak campaign, sending email to the School Board and City officials asking them to keep the school open, was launched on Friday, March 31, 2006. It was the first time we publicly identified ourselves as the East Side [...]

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Are you missing our email updates?

We sent out update #18 today and I’m getting “undeliverable” messages from some of the people on our email list. In some cases, this is probably caused by oversensitive spam filters. Please check your spambox and “whitelist” us. In other cases, the mailserver returns “unknown user”. This might be an [...]

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First Meeting of City Council Public Education Committee

The new City Council Public Education Committee will hold its first meeting Thursday, Tuesday April 3rd at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall. Cliff Wood, the Ward 2 Councilperson (in whose ward Bishop sits) chairs the Committee. Mike Solomon is Vice-Chair. This Committee promises to be a strong forum for discussions about Providence [...]

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Official Notice From Providence Public Schools on Meetings with Ai3

We’ve just received the official notice about the upcoming meetings, as well as a Flyer (pdf file) that you might hand out or post in your daycare, coffee shop, or other community gathering place.
NOTICE : The Providence School District has several buildings in various stages of design/construction progress—Adelaide, Central, Hanley and Bishop.
In the [...]

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Open Meeting with Nathan Bishop Architects Scheduled

Architectural Involutions, the firm hired to design the new Nathan Bishop, will present designs and explain their approach at a public meeting sponsored by the School Department:
Wednesday, April 11th
6:00pm
ML King Elementary School
This will be your chance to give opinions to the official decisionmakers about renovation vs. new construction, historical preservation, “green” construction, etc.

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East Side Monthly Editorial Misses the Mark

Update: The East Side Monthly Editorial discussed here is now online here.
East Side Monthly has a curious editorial about Nathan Bishop in its April issue. The editorial makes some good points but it is ill-informed or misguided on others, and a response is in order.
The first point of the editorial is that, before tearing [...]

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Architects Meet with Bishop Task Force

Last week, the Architectural Involutions, the firm engaged to plan Nathan Bishop, met with the Superintendent’s Nathan Bishop Task Force (nee “committee”). We saw designs for schools, some of which can be seen on their website. All in all, it was a very impressive event. This is a very smart, young [...]

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Nathan Bishop Architect Announced

The city has retained an architectural firm to prepare proposals for Nathan Bishop, though it’s not clear that they will do the final design. They will prepare and present proposals for both renovation and new construction.We hope very soon to be able to announce public meetings where the community can give them feedback.
The [...]

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Public Education, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth

A recent ProJo article gets at the heart of one thing that ESPEC has trying to say over the last year: good-quality public education produces economic growth, and anybody who is interested in RI’s economic future will be investing in its educational present. I fear we’ve lost sight of this “big picture” a bit in [...]

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City Council Creates Special Committee on Public Education

In a very positive step, the City Council has created a Special Committee on Education. Ward 2’s Cliff Wood, who showed a strong commitment to public education from the very start of his campaign and who remains vigorously involved in the effort to reopen Bishop, serves as chair. Here’s the press release:
Press Release from [...]

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NY Times on Middle Schools- Part III

The NY Times has published the third in a series of articles on the challenges of teaching Middle Schools. The excerpts below give the gist. The entire article can be read here.
“Faced with increasingly well-documented slumps in learning at a critical age, educators in New York and across the nation are struggling to [...]

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Bishop & ESPEC in the Brown Daily Herald

This article discusses Bishop, ESPEC and the possible role of Brown in Bishop’s future. There are perspectives from ESPEC steering committee members, PPSD and RIDE personel, and Brown representatives:
The East Side Public Education Coalition – a group of parents and residents on Providence’s East Side – hopes to reopen Nathan Bishop [...]

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Report on the Board of Governors

In our last update (Feb. 23) we told you that we expected the Budget Committee of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education to make a recommendation regarding the School Department’s proposal for Nathan Bishop at its Feb. 28 meeting.  That did not happen because the state Department of Education (RIDE) did not [...]

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Nathan Bishop Committee Reconvenes.

The Superintendent’s Committee on Nathan Bishop reconvened last night, March 8th.   The Committee is charged with refining and  implementing the proposals for programming and curriculum made by the Committee last fall.  ESPEC steering committee members continue to sit on the Committee, and we’ll be reporting back to you as we did last Fall.

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Recent quiet

Just a quick post to acknowledge and explain the lack of postings here in the last week. Your humble blogger’s day job has overwhelmed me lately. Too many late nights grading all of those midterm exams. Thank goodness for spring break!

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New Public Education Coalition wants input on contracts

UPDATE:  Here’s a link for PEEC
This seems to be a heady time for public education activism. ESPEC formed last spring; the West Broadway Coalition more recently. The Providence Educational Excellence Coalition (PEEC), which wants to see the broader community to have a voice in negotiations over the teachers’ contracts, was established during the [...]

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Update- School Board votes to Close WBES

The School Board voted 6-2  on Monday night to close West Broadway Elementary School.  Board members Ronnie Young and Bert Crenca cast the dissenting votes.
Unlike the original plan, the current plan would keep the students together at the Pell Complex. Additionally, Superintendent Evans made a commitment to return the school to the community, and that [...]

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