the elorza vision for education pt. 3: a providence public school

The Elorza Vision for Education, Pt. 3: Making our school system work 1

The Elorza Vision for Education

Pt. 3: A Providence Public School System that Works In my last two releases, I outlined a vision for education in which our schools are community-centered and our curriculum is student-centered. First, I presented a model for full service community schools with wrap-around services, in which the school doors are opened to nonprofits, social service agencies, and other community partners to provide vital supports and resources to students and families. This will make our school buildings centers of excellence for their neighborhoods beyond the school day, and even the school year. In the second one, I envisioned a system of multiple educational pathways that would move us away from the “one size fits all” model of learning that has persisted for far too long. This curriculum will be individualized and student-centered, and assessments will be geared towards demonstrating authentic mastery of knowledge and skills through uncommon tasks. Not all of the changes Providence’s education system needs, however, are so bold or attention grabbing. I believe it’s just as important to address the detailed policies and governance systems that don’t attract media, and nevertheless have serious impacts on our system’s ability to facilitate innovation, distribute resources, develop effective policy, provide safe school environments, and more. This final vision statement on education deals with some of these issues. This is a plan to address some of the most immediate challenges over which the Mayor has the most direct impact – the low-hanging fruit of institutional reform and management. This is very much in line with my plan for improving City services: it’s focused on the kinds of simple things we can actually achieve to improve the everyday functioning of the system.


I have a vision for our school system that certainly contains some bold and ambitious ideas, and also some very common sense ones – because, above all, I have a vision for a Providence Public School system that just works. School Management My number one priority as Mayor, and what I see as my primary responsibility, will be to audit the structure of the Providence Public School Department from top to bottom. There is broad agreement that at this moment, the city is overly concentrating resources into the central office at the expense of individual schools. In our community schools

model, the focus will shift away from PPSD headquarters and into the individual neighborhoods, bringing with it dollars, resources, and human capital that were previously tethered at 797 Westminster. Already, PPSD is planning a transition to “site based management,” which will ensure school principals more autonomy in hiring, budgeting, and instruction. I will see to it as Mayor that this transition is responsibly accelerated, so principals across our city are empowered to work proactively and respond quickly to changing conditions in their buildings. Moreover, we must ensure that school principals are equipped for what will become a more demanding role. Leadership has been cultivated in environments in which principals are trained to follow directives, not lead change. Principals have been hired based on teaching and learning skills, yet as we move forward, management and leadership skills will become more

important to their success. Again, as we switch the focus to site based management, we will need to develop school leaders who are prepared to engage stakeholders, collaborate on creative solutions, and make decisions based on the needs of their individual schools. Some of this work is already being done. For example, the Principal Residency Network develops and places innovative leaders in schools throughout Rhode Island. We must expand this work and establish a leadership academy, possibly in partnership with local universities, to identify and train future principals in things like business and management practices. Similarly, we must also reexamine the way we utilize assistant principals throughout the system. Teacher Supports Just as we must ask more of our school administrators, we must also ask more of our professional teaching staff (as detailed in my previous proposal). I have a deep and


profound respect for the hard and often thankless work that our city’s teachers put in day after day. That is why I want to make sure they work in a system that appreciates their time, trusts their talent, and values their work. I hear again and again from teachers across our city that their professional development options are too often redundant, limited, or disconnected from the real needs of their classrooms. Professional development should be welcomed as an opportunity, not regarded as a compliance issue. I will prioritize an overhaul of the city’s professional development system that will make it worthwhile again for our teachers, and facilitate bringing new, proven, innovative best practices into our city’s classrooms. At the same time, I will engage our teaching force to help administrators be better informed about the needs of schools and fellow teachers. Along with students, no one knows better than teachers what is going on inside the classrooms across our city. I am asking teachers, including the Providence Teachers Union and the numerous school delegates, to work within schools as motivators, information-gatherers, and ambassadors to parents, to send clear messages up the ladder about the needs of students, parents, teachers, and classrooms. This includes identifying supports needed to make sure our students are ready to learn, and identifying what professional development is needed to strengthen and empower our city’s teachers, and ultimately students. This reflects my basic approach throughout my campaign and my life: the best way to solve problems is to bring all stakeholders together in an environment of trust, and work together to move in a better direction. When we foster a more supportive and trustworthy environment, we will achieve better results for our students, improve morale among our veteran teachers, and better encourage young educators to commit to our city’s public schools. School Board Under the current mayor, we have made progress in developing a Providence School Board that is reflective of our community, highly skilled, and actively engaged in crafting policy and budgeting. I pledge to build upon this work by actively recruiting the strongest candidates from the education, nonprofit, community, and business sectors. As we move towards site-based management, we will need to revise a number of policies to support this work, especially in the area of human capital management. We must empower the School Board and provide it with the resources necessary to develop policies that align with and support that vision.


