PROVIDENCE — More than 30 leaders from public and higher education, the local schools, the religious community and City Hall met yesterday to discuss ways in which the community can help the school district transform everything from the curriculum to the central office.

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, along with Supt. Tom Brady and Mayor David N. Cicilline, convened the Providence Partners Blue Ribbon Task Force to do the following:

•Identify the most critical issues facing the district.

•Invite local organizations to share their expertise.

•Outline specific ways that the district can work more effectively with local partners.

•Begin matching community expertise with district goals.

Warren Simmons, Annenberg’s executive director, said that community partners were there to begin a conversation about how they can partner with the school district more effectively.

“We’re not here to cast blame and point fingers,” Simmons said. “We’ve had a succession of individual saviors. They stay an average of three years, and then they leave. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Do we own the problem?’ Are we going to invest in this leadership and solve the problem?”

It’s time for community leaders to focus on improving the entire district, not “scattering our attention on our favorite schools,” Simmons said.

The institute also released its synthesis of 11 previous studies on the school system, including the PDK curriculum audit, the Council of Great City Schools human resources’ report and separate evaluations of the district’s reading, math and English as a Second Language programs. The so-called “meta-review” is designed to help the district build a broad set of civic, business and community partnerships that will ultimately lead to school reform.

The institute conducted the evaluation at no cost at the request of Brady.

Given the state’s fiscal crisis, Brady said that it is unrealistic to expect the city or state to bail out the district’s struggling schools, which suffer from a lack of resources, a lack of central office staff and a lack of technology.

“The pie is only so big,” Brady told the crowd. “I can make a plea to the city or the state for a larger piece of the pie, but that’s not going to work, or I can expand the pie. We want to ask, ‘What can you contribute as organizations?’ ”

Brady provided some context for what the district is doing to address major shortcomings, from creating a systemwide math and science curriculum to making the student registration center more user-friendly.

He also shared some important demographic information: The district is the third-poorest in the country, after Hartford and Brownsville, Texas. Nearly 60 percent of the 24,000 students are Latino but that population is not monolithic. There are second-generation families from the Dominican Republic and newcomers from Honduras, and each population has very different needs.

He also told the assembled leaders that the district is “very, very close” to signing what he called a “next-step” contract with Providence Teachers Union. In earlier conversations, Brady signaled that the district would probably sign a short-term contract and then negotiate a longer agreement to deal with meatier issues.

“We’re in the mindset that school starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m.,” Brady said. “We need to think of that child from dawn until dusk, maybe later.”

The entire community, he said, needs to think seriously about pre-kindergarten, an area that some states are tackling because research has shown that an academically challenging early childhood program gives children a leg up when they enter public school.

Brady then asked the room to break into small groups to discuss the following questions: What can we do to be a better partner? Who else do we need to reach? And what concrete things can you do to help the district reach its goals?

“Every leader has a theory of change management,” Brady said. “We need to change the system, but we’re not going to blow it up. But we do have a sense of urgency.”

In the small-group meetings, community leaders discussed how local organizations can increase the size and quality of the central office staff, boost the district’s use of technology and create a core curriculum across subjects.

At one table, Chief Academic Officer Sharon Contreras described some of the challenges facing high school teachers. The faculty has agreed that algebra II and pre-physics need to be taught at every high school; however, many of the staff lack training in the subjects. How does the district support those teachers?

At another table, Cicilline and Peter McWalters, the state commissioner of public education, discussed how to evaluate teachers and how to grow a cadre of strong leaders from within the district. The conversation included Nancy Carriuolo, the new president of Rhode Island College, Larry Roberti, president of the administrators union and other top school officials.

The blue ribbon panel also includes Dennis Langley, director of the Urban League of Rhode Island; the Rev. Donald C. Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches; Terri Adelman, director of Volunteers in Providence Schools; Paul Sproll from the Rhode Island School of Design; Mary Sylvia Harrison with the Nellie Mae Education Foundation; Providence School Board President Mary McClure and the leaders of Young Voices, a student advocacy organization.

The task force will meet again in January.

lborg@projo.com