Open Letter: Providence Needs an Education Mayor - Sasse

Open Letter: Providence Needs an Education Mayor - Sasse

“JOB ONE” for Providence’s next mayor is to work with the State to return governance of the City’s schools back to Providence parents and residents. During the campaign, it is incumbent that each of the mayoral candidates disclose their plan to provide for local accountability and management of Providence schools.

In 2020, when the State took over the care, control, and management of the Providence school system, it established student learning goals to measure student progress. In part due to COVID-19 learning disruptions, Providence’s school turnaround plan needs to update its benchmarks. In response, the Education Commissioner has recommended resetting student achievement targets and extending the state’s control over Providence schools through the 2026-27 school year.

Extending State control for two years may be appropriate only if it is linked to fixing the flaws in the initial turnaround plan, while also including a pathway back to local control.

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Assigning operational responsibility for Providence schools to a State Commissioner of Education facing a daunting statewide challenges system was problematic from the inception for several reasons. As James Kadamus, a former Deputy Commissioner of Education in New York state, opined in 2019, “The Commissioner has the power to put strategies in place without getting embroiled in a full state takeover.”

The takeover plan was poorly designed because it did not afford the Commissioner with the built-in political cover needed to make and sustain tough decisions. That type of support for local administrators is usually received from school committees, and for chief state school officers, it comes from knowledgeable state boards. One example of this was the negotiation of the collective bargaining agreement with the district’s teachers.

One of the unspoken justifications for the State’s takeover of the Providence schools was that the State could be more effective in negotiating an agreement with the teachers’ union over issues such as teacher assignments, hiring, and professional development. Everyone realized that negotiating a teacher’s contract would be difficult, but the takeover plan may have made it more so. In the end, the Governor intervened in the negotiations, and some have suggested that the collective bargaining agreement probably did not vary much from what the City could have negotiated without the State takeover. 

In the final two years of state control, changes should be made in the governance of Providence’s schools.

The Governor should be given the authority to name a State Board of Overseers to run the Providence school system until the end of school year 2026-27. This Board should be composed of a diverse group of educators and community leaders with experience in pedagogy, community engagement, finances, and school administration. This temporary governing board should have the powers of a local educational authority including the hiring of the superintendent and other school administrators.

In addition, this Board should be required to develop and implement a plan to transfer authority for Providence schools back to Providence’s elected officials and the people of the capital city no later than July of 2027.

The Commissioner should be responsible to support the Board of Overseers with policies and resources to succeed, and most critically hold them accountable for results by monitoring performance metrics and reporting the results to the public.

The mayoral candidates have a responsibility to suggest a pathway for the city to once again be responsible for the performance, care, control, and management of the Providence education system.

 

Gary Sasse is the Founding Director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University