11:43 AM EST on Thursday, December 16, 2004

BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- A portrait of Hope High School emerged last night as a place where some teachers work heroically on a daily basis to make a difference in students' lives while others reveal in pejorative remarks that they do not care about their charges.

While a city councilman and a coalition of community organizations called on education commissioner Peter McWalters to take over Hope, contrasting images of the school led several speakers to identify an element critical to the success of the school no matter who runs it.

They said a mechanism is needed to usher out teachers who are not up to the work that needs to be done.

Melcris Francisco, a Hope junior, said it is difficult for students to be motivated to learn if teachers show they are not motivated to teach.

She said she doesn't need a "teacher who sits there and gives out papers and that's it."

Tiffanie Mitchell, a Hope graduate, spoke of a teacher who told her publicly that she would never amount to anything.

But Melcris also said her grasp of math has improved in the class of a good teacher -- one of several good teachers she has this year. She said it should be easy for good teachers to keep their jobs at Hope.

Last night's testimony on the campus of the MET Center marked the fourth session of a show-cause hearing McWalters will use to determine by Jan. 31 whether to take over the school.

McWalters told an audience of more than 100 people that he was looking for information to help him determine the viability of a plan submitted by the School Department that asks for an additional 2 1/2 years to make improvements at Hope.

McWalters has said he wants Hope to become a cluster of small, independent schools offering high-quality instruction, linking each student with an adult adviser and actively involving parents and other members of the community.

The plan, submitted by a joint administration-teachers' union committee, promises extensive teacher training, an advisory period once a week, and mechanisms for parent involvement.

The plan, explored in three days of testimony last week, gives teachers the prerogative to opt out of Hope if they do not feel they can sign a statement of commitment to the extra effort associated with school reform. But it does not contain a mechanism to ensure that bad teachers leave Hope.

Meanwhile, a child psychiatrist who has worked at Hope in connection with a wellness initiative warned that turmoil at the school has raised stress among students to levels he is accustomed to seeing in the emergency rooms at Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital.

Dr. Anthony Spirito said the situation has exacerbated the conditions of youngsters who already have mental-health problems and has caused some normally developing students to exhibit levels of anxiety that warrant professional treatment.

Spirito urged McWalters to take the mental-health needs of the students into account no matter what he decides in shaping educational remedies for the school.

Mary Sylvia Harrison, executive director of the Rhode Island Children's Crusade, said that the last four years of failed attempts to turn around the school have taken "too long already" and that the students at Hope would be better served if McWalters started from scratch.

Harrison spoke not only for the Children's Crusade but for nearly a dozen other organizations that, taken together, represent a broad consensus of opinion among community agencies in the city that serve children and adolescents.

FRANCISCO, who edits the high school newspaper, said that last school year she wrote an editorial on how Hope was changing for the better, and "now our school is upside down."

"The schedules are messed up, the principal is gone, I am concerned about after-school activities, I don't want my teachers to go away," she said. Melcris alluded to repeated schedule changes, with some students now having to make up nearly a quarter of a full year's work in classes they missed through no fault of their own.

She also referred to the departure of Principal Nancy Mullen, who was not invited to return after two years of working as a change agent -- a situation that left three hard-working but inexperienced administrators trying to run fledgling small schools without overall coordination.

Melcris said she loves the plan submitted by the joint union-management committee, but she also wants to see teachers "reinterviewed" if they want to stay at Hope -- a feature that would be part of McWalters' intervention.

She said that if McWalters surveyed the students, he could quickly figure out who the good teachers are, a sentiment echoed by other students who spoke.

Meanwhile, Councilman Kevin Jackson said that the students at Hope High "can't wait another two and a half years" for change while the School Department continues trying to fix Hope.

One teacher, Valerie Kline, a veteran of 13 years at Hope, held back tears as she said committed teachers at Hope "need to have the opportunity to demonstrate they educate from the heart and educate with their heads."

She and another teacher, Ellen House, both said they will be there for their students no matter what happens.

The final session of the hearing is scheduled for today at 1:30 p.m. at the state Department of Education, in Room 501 of the Shepard Building downtown.