TRANSCRIPT:
Five years ago, the state took control of the Providence Public School District after a report from Johns Hopkins University showed poor academic performance and a toxic environment for staff and students. Has the district improved on those issues? Is it ready to take back its schools? The state plans to evaluate the district’s progress, according to a recent update by Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green, by commissioning a review by an education consultancy.
Infante-Green joined The Public’s Radio’s Luis Hernandez to discuss the school district’s progress and the way forward.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: I wanted to start by going back to that original report from Johns Hopkins. I’m just curious, what sort of toxicity did they find and how bad were the schools performing that it led to the state saying, “We’ve got to take control.”
Angelica Infante-Green: So the toxicity was physical, the plants of the school, the physical plants of the school buildings as well as the environment, right? So I think those are some of the things, and then the instructional environment, what was happening with instruction in the school buildings. So we have tried to address all of those things in the last five years.
When we took over, we made the decision in November, 2019, to hire a superintendent in February and then in March we were hit with the pandemic. While that was happening — while we were in a pandemic — we put out our report with the expectations that happened that summer of 2020 and we worked with the community to do that.
One of the things that was really hard for me to witness as I walked in and out of buildings was the conditions of the buildings. I went into schools where it was raining inside the classrooms, where they had buckets catching the rain, where teachers were saying to me, we can’t be in this room when it rains or it’s too cold, and they fixed a roof three times. They had this band aid approach to buildings and we no longer have that. We’ve actually closed down buildings that we felt we fixed the roof three times. We can’t continue to invest money. What we have now is state-of-the-art classrooms where you can actually open the accordion doors, which are all glass, and the kids can learn in the hallway just everywhere else. By 2030, every single student will be in a new or like-new school. So that’s one area.
The second piece that I think was really important is the professionalism. Our teachers had one professional development day, which is not what we have now. We’ve worked really hard with the union to make sure that we have more days for teachers to get prepared, and then we have a common curriculum. One of the things that was really prevalent in the report was that if you were in the same school and you were in a third-grade classroom, you might be getting a different education because one teacher was using one curriculum, another teacher was using another curriculum. Now we have a common curriculum K to 12 in our district so that everybody is learning aligned to the state standards. What’s interesting about that is that in Providence, there’s a very highly mobile population. By the time the kids are in fifth grade, they’ve moved schools three or four times. So it is really important for continuity. So those are some of the things that we have done to try to address those things.
Hernandez: So from the last report, there’s now going to be a review of the district to determine if it’s ready to take back those schools. Briefly, if you could, what will this review look like and when can we expect it? Will it be presented to the public, as well, so they could review it?
Infante-Green: What I’m calling this is sort of a temperature track. It’s like a dipstick. We have to remember that when we interceded, it wasn’t just about what was happening in the schools; it was about the local capacity. The schools in Providence had been flat-funded for many, many, many years. So the report is going to capture all those things. It’s the capacity, how much movement has been made in the district, how much progress. Do we still need to be here or longer? What is the capacity of the governing bodies locally? Can they take over? The report will be public. It will be presented to the K-12 council. People will be able to see it, and it is basically where we are. We’re going to make a decision whether we can pull back and whether it goes to local control and when that happens, because it’s not like flipping a light switch.
Hernandez: You’ve been watching all of this. You’ve been leading the way to try to improve things. You personally, are you convinced the district is even close to ready?
Infante-Green: There’s a lot of work to be done. We’re talking about over 30 years of non-compliance, neglect, not a structured system. I’m going to wait to see what the report says. Would I have liked to do more? Absolutely. This was a broken system. What we’ve tried to do is put an infrastructure in place and unfortunately the Johns Hopkins report was just the tip of the iceberg. When we went in there, we found layers and layers of things that needed and are still being addressed.
Hernandez: I’m not going to read between the lines of what you just said, but I’m still curious. You personally, how do you feel? Considering everything that you said that’s happened, is the district ready to take back control?
Infante-Green: I’m going to let the report speak for itself. I am always going to think that there’s more to be done. I think there’s more to be done in every district. We have high standards for every single district in our state. So I think there’s more work, more work that we could always do. Should it be us to do it? That’s another story.
Hernandez: We recently spoke with Rachel Greenberg. That’s the Providence school teacher of the year this past year. She teaches MLLs — multi-language learners — and we asked her about what the challenges are right now with this growing population of students where English is not their first language. Where is the state going to find these teachers and are there enough of them?
Infante-Green: So the answer is no. There aren’t enough of them. There weren’t enough of them prior to the growth. Part of what we’re doing is a lot of grow your own. A lot of people from the community, a lot of our teacher assistants are bilingual. So we have a pathway for them to become teachers. This is a need that we have, but we also can teach these students, even if you don’t speak the language, as long as you are making sure that you are using their home language. So I can teach a child that speaks French even though I don’t speak French, making sure that I understand how the language works, making sure that they have access to information in that home language. That is the best way to learn English; by using the child’s home language. We’ve done a lot of work in this area, in particular in the state and in Providence.
So as a state, we created the MLL blueprints, multilingual learner blueprints. We have an accompanying document that really shows you how to really work with these students. The population has doubled in our state. In Providence, we’re going to be almost at 50%, and that is unheard of. It is one of the largest numbers that you see in any urban district. So it is a population that we need to pay attention to, and we are going to be looking at our regulations to make sure that all the districts are providing as needed supports for these students. What we did have last year though, I will say, is that our students that have been MLLs that have tested out, outperformed all the other kids, which is amazing because it really speaks to the work that’s happening.