Contracting On the issue of the School Board, it is long-past time that the district moved to performance-based contracting. We have for decades handed out too many contracts to consultants and service providers without attaching clear expectations for results. Many of these programs are doing great work, but when it comes to our city’s children, we have a moral imperative to ensure that we are constantly focused on delivering the best value for every precious dollar we spend.

One of the first areas of contracting that I will commit to examining is our city’s bus contracting policy. We are simply paying too much in transportation costs. PPSD's own Student Transportation Services Assessment from last year noted that the $1,460 annual cost of transportation per student is 10-30% higher than expected for a school district of this type and size. One attempted solution already failed: an effort to increase the efficiency of bus runs by adjusting bell times did not produce the desired increase in efficiency or cost savings because of errors in implementation. But the bottom line remains that Providence’s higher transportation cost per students is due to the number of buses in use, not the specific cost per bus. We must reduce the number of buses PPSD is using. That same Student Transportation Services Assessment showed that the cost per student for PPSD transportation was higher than that of

services provided by both RIPTA and RIDE. In the plan I released to expand school busing last year (the first such proposal by any candidate in this election), I proposed negotiating with RIPTA for discounted bus passes for students who live within 2-3 miles of their school, adding approximately 700,000 rides to their current total. Public transportation has increasing returns to scale, meaning its cost per user goes down as the number of users increases. If we are already negotiating better rates with RIPTA, then we should make better use of public transportation and reduce the number of buses PPSD needs. Also, PPSD is already using route planning technology to ensure efficiency, but there is always room for improvement. By regularly assessing our progress, clustering bus stops, and optimizing routes, we can continue to make progress. While on the topic of busing, I want to openly commit to completing the work of the current Mayor, City Council, School Board, and community groups like the Providence


Student Union by completing the transition to providing bus passes for high school students living farther than 2 miles from school. School Funding PPSD currently only has two employees working on grant funding: the Director of Grant Funding and a Temporary Assistant to the Director of Grant Funding. At the same time, it also employs 36 clerks, including seven payroll clerks and three typists. We must re-focus our hardworking staff’s time and energy so that we stop missing opportunities to raise more funds. As Mayor, I will ensure that whether through repurposing existing staff or new hires, PPSD expands the number of employees dedicated to grant writing, fundraising, and otherwise securing outside funding. The community schools model outlined in my first education proposal would open up new opportunities to receive grants and attract outside funding; we need to make sure we have the staff in place to aggressively pursue these avenues. The City of Central Falls, for example, hired a part time grant writer for its school department at a salary of $30,000 per year; in the first year, this person brought in $600,000 in grant funding. Some investments are simply worthwhile, and as Mayor, I will make those investments. Conclusion Over three successive releases I have outlined my vision for the Providence Schools. This vision reflects my approach of thinking big and being bold, yet also being pragmatic and collaborative. Our school system must tend to the needs of the whole child, it must provide multiple pathways to achievement, and it simply must work. That is what I’ve proposed here. This vision is not the end of the conversation about improving our schools, but rather the beginning. These very same schools were my pathway to a better life, and as Mayor I will work tirelessly to ensure that similar opportunities exist for the next generation.

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the elorza vision for education pt. 3: a providence public school

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