Blackstone Valley

02:07 AM EDT on Friday, June 10, 2005

By CYNTHIA NEEDHAM
Journal Staff Writer

Fifth in a five-part series

At a table off to the side in the Woonsocket Middle School cafeteria, Anthony D'Acchioli sits alone, eating a foot-long hot dog, drinking a carton of coffee milk.

Students wander by and nod hello, but none screws up the courage to sit with him.

"That's OK, I sit until they come find me," he says, unfazed. "We'll see who's brave enough."

And so he lunches alone, slurping his coffee milk in silence, waiting for the teachers and students in the room to find their way to him.

And they do.

It takes 10 minutes or so, but one by one they come and fill in the seats around him, putting D'Acchioli just where he likes to be -- at the center of attention.

School Supt. Anthony D'Acchioli took the reins of the Woonsocket school system in 1996, coming from the same job in Webster, Mass. It was a time when demographics in the district were changing. The city's Hispanic population nearly doubled and student mobility was an increasing problem.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

Woonsocket School Supt. Anthony D'Acchioli catches lunch in the cafeteria of the Woonsocket Middle School recently.

D'Acchioli knows all the statistics. He quotes them constantly, usually when he's pressed to explain academic achievement problems at the middle school.

By most accounts, he is a love 'em or hate 'em kind of guy with a reputation for rewarding his supporters and embittering his dissenters.

He is also the middle school's biggest defender.

In the past, when interviewed, he praised the middle school, saying it provides a education superior to other middle schools around the state.

Most problems, he insisted, were sensationalized, overzealous reports by the media.

In recent weeks, The Journal asked again: Does he still believe New England's largest middle school is also its best?

"I think it can be, with some work," he said.

That's why he's made a habit of driving his Mercedes sedan to the cavernous school once or twice a week, "just to check in and see how things are going."

He knows the district could use a new middle school, but he hasn't made it a priority. Early on in his administration, he focused on building new elementary schools and implementing block scheduling at the high school.

A new middle school is not now and has never been at the top of his list.

"Park-like settings and athletic fields and state-of-the-art equipment are great, but the reality is, you just want students to have the opportunity to excel and you can do that without all the glitzy stuff," he says. "I'm saying that as a kid who always had to make do and never let it slow me down."

Two weeks ago, D'Acchioli announced plans to retire in 2007, the year he turns 60. There will be no new middle school by then and D'Acchioli expresses little regret. That challenge, he says, belongs to his successor.

D'ACCHIOLI FINISHES his hot dog and guides a reporter to a computer lab nearby. A self-professed "techno geek," he feels at home in computer classrooms, raving about the latest technology.

In this particular room, seventh graders are laughing and yelling, 20 minutes into the period. There is no teacher in sight.

D'Acchioli chatters on about computers, hardly noticing the chaos, until a reporter asks, "Where's the teacher?"

The superintendent decides to find out. In the teacher's absence, the students -- who are supposed to be working on a project about drug rehabilitation for health class -- are taking a bit of artistic license.

They search Web sites with headlines that include "A Guide to Making Really Great Pot Brownies!" and "Manufacturing Cocaine." One girl is examining a site which explains how to properly insert a heroin needle.

When the superintendent returns and is told which Web sites the students are checking, he gets mad.

"See, this is what happens when you have classroom teachers that call in sick all the time," he says. "This is what you get."

D'Acchioli does nothing to steer the students away from the Web sites, instead rattling off faculty absentee rates.

When a substitute finally arrives, D'Acchioli complains about her tardiness. Only this sub is not exactly a sub -- she's social studies teacher Natalie Brennan, who's been called out of her daily teacher preparation period to pinch hit.

She'll be paid for covering the class, but she'll lose out on planning time.

"They went through a list and saw I had a free period," Brennan says, failing to mask her displeasure.

D'Acchioli just shrugs. "There's just nothing I can do about it," he says, his tone curt.

Fifteen minutes later, neither the teacher nor D'Acchioli has redirected the students from the inappropriate sites.