Hernandez: We talk about looking for language teachers, but the teacher shortage is a national problem. This is not unique to Rhode Island because you have to encourage people to want to go into the field. It’s not even just finding qualified teachers, but you have to encourage people to want to become teachers, and that’s becoming a challenge these days. It’s almost a field that a lot of people are turned off by. So what is it? Is it better pay? Is it better marketing of the job? What is it?
Infante-Green: I think it’s both things you said and more. We are now in a different place where people can work remotely. There are other opportunities. Some students in other fields graduate right away and they make a different type of money. Our teachers work really hard, but I will say that we knew this was going to happen. This was slowly happening throughout the years. One of the things that we have not done as a nation is invest in really marketing heavily our teaching profession. I will tell you, for anyone that’s listening, this is the most rewarding job. The moment you see those kids’ eyes sparkle when they get something for the first time, I can tell you, there is no greater reward. There just isn’t.
Hernandez: I want to push back just a little bit because this is what’s happening. Right now, there is a tension in this country — a political tension — and teachers and librarians are being attacked. So I mean, you could say it’s rewarding, but at the same time, part of the job is you’re going to be dealing with all of that as well.
Infante-Green: Yes. And you’re 100% correct. It’s become very political. Everybody has an opinion because people went to school. They think they know what needs to happen in schools, and teachers are at the forefront of this. People are pushing back. In our world, in education, we call “September Book-Banning Month,” right? This is when everybody comes out and wants a book banned. We’re lucky in Rhode Island that we don’t get as much of that. But the teachers are the experts, right? The educators are the experts, and it is controversial. Teaching has become controversial, which is very sad because it shouldn’t be. Getting a good education and learning about everything, everybody’s history, learning about finances; it’s really important because we’ve moved in Rhode Island, we’ve moved our secondary regs, our criteria for graduated from the classroom, and we’ve listened to students and teachers. These are things [that are] very important. These conversations that we’re asking teachers to have are not conversations that teachers should be put in that place. And not only that, we’re asking so much of teachers. We’re asking them to teach. We’re asking them to be social workers. We’re asking them to be guidance counselors. We’re putting so much on their plates that the job seems very overwhelming. But again, I don’t know any of our current teachers that, if you were to sit with them, would tell you that they don’t enjoy what they do because they do. They just wish it could be easier. And I think it is incumbent upon us as a society because it’s not just schools.
I’ll give you an example of something we did here in Rhode Island this year. Chronic absenteeism has been a problem nationwide for a long time, and with the pandemic, it has been exacerbated. It has always been on the shoulders of the schools of having to have an attendance team going out, knocking on the doors, getting the parents in. This year, we’ve made it an all out campaign making everybody responsible. We have a dashboard where it’s not just by school, but where kids live. That’s also the responsibility of pediatricians. It’s also the responsibility of elected officials. It is also the responsibility of if you go to church. People should be talking about how important this is. This cannot only fall on the schools. Everything falls on the shoulders of the schools.
Hernandez: I want to just briefly ask you if you could comment on this. Providence Superintendent Javier Montanez recently called out Mayor Brett Smiley on their budget saying that the city is underfunding schools. Again, the city’s come out with its budget. Is the superintendent, right? Is the city doing enough?
Infante-Green: I have to say that the district has been flat-funded for a very long time. We knew that when we were walking into this situation. What I want everyone to know is that the superintendent and myself, we have been very clear that we have never asked for that amount of money. We understand that the city can’t afford that amount of money, but the city’s budget has gone up 21%. We have not seen an increase in the school budget the way that we should be or that we would expect. It is the school system. It is the heart of every community. We hear now, “Oh, you’re asking for 20 million dollars.” We’ve never asked for that. With the last administration, we worked with them to have a fair amount that we both agreed was fair. We just have not been able to get to that place with this administration, which is very disappointing. I know that moving forward, they said that we’re going to put in $3 million, but I want to be clear that when those $3 million were projected to be in the budget, at the same time, the city took away energy credits from the district, which is about a million or so dollars. So now we’re not talking about $3 million. You took away credits that the district has always had.
I want everyone to understand that the money that goes to the district is for all schools. It goes to our charter schools. It goes everywhere. So everybody’s being flat-funded. Inflation. We all know that what used to cost $10 six years ago doesn’t cost $10 today. It costs $12. If you’re giving the district the same amount of money, and I say again because people may say, “Well, there are less kids.” They’re still in the city of Providence. That money goes to our traditional district as well as our charters. You cannot give the district the same amount of money. So is the superintendent correct? Absolutely. Did we see any additional dollars come to the district in this last school year? No. And it’s very unfortunate because there is what is required and then what we should be doing to support the students and the schools to move forward, and that has not happened.
Hernandez: Commissioner, I’ll give you the last word. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Infante-Green: Well, if you’re thinking of teaching, don’t listen to anyone. Come into our profession because you’re never going to feel as fulfilled as you would in this profession and get ready. We are becoming a bilingual state. That’s exciting for all of us as a state. So our school systems are getting better every single day thanks to everybody that’s doing the hard work.
Hernandez: Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much for the time today.
Infante-Green: Thank you.
