Extreme myopia (beyond Providence) + process questions (in Providence)

Written by a teacher-librarian and posted in part on Washington Post Answer Sheet blog, this first hand description of hearings for teachers that the Los Angeles Unified School District is attempting to lay off reveals a shortsighted and and heartbreaking process. It's worth a read, as is the original longer post. For more background, here and here are two opinion pieces (against) on issue of RIF-ing all LAUSD teacher-librarians (am assuming that second one, published today, is written by the same Ms. Murphy as the author of the blog piece referred to a couple of lines back. Whether there are one or two Ms. Murphys documenting the process of what's happening in LAUSD and speaking out, kudos to you.

Teachers here in Providence will soon be facing the same process. Well, not exactly the same. The LAUSD hearings, however absurdly the district may be handling them, are being conducted on a teacher-by-teacher basis. Teachers in Providence who wish to seek due process to address their firings will be doing so in group hearings, the ProJo reports. I will leave it to you to opine on the legality or feasibility of conducting group hearings for such a purpose.

Which teachers will choose to do so will become evident soon, I assume. According to this May 3 Emergency Motion to Expedite published on the PPSD website, "The individualized statements of cause contemplated by the PSB Plan have to be provided to the teachers no later than May 17, 2011 under the Tenure Act." That was yesterday.

I surmise that these notices went out to "Category 3" teachers who are being dismissed for cause (see this useful post from The Quick and the Ed blog for a succinct explanation of three hiring/firing categories into which PPSD has sorted teachers). Or did it go to all teachers whose dismissal notices haven't yet been rescinded? This would including those going to next week's "match event" designed to put still-fired teachers eligible for hire into open PPSD teaching jobs.

Seriously, if anyone has insight into the process, please to share. I've figured out about as much as I can with Google as my guide and need to get back to the paycheck-generating work.

School closing announcement delayed again. Who stays and who goes?

Mayor Taveras' office has released a statement that the school closures announcement, originally slated for Monday and postponed until today, will now happen on Monday, March 14. Here it is, in full:

Superintendent Thomas Brady and Mayor Angel Taveras have postponed by one week submission of a list of schools recommended for closure in 2011-12.  The list will be announced on Monday, March 14, 2011. The decision to postpone reflects the seriousness of the process, the complex variables that must be considered before a school is closed, and a commitment to conduct school closures in a manner that produces the best outcomes for students and significant cost savings for the City. In addition, the administration is still in ongoing conversations with leadership at the Providence Teachers Union to discuss how teachers displaced by the closure will be terminated and how those unaffected will have their letters of dismissal rescinded. These are challenging decisions that cannot be made lightly or without adequate consideration.

The second to last sentence points to a real challenge: who will stay, who will go, and how will that be determined? I ask the Mayor not to use seniority as the sole basis for continued employment. If the only criterion is seniority, the result will be bumping, which allows senior teachers to displace more junior teachers. This destroys the fabric of school communities and presents the prospect of disruption that our already stressed-out students can't afford.

I write this with great respect for our teachers with seniority in the system. We need their wisdom and experience. Seniority has a place in the hiring and retention process, but it cannot be the only factor.

PPSD school closing announcement moved to Wed., March 9

The ProJo reports that the announcement that will tell us which Providence schools will be recommended for closure as a result of our financial crisis has been delayed until Wednesday, March 9. Here's the original timeline that Mayor Taveras shared last week.

If you're still reading, having made it through that painful passive construction that I used in the first sentence above, thank you for hanging in there. Since last week, when all of this started with the teacher termination news, Mayor Taveras' office has initiated all communication from the city's perspective about what's happening to our teachers, schools, and other education-related matters. Perhaps moving forward, some of this info will start to come from PPSD, though there's no way to be sure of that, hence the grammatical hedge.

Extremely far from ideal

Here's a small excerpt from my upcoming April East Side Monthly education column. I put aside what I had been writing for April to focus on the sharing reactions from teachers in the first week of hearing that they faced termination at the end of the school year. Since last Wednesday, when the news of the teacher terminations broke, the possible impact of PPSD budget cuts on our young people and their schools was surrounded by a larger context of bleak finances and immediate responses by Mayor Taveras. The mayor is addressing neglected and obfuscated financial responsibilities; I applaud him and am committed to contribute all I can to move our city to its next strength. Here's part of what I wrote; the issue should be in your mail within the next couple of weeks, and I'll link to the full version when it appears online.

...we know  that the way the teacher termination decision was reached and announced was extremely far from ideal, even if could not be helped. I am not in a position to know if there were no other choice. What I do know is that the specific circumstances of the teacher termination announcement—during vacation, with no guidelines or support of which I am aware provided for teachers to manage students’ anxiety—created a perfect storm for stress and unease. One can assume the utmost good will and believe that no one intended to create anxiety among students, but the consequences, however unintended, have been real. The erosion of trust that resulted from the way the teacher termination news broke created resentment, confusion, anger, and worry at precisely the worst moment. We all need safety and security to use our minds well. We need everyone at their best as we pull together to preserve what works and improve what’s broken in our schools for the benefit of our city’s young people.

 

teacher's voices

As I write, the financial picture of Providence is changing rapidly for the grimmer. It was a hell of a day, with last week's teacher terminations and subsequent worry about what's going to happen to our schools placed in a broader context of massive deficit and proposals for cuts to city services and agencies across the board.

