Senate Education Committee Hearing on “Bumping”

Summary: Legislation designed to keep our best teachers in the classroom by ending seniority-based “bumping” will receive a hearing before the Senate Education Committee at the State House this Wednesday, April 2 at 4:30 pm. We are looking for supporters to attend this meeting, and for people who have direct [...]

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New Superintendent Hired

UPDATE: Here’s the press release from Mayor Cicilline’s office announcing the hiring of Tom Brady as the next Superintendent of Providence Schools, and a recently-posted ProJo article. It’s not entirely clear when he will start. Dr. Evans’ contract runs until September 19th. The Inquirer says that Brady will stay in Philadelphia until June.
The [...]

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School Siting Bill Considered

Hearings will be held tomorrow H-7577, a bill designed to prevent siting new schools on contaminated land. The bill has bipartisan support, and is co-sponsored by East Side Representative David Segal. I am not familiar enough with the bill to speak to specifics, but, according to a release from the group supporting the bill,
Cash [...]

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March 24th School Board Meeting

The School Board meets tomorrow, Monday March 24. Agendas for meeting are published on-line, usually the previous Friday, which means you really have to pay attention to know what’s going on. We might encourage the Board to post agendas sooner than the last minute required by state law.
Go to ProvidenceSchools.org, select “office…school board…dates [...]

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Tennis Anyone?

This is not education-related, but it does concern Nathan Bishop.
One of the benefits of the Bishop remodeling plan is that it preserves the tennis and basketball courts behind the school. These are not actually part of the school, but are managed by the City’s Parks Department. Those of us who played at Bishop [...]

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More Art!

Many thanks to Nancy Safian, the Program Manager of RISD’s “Project Open Door” for passing along the information below. Note that this is a high school program, but they are interested in working with 8th graders. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this at Nathan Bishop when it opens?
I am on your [...]

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Nathan Bishop Outreach Committee Formed

A sub-committee of the ESPEC steering committee is being formed to reach out to parents of prospective attendees of the new Nathan Bishop. Co-chairs are Kim Rohm, a parent and PTO member at King Elementary and Karina Wood, PTO president at Vartan Gregorian.
Karina and Kim will be looking for others who can help with this [...]

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NCLB: Reform & Renewal or Retirement?

With a tip of the hat to the Hard Deadlines blog down in Portsmouth for catching something I missed in the papers:
Yesterday’s (March 19) New York Times has a story on a new development in No Child Left Behind.
The Bush administration, acknowledging that the federal No Child Left Behind law is diagnosing too many public [...]

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VIPS is Here and Helping. You can too!

A couple of recent conversations reminded me that it’s been a while since we mentioned VIPS- Volunteers in Providence Schools. From their website:
VIPS is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to enabling our city’s students to succeed in school by providing them with educational support services and individualized help so that they can grow academically [...]

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Nathan Bishop Bidders’ Conference

Yesterday morning, the pre-bid conference for contractors was held at Nathan Bishop. Diane McAleer, long-time immediate neighbor of Bishop and active member of the Superintendent’s Nathan Bishop Committee, reports 35 to 40 cars and trucks arrived, which seems to indicate a good level of interest. Potential contractors and sub-contractors, many carrying blueprints, [...]

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Superintendent Evans to Resign

Update: This (Tuesday) morning, the ProJo has a longer version of the story that was posted last night. It no longer mentions Nathan Bishop.
As was reported on the 11:00 news tonight, and in the Providence Journal on-line, Dr. Donnie Evans, Superintendent of Providence Schools, has submitted his resignation, effective at the [...]

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Silver Linings in the Cloud Over Arts

As a follow up to the post below, and as an antidote to its negative tone, I would like to point out that the recent ProJo story that I mentioned also has some encouraging news from a neighborhood elementary school, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary.
“Katharina Shroeter has her hands full. She divides her time [...]

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When Will the Arts Return to Our Schools, and How?

A recent article in the Providence Journal points to the moribund condition of art education in the Providence Schools. This is an issue that affects the Providence School District as a whole, but it also has a direct impact on the reopening of Nathan Bishop and on ESPEC’s goal of drawing more children from [...]

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Yet More on Math Scores: Time for Teacher Testing?

The previous post on low 11th grade math NECAP scores was meant to suggest that some of the reaction to them might have been a tad histrionic. (I posted after hearing that one local talk show host suggested the appropriate response is to “hang the teachers”). That was not to say that there is [...]

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School Board Hears About Nathan Bishop Progess

I’m not sure this counts as “news” for faithful readers of this blog, (see this post) but yesterday’s ProJo contains a report, by Linda Borg, that Alan Sepe, the city’s acting director of public property, reported to the School Board Monday evening on progress on Nathan Bishop. Sepe told the Board that,
Plans for both a [...]

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More on NECAP Scores

With all the recent attention on the new 11th grade NECAP, I was moved to take another look at the 3rd through 8th grade scores, with the particular goal of seeing how Providence schools are doing. The RIDE website has data from the 2005, 2006, and 2007 administrations of the test.
Providence schools have shown [...]

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Nathanael Greene Unrest Update

[The second of several catch-up items on recent events related to Providence public education]
At the end of February, several articles in the Providence Journal documented food fights and other disruption and behavior problems at Nathanael Greene Middle School, and reported on the Superintendent’s response.
According to teachers quoted in the story, “there have been three major [...]

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Discouraging Math NECAP Scores Released (math problem included!)

[note: This week, I'm trying to catch up on posting about recent stories related to Providence Public Schools. This is the first of these posts. I hope you'll take the time to watch the video and try to solve the math problem below!]
As reported in the ProJo and elsewhere, on Monday March 3rd [...]

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Bid Proposals for Nathan Bishop Solicited

On February 14th, the City solicited bids for rennovations to Nathan Bishop Middle School. The description is as follows:
The work is primarily renovation of the existing middle school; the work also includes abatement, demolition, sitework, general construction, masonry, metal fabrications, waterproofing, roofing, windows, glass, tile, ceilings, floors, painting, elevators, plumbing, HVAC, electrical (including telecommunications), [...]

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Progress on Nathan Bishop Construction

The timetable for Nathan Bishop below was first posted in October, 2007. I thought it was time to update it with indicators of which tasks have been completed. As you can see, the project is generally on schedule, though we understand that the date that the building is actually handed over to the [...]

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