AS SUPERINTENDENT of a large school district in an economically-challenged city, D'Acchioli has a tough job. And, the state Department of Education is watching his performance closely. Student achievement has been so low, with no signs of improvement, for three years, a condition that has forced the state to designate it "in need of progressive support and intervention."

D'Acchioli knows state education officials are paying particular attention to what's going on at the middle school and what he's doing to fix it.

Still, reform costs money, which is hard to come by in a district that already depends on the state for more than 70 percent of its $61-million budget.

So the superintendent is looking at the $3.3 million in federal Title I money, which the School Department has used effectively to shore up academics and parent involvement in its elementary schools.

For many years, D'Acchioli defended the decision to concentrate that money at the elementary level, where it is widely believed to do the most good, catching problems at an early age.

Now, he's thinking about a switch.

"We are studying what it would do to our programs at the elementary schools," D'Acchioli says. "After having some conversations with the people from the Department of Education . . . we're considering it."

At a School Committee meeting this week, in answer to a parent's question, he indicated that he was leaning against it.

D'Acchioli says the key to any reform is strong leadership, something he thinks he has in the current principal. For too long, the middle school lacked leadership, he says.

Both Patrick McGee and Henry Hatcher, the two prior principals, let the faculty run the school, writing positive teacher evaluations and ignoring academic problems, the superintendent says.

As a result, the faculty got used to ruling the school untethered. Now they're feeling shell-shocked by a principal determined to exercise control over the building, he says.

"We have some really outstanding teachers [at the middle school], but we have some teachers who have been empowered in the wrong way," D'Acchioli says. "I think some School Committee members and the union have allowed them to think they can dictate who their administration is."

Faculty members, for their part, insist that McGee boosted morale and made them feel supported in a way that neither D'Acchioli nor the current principal, Donna Valentine, ever has.

D'Acchioli rolls his eyes at those comments, fiercely defending Valentine's leadership.

IN SOME SCHOOL districts, when problems are so severe that a school is described as having a "toxic" environment, the School Committee steps in.

However, in Woonsocket, School Committee members cannot put aside their own hostilities. Committee members are well aware of the school's woes, but they use them as fodder for their own blame game.

Chairman Marc A. Dubois, who has made no secret of his disdain for Anthony D'Acchioli, said several weeks ago that he'd been asking for a joint "clear the air" meeting between the superintendent, the middle school faculty and the School Committee since winter. According to Dubois, D'Acchioli never scheduled it.

"I'm sure you've heard his nickname by now, 'Teflon Tony.' He's always coming up with excuses and skirting the answers," Dubois says.

Longtime committee member John F. Ward says it's Dubois who is making excuses about the middle school. There's no need to wait for the superintendent to schedule a meeting, Ward says.

Just this week, the meeting was finally set. On June 22, committee members will sit down in a closed-door session with union officials, a group of teachers and district administrators. The topic: getting the middle school the help it needs.

While state education officials say that kind of district-wide communication is a good sign, the real architects of change are those working most closely with the children.

"The people who hold the keys to fixing that school are right inside the building," says Todd Flaherty, the deputy education commissioner.

"There's work for everyone to do. The town has work and the School Department must figure out how they can support the middle school at an instructional level. But the real hard work is right in the school," Flaherty says. "It's got to be the teachers and the administrators working together."

D'Acchioli agrees that as principal, Donna Valentine "is going to need to work hard to win staff support."

The superintendent says he also has great hopes for the School Improvement Team. He speaks highly of Sandy Gasbarro, the team's chairwoman, and says she and her group are developing what looks to be a promising corrective action plan. It helps target students' academic and behavioral problems, while working to change the attitudes of adults in the building.

"Donna and her team are capable. They have a foundation to fix that school. I just hope she'll last long enough," he says with a laugh that's more nervous than light-hearted.

Staff writer Cynthia Needham can be reached at (401) 277-7374 or at cneedham [at] projo.com.