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.

Calling all Families and Educators! Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools, March 19, 9:30am

On Saturday, March 19 (this coming Saturday!) from 9:30am-noon, please take a couple of hours to join parents, family members, young people, educators, and concerned citizens across Providence to participate in a Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools.

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.

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.