Before we totally lose the thread of the impact on teachers, I want to remember what this felt like to them when the teacher termination news first broke by highlighting a comment that appeared on the blog that the East Side Public Education Coalition maintains. In response to a statement that ESPEC put out (which, for full disclosure, I helped draft last week), Jennifer Galpern, a parent at Vartan Gregorian Elementary School, shared thoughts from teachers at Gregorian in the fourth comment down. These teachers shared their thoughts before school resumed on Monday, and give a window into what this felt like to them. As Jennifer said, "our teachers' hearts are broken and their trust lost." I am not presuming to say that all teachers feel this way, or that these teachers even feel this way now, nearly a week later, but I don't want their voices to get completely lost in the maelstrom in which we find ourselves.

Community Forum on Current Issues Facing Providence Public Schools, March 2, 6:00pm +

Tomorrow evening at 6:00pm, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization is hosting a community forum to discuss the current financial issues facing Providence Public Schools. This meeting is being co-sponsored by the Vartan Gregorian Elementary, Nathan Bishop Middle School, and Hope High School PTOs.

MLK PTO president Dr. Corey D. B. Walker, Associate Professor of Africana Studies, will facilitate the conversation, which will focus on sharing clear information, creating a space to share concerns and questions, and consider next steps as a community.

Invited speakers (not all of whom are represented in the image of the flyer on this page - this has come together fast!) include:

Superintendent Tom Brady
Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith
School Board Member Brian Lalli
School Board President Kathy Crain (confirmed)
Mayor Taveras' Senior Adviser on Education Angela Romans (confirmed)
Annenberg Institute for School Reform Executive Director Warren Simmons (confirmed)
City Council Member Seth Yurdin (confirmed)
City Council Member Kevin Jackson (confirmed)
City Council Member Sam Zurier (confirmed)

The meeting will be held at MLK Elementary School, 35 Camp Street. Please enter through the cafeteria doors on Carrington Avenue, on the south side of the building. Carrington runs between Hope and Camp Streets.

Moving out of reaction and into action

I haven't been among those spilling much digital ink about the extraordinary circumstances that have unfolded since the evening of Tuesday, February 22, when Mayor Taveras announced that all of Providence's 1,926 teachers would all be receiving dismissal notices effective at the end of the school year. There's been newsy and bloggy coverage, of course. For the latter, I suggest you check out Tuttle SVC and Kmareka.com. Both local blogs have been usefully and thoughtfully sharing news and analysis.

Last week was February break for all three of my kids and for the first couple of days, we were on a vacation and they were front and center in my world. We returned from a few days away directly into the news that the city plans to terminate all teachers. When I wasn't working and/or being with my kids, I was connecting with PPSD parent and teacher friends (including PPSD parents who are PPSD teachers) to try to make some sense out of what's happening. As part of the district's Parent Advisory Committee (PAC), I participated in a briefing with Superintendent Brady on Thursday morning; the notes we took to share with PTOs district-wide are here. The MLK Elementary School PTO has put the notes on its blog here (same notes, different location). The PAC is also working on organizing a city-wide conversation among parents in response to this situation and in order to be proactive about standing up for our kids' education in the face of what is yet to come. With other neighborhood parents, I've been planning a community meeting to discuss the terminations and next steps of school closing and program cuts with the four East Side PTOs (MLK Elementary, Vartan Gregorian Elementary, Nathan Bishop Middle School, and Hope High School) which will happen at King on Wednesday evening, and which was written up today the ProJo's news blog (not sure why; here it is). And I chose to shelve the column I was going to do for April's East Side Monthly in order to write about parent and teacher reactions to the terminations, which I will share with you as soon as I finish it.

So, it's been busy with all of that and the usual business of living life, which included our clothes dryer catching on fire just a little bit over the weekend. Super-exciting. We're fine and already enjoying a lovely new dryer* which is really great as I am a devoted practitioner of laundry as stress reliever.

And now it's Monday--what remains of Monday--and this blog is back in nearly daily business. I'll share as much as I can from my perspective as a public school parent who wants the very best for all kids in all schools in our city; who supports teachers and celebrates their commitment, expertise, and dedication to our children; who wants stability and forward progress for teaching and learning in our schools; who is working to understand the magnitude of the financial challenges that Providence is facing; and who seeks responses that are possible, fair, and the least damaging to the most vulnerable among us.

The first action: be present for my kids. I suggest this to all parents who have the capacity to make it happen. I heard from a number of teachers today on the elementary level that some kids were really shaken by this news, dissolving into tears in class, full of anxiety that their teachers and/or their schools would not be here anymore. Those teachers are pros, and helped their kids get settled and centered, and the day went on. And that's exactly the point: for a lot of kids, their teachers and their school are among the few points of stability they might have. Family and neighborhood circumstances might be unpredictable or chaotic. For many kids and the neighborhoods that they live in, the consistency of a school community is a tremendous benefit, and the thought that it could disappear is frightening.

I think our home life is fairly stable. I also think that my kids are likely to pick up on the angst and stress that's in the air. Look at how I spent my time in the past week--how could they not? So I am reminded to be calm, be reassuring, and keep things as fun and cool as possible at home so that they can go to school as their strongest, most confident selves and be there to be strong for their friends who might be having a really hard time with this. So for now, while everything else is happening, that's the action that I feel really good about.

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* Totally uncompensated and unpromoted shop local note: this lovely new dryer came to us just 48 hours after the last one burned out from Atomic Appliance on Wickenden Street. If you're anywhere nearby and have need of a major appliance, shop there for better prices and service all around.