WRNI features dual perspectives on PPSD school closing timeline + our commitment to neighborhood schools

WRNI's Elizabeth Harrison has (separately) interviewed Mayor Taveras and Matt Gabor and Michael Udris from the West Side Public Education Coalition. Both are worth a listen to deepen understanding about the arguments about whether, how, and when to close public schools in Providence.

Gabor and Udris' argue that the proposed school closings will leave the West Side with no middle school. The same is true for Windmill Street Elementary School; its closing leaves the Charles Street area/the northern part of Providence with no elementary option. That the West Side's Bridgham Middle School and Windmill (not to single them out - the rest of this sentence applies many or most other PPSD schools) have ample room for improvement is obvious, and they will be able to build on their respective recent successes and recently galvanized neighborhood energy to continue to do so. However, to say that there should be no elementary or middle school options at all in various neighborhoods is ludicrous, as is suggesting that mileage alone determines that a school is a "neighborhood" option.

This is particularly true given Providence's actual policies and current rhetorical focus on neighborhood schools. We need neighborhood task forces to bring local understanding to bear on what is reasonably walkable. Our children cannot cross highways, walk through dangerous streets with poorly understood potential for gang-related violence, or be forced to negotiate dangerous intersections. And winter isn't yet a distant memory; just a few weeks ago, we were all picking our way through unshoveled sidewalks, icy intersection, and poorly plowed streets.We may well want walkable, neighborhood schools but even from a infrastructure-only point of view, we're not yet ready for them.

Had Nathan Bishop have remained closed in 2007, the greater East Side would not have had a middle school option. At that time, that seems inequitable and unfair, and that spurred me into action as an involved parent. I started attending ESPEC meetings, witnessed and assisted the process of working through the politics of reopening the school, and along with other parents, eventually joined PPSD's Nathan Bishop Task Force as a parent/involved citizen to collaborate with the city to plan Bishop's reopening.

Many speakers at last night's School Board meeting acknowledged that we may well need to close schools and make significant changes but that doing so now, with such haste and so many remaining known unknowns, would be wrong. Those changes, many of them said, should be done with significant, substantial input from neighborhood residents within a more reasonable timeframe to allow us to create a more workable plan. 

Though I acknowledge the financial pressures that are compelling the school closings and reduction in teacher force that will result, I too want to find a way to do so with clearer answers and more adequate preparation. Along with many others, I am eager to seize our collective energy and assets to identify and implement community-based, locally-driven ways not only to save existing schools when reasonable to do so but also to improve teaching and learning all of our schools and the system itself.

Report from Windmill Street Elementary School Board Hearing, March 30

Here's a brief report from the Providence School Board hearing on Windmill Street Elementary that took place at Windmill on March 30.

The Windmill school community used their advocacy skills tested by last year's PPSD proposal to close the school, which obviously ended in a decision to keep the school open. Lots of signs and poster, lots of families with kids and babies, 75+ students, teachers, parents making their cases to save their school. The hearing was heavy on emotion; lots of tears and desperation among speakers and audience members. It was crushingly sad to see so many kids, parents, and teachers so proud of and attached to their school say over and over and over and over that they wanted it to remain as an anchor of their community.

I don't know why Windmill is targeted for closure. Facility issues, it seems, rather than performance issues, as indicators of achievement have risen steadily over the past few years. Certainly not because other nearby schools can take up the slack. There are no other nearby elementary schools. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School and Veazie Street Elementary School are the nearest locations. Both are across major highways (King is across 95 and is a schlep to get to; Veazie Street is across 146 and not very nearby either) and fairly full themselves (I think that's the case for Veazie Street; it certainly is the case for King).

There was not enough meaningful commentary about the claim made by PPSD that many folks in the neighborhood don't use Windmill, one of the arguments for closing the school. Here in PDF form is the information that the district shared to back up that assertion. A few Windmill speakers described the experience of being dissuaded or even prevent by PPSD registration from enrolling their kids at Windmill, claims that aren't difficult to believe, so what the real story is about neighborhood demand for Windmill seats, I can't say. Right now, it doesn't seem that the neighborhood is hitting the levels of organization that's happening on the West Side via WSPEC. I wish I--or someone--had the capacity to spend time in the North End better understanding the situation. Clearly, this is a beloved school, an anchor of its community, and it feels wrong to remove the only option for a neighborhood school in that part of town.