On Tuesday, the members of the Providence Teachers Union voted with a robust majority in favor to ratify the contract discussed here and elsewhere previously. Here's the ProJo's report on the outcome.
BetterProvidence has posted the full text of the contract (PDF download) for your analysis, distraction, enjoyment. Not for me to judge. You have your fun and I'll have mine. Since this blog constitutes one of my main pastimes, infer what you will about mine.
Showing posts with label BetterProvidence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BetterProvidence. Show all posts
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
What will the new PPSD-PTU teachers contract mean for teaching and learning?
Mayor Taveras' August 2 announcement mentioned in the previous post focuses mainly the tentative agreement between the Providence Teacher Union and the City on the teachers contract, on which PPSD teachers are voting today (click here for a PDF version of a letter from Providence Teachers Union president Steve Smith that contains the announcement of the vote).
Each side seems to have given big to get big in certain areas. The union agreed to criterion based hiring to replace hiring/classroom assignment controlled by seniority. The city agreed to nearly all fired teachers keeping their jobs. The city nets $53 million in savings as a result of the agreement, which in our current dire financial situation is, of course, the big win. As former school board president Kathy Crain argues in GoLocalProv, the contract doesn’t seem to contain significant improvement in the conditions it establishes for teaching and learning, so no big wins for students.
Since this is a follow up post to thoughts about the length of the school day, it’s worth noting that the contract itself doesn’t expand instructional time in any meaningful way, other than adding 5 minutes a year to the day over the course of three years. Not nothing, but not really something either.
Additional stipulations of the new tentative agreement that have been released are provided by the Mayor’s announcement and reported by the ProJo, Providence Business News, and other outlets.The contract itself has not yet been made available to the public.
Last but definitely not least, take a few minutes to review the list of reactions and questions about the new contract that Better Providence is compiling on Facebook. Very thoughtful. I want to know the answers and thank Better Providence for asking for more clarity.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools, 3/19/11: recap
On Saturday, March 19, I worked with a handful of other PPSD parents, with Karina Wood from Better Providence (who is also a PPSD parent) and with the staff of the office of the district's office of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) to create the Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Schools. Big effort, and playing catch-up in all of the other areas of life has necessitated a couple of days of blog silence even though there's so much to talk about. This meeting was a separate and independent effort, spurred by recent events but not related to the Community Meetings on the future of Providence Public Schools that the district is hosting this week.
Quick event recap: the organizers--and my informal sense of reaction from most participants--is that it went really well. Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady opened the Forum with short remarks that included their own wishes for the Providence Public Schools - a thoughtful way to get participants ready for what was to come. They then took several questions, not directly from the audience but from the audience, who wrote their questions for the Mayor and Superintendent on index cards. Ina Anderson posted the most frequently occurring questions. We'll be sharing all of the questions, and I'll get a report from someone who was paying attention to the Mayor and Superintendent's answers to share their responses--I could not, as I was engaged in other event-related getting-started urgencies.
Following the Superintendent and Mayor's remarks and Q & A, we moved the audience members into small groups of 10 or so, each group gathered around a table, and each group paired with a facilitator. The facilitator led the groups--which were mixed across roles, neighborhood, race, and other factors--through a conversation with several phases: quick introductions, longer discussions in pairs in which each participants shared her/his reason for coming to the forum, a full-group discussion in which each person shared their partner's reason, a short individual writing session in which participants wrote about their top three wishes/hopes/dreams/expectations for the Providence Public Schools, a time to share those wishes, which the facilitators captured on chart paper, and finally, a group conversation that identified the group's top three wishes. We then brought the small groups together and they shared their collective results, which I will share here as soon as they're typed up.
I wish we'd asked for feedback at the end - unfortunate oversight. Though I can't report directly on people's experience, what we saw was encouraging. Anecdotal feedback told us that people were gratified both to have heard from Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady. They valued having the opportunity to express themselves not just to people who they knew, but to people who they never would have otherwise met. They talked about the immediate issues that their schools are facing as a result of the current financial mess, and they talked about the bigger picture of what we want our schools to be in the long run. We saw teachers, parents, elected officials, appointed officials, students, and others being able to share their experiences with each other with honesty and respect--and we noticed a lot of intent listening. Informal conversations lasted long after the small groups dispersed, and again, there were folks talking with each other who never would have met, and they were able to feel a sense of mutual support and new understanding of each other's challenges. I think the event went a distance toward humanizing groups that might have found it easy to be disparaging or dismissive in the abstract. When faced with a real person talking about their worries and hopes, we realize both that our experience is not universal, and that we need to gather our assets citywide to create lasting change in our schools that will make the difference for all kids in all neighborhoods.
