Providence Teachers Contract Ends August 31- What’s Next?
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Whether defended or despised, public school teacher contracts are critical documents that set out what we expect from our teachers and what they can expect from us as their employers. Yet, the public and its elected representatives have almost no information about or influence over [...]

21
Aug
Courtesy Paul Cuffee School
Double Jeopardy: Summer Vacation Compounds Covid Learning Loss
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In their New York Times op-ed piece on learning loss during the pandemic, the authors conclude their analysis of the research with a call to justice: “If we fail to replace what our children lost, we — not the coronavirus — will be responsible for [...]

07
Aug
Asa Messer, 1869, by John Sullivan Lincoln, copied from an ivory miniature, Brown Portrait Collection
Education for Everybody: Why They Named a School After Asa Messer
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Asa Messer’s name has been attached to two Providence school buildings.  Few people today would know the reasons: he was active in Providence for almost half a century, two hundred years ago, an educator inspired by the open mind of Providence founder Roger Williams. He [...]

10
Jul
Drawing by Niah Rivera
Teens and Sex [Education]
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The Met High School (Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center), located in South Providence is not a “traditional” school; as a student at the Met I was able to engage in internships and research projects–to participate in real-life learning. I was particularly interested in healthcare [...]

03
Jul
RI KIDS Count Executive Director Paige Clausius-Parks explains school funding to parents and students at CCRI on May 11.
“Our education just isn’t important enough.” School Budget Measures the City’s Commitment to Children
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One after another, Providence Schools students and parents stepped up to the mic at the City Council on June 11 to demand that the city increase its appropriation to public schools by $20 million in the coming school year. Their passion and anger at the [...]

19
Jun
Nathan Bishop: “He Could Do More Work With Less Noise Than Any Man…”
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Searching “Nathan Bishop” to understand why Providence decided to name a school for him in the 1930s, one might find an Englishman who briefly played goal for soccer team Manchester United, or a Toronto-based singer-songwriter, but also the fascinating, modest, hard-working man after whom Nathan [...]

12
Jun
19th century classroom
Palaces for the People’s Children?  A Very Short History of Providence Public Schools  
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The Providence Eye is inaugurating a series on the origins of the names of Providence schools, primarily, but not exclusively, the public schools. Everyone knows who Martin Luther King Jr. was, and ditto for Roger Williams. But who was Nathan Bishop? Who was George J. [...]

21
May
Are Providence Schools Better Off After Five Years of State Management?
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On November 1, 2019, RI Department of Education (RIDE) used the authority granted in the 2006 Crowley Act, to take sole control over the Providence Public School Department (PPSD) and its 41 schools. Today, five eventful years later, can we say that our schools are [...]

08
May
Graphic courtesy of the Montana Office of Public Instruction
PPSD Cuts Language Classes Affecting Growing Multilingual Learner Population 
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According to the Providence Schools website, 40% of the district’s students are multilingual learners. This means that almost half of the district’s students speak a language other than English as their first language.  According to Debra Jared in the Oxford Handbook of Reading (Oxford University [...]

24
Apr
Lawsuit filed against PVD Public Schools and RIDE to protect multilingual learners from 360 High School closing
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“This school is very special for our family and it is worth fighting for,” said Maria Pirir, the mother of a 360 High School student. “I am standing up for the children.” From a Rhode Island Center for Justice press release: A lawsuit has been [...]

24
Apr