Next steps include sharing the results of the meeting, particularly the pressing questions and the hopes and dreams for our schools. We will definitely do a follow-up gathering of some sort soon, and we'll see where our collective energy takes up. This could be the foundation of a city-wide public school advocacy group powered by those who are closest to young people and their learning: educators, family members, and students themselves. Providence needs it, and the time is right to make it happen.
If you want to read yet more, the ProJo and the Brown Daily Herald came out and reported on the event; I think there were other media outlets there as well but haven't seen anything else in print or online.
I could go on, but for those of you still reading, I'll let you off the hook, at least for now. Just one more thing to do, which is to say thank you to the many people who helped make this possible. Thank you to Mayor Taveras, Angela Romans, Melissa Withers, Superintendent Brady, Janet Pichardo and the FACE staff, Christina O'Reilly, Peter Lee and the staff of the John Hope Settlement House, Jorge Cardenas of Sodexho for providing food, Aramark for providing chairs, Karina Wood and Better Providence for tireless event support, Youth in Action and Kidoinfo for helping to spread the word, members of the Parent Advisory Council who came out on Saturday morning to assist with registration and set-up, and the members of the Parent Advisory Council leadership group who planned the event: Robin Adams, Dawn Clifton, Carmel McGill, Lee Keizler, and Michelle McKenzie.
If you'd like to find out more about the Providence Public Schools Parent Advisory Council, email us at ProvidencePAC@gmail.com.
Quick event recap: the organizers--and my informal sense of reaction from most participants--is that it went really well. Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady opened the Forum with short remarks that included their own wishes for the Providence Public Schools - a thoughtful way to get participants ready for what was to come. They then took several questions, not directly from the audience but from the audience, who wrote their questions for the Mayor and Superintendent on index cards. Ina Anderson posted the most frequently occurring questions. We'll be sharing all of the questions, and I'll get a report from someone who was paying attention to the Mayor and Superintendent's answers to share their responses--I could not, as I was engaged in other event-related getting-started urgencies.
Following the Superintendent and Mayor's remarks and Q & A, we moved the audience members into small groups of 10 or so, each group gathered around a table, and each group paired with a facilitator. The facilitator led the groups--which were mixed across roles, neighborhood, race, and other factors--through a conversation with several phases: quick introductions, longer discussions in pairs in which each participants shared her/his reason for coming to the forum, a full-group discussion in which each person shared their partner's reason, a short individual writing session in which participants wrote about their top three wishes/hopes/dreams/expectations for the Providence Public Schools, a time to share those wishes, which the facilitators captured on chart paper, and finally, a group conversation that identified the group's top three wishes. We then brought the small groups together and they shared their collective results, which I will share here as soon as they're typed up.
I wish we'd asked for feedback at the end - unfortunate oversight. Though I can't report directly on people's experience, what we saw was encouraging. Anecdotal feedback told us that people were gratified both to have heard from Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady. They valued having the opportunity to express themselves not just to people who they knew, but to people who they never would have otherwise met. They talked about the immediate issues that their schools are facing as a result of the current financial mess, and they talked about the bigger picture of what we want our schools to be in the long run. We saw teachers, parents, elected officials, appointed officials, students, and others being able to share their experiences with each other with honesty and respect--and we noticed a lot of intent listening. Informal conversations lasted long after the small groups dispersed, and again, there were folks talking with each other who never would have met, and they were able to feel a sense of mutual support and new understanding of each other's challenges. I think the event went a distance toward humanizing groups that might have found it easy to be disparaging or dismissive in the abstract. When faced with a real person talking about their worries and hopes, we realize both that our experience is not universal, and that we need to gather our assets citywide to create lasting change in our schools that will make the difference for all kids in all neighborhoods.
Next steps include sharing the results of the meeting, particularly the pressing questions and the hopes and dreams for our schools. We will definitely do a follow-up gathering of some sort soon, and we'll see where our collective energy takes up. This could be the foundation of a city-wide public school advocacy group powered by those who are closest to young people and their learning: educators, family members, and students themselves. Providence needs it, and the time is right to make it happen.
If you want to read yet more, the ProJo and the Brown Daily Herald came out and reported on the event; I think there were other media outlets there as well but haven't seen anything else in print or online.
I could go on, but for those of you still reading, I'll let you off the hook, at least for now. Just one more thing to do, which is to say thank you to the many people who helped make this possible. Thank you to Mayor Taveras, Angela Romans, Melissa Withers, Superintendent Brady, Janet Pichardo and the FACE staff, Christina O'Reilly, Peter Lee and the staff of the John Hope Settlement House, Jorge Cardenas of Sodexho for providing food, Aramark for providing chairs, Karina Wood and Better Providence for tireless event support, Youth in Action and Kidoinfo for helping to spread the word, members of the Parent Advisory Council who came out on Saturday morning to assist with registration and set-up, and the members of the Parent Advisory Council leadership group who planned the event: Robin Adams, Dawn Clifton, Carmel McGill, Lee Keizler, and Michelle McKenzie.
If you'd like to find out more about the Providence Public Schools Parent Advisory Council, email us at ProvidencePAC@gmail.com.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Calling all Families and Educators! Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools, March 19, 9:30am
The Forum will take place at the John Hope Settlement House, located at 7 Thomas P. Whitten Way (off Westminster St.) in Providence. If you're driving, enter front parking lot off Westminster Street or back parking lot via Thomas P. Whitten Way.
The forum is sponsored by the Providence Public Schools Parents Advisory Council (known as the PAC, of which I am a proud member and of which I will say a bit more below) and BetterProvidence (with which it has been a delight to collaborate).
Parents and community members will identify and discuss our education priorities, and how can we be better engaged in our schools and partner with our schools and the School Department to improve the quality of education for our kids. We're planning on facilitated discussion in small groups, and what people share really matters. Your voice will be heard!
In addition, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras will outline his education agenda and priorities for Providence public schools and Superintendent Brady will provide the most updated information from the Providence Public School Department.
The Parent and Community Forum is free and open to all. Spanish and Hmong translation services, refreshments, and free child care will be provided. Please call in advance to reserve childcare: 401-456-0686
For further information, please contact ProvidencePAC@gmail.com or the PPSD Office of Family and Community Engagement at 401-456-0686 - or ask me here and I'll find out what you need to know. If you click on the flier in the upper right, you can grab copies of it for yourself. Please help spread the word!
As you can tell, I am excited about this event. In early March, when the impact of the city's financial crisis became know, the PAC leadership gathered to act on the foundation we've been building for some time to create strong connections among families with students in the public schools across Providence. The PAC meets monthly with representatives from many (should be all, but isn't now) schools in Providence. One of our members, Robin Adams, was instrumental in pulling together a meeting of parents statewide earlier this year to hear from and ask questions of RIDE Commissioner Deborah Gist about Race to the Top funds and parent involvement.
This meeting will be our first focused on Providence itself, the first effort by parents for parents that we're aware of recently, and we see it as an important moment. We're eager to use the strength and energy of those who show up to form a strong citywide coalition of families. We won't always agree, but we can work across difference, find what we have in common, and speak clearly as one to stand for the best interests of all of our kids.
This is not limited at all to families, of course. We also hope that teachers and high school students -- who thus far have been better organized than families in this city -- will join us.
Please help spread the word, and if you have any questions or comments, please share them below or with me in email. Use the ProvidencePAC@gmail.com address - I'll be checking it.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Providence City Council teachers contract hearings, 2/17 and 2/22
Karina Wood, Interim Executive Director of the nonpartisan citizens' initiative BetterProvidence, has passed on information about the hearings that the Providence City Council is holding this week to gather information about the contract between the Providence Teachers Union and the Providence Public Schools. Here's Karina's announcement:
This is a unique opportunity to learn more about the union and district's aims and expectations, which will have a tremendous impact both on the ways Providence spends money not only on salaries but much more, and on the ways teachers can spend their time as professionals working toward the best possible learning outcomes for our kids. It's also a chance, as time permits, for you to offer your perspective as a citizen about the ways resources can and should be used to create the best conditions for teaching and learning in our city's public schools.
There will be a second teachers contract hearing on Tuesday, February 22 at 7:00 p.m.
The contract with the Providence Teachers Union has a major effect on the cost of education in Providence and on the policies and practices by which our children learn in the classroom. The contract need to be renewed by August, 2011.
This Thursday, February 17 at 4:30 p.m., at City Hall, the City Council’s Education Subcommittee of the Finance Committee is inviting the lead contract negotiators to present the goals they have for the upcoming negotiations. Superintendent Tom Brady, Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, and Providence School Board President Kathy Crain have been invited to make presentations and take questions from the committee.
The public is invited and welcomed to attend. Please come if you can.Ed Fitzpatrick wrote about the upcoming teachers contract hearings in today's ProJo, with a focus on City Council member Sam Zurier, who initiated the hearings. The ProJo's Alisha Pina also reported this story last week.
This is a unique opportunity to learn more about the union and district's aims and expectations, which will have a tremendous impact both on the ways Providence spends money not only on salaries but much more, and on the ways teachers can spend their time as professionals working toward the best possible learning outcomes for our kids. It's also a chance, as time permits, for you to offer your perspective as a citizen about the ways resources can and should be used to create the best conditions for teaching and learning in our city's public schools.
There will be a second teachers contract hearing on Tuesday, February 22 at 7:00 p.m.
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