Brown University President Ruth Simmons meets Kayla Billings and other Vartan Gregorian Elementary School students before Simmons announced a major donation to the city’s public schools.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Brown University has given 12,000 graphing calculators to the city’s middle and high school students, the first part of the university’s commitment to pour millions of dollars into the Providence public schools.

In 2003, Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons commissioned a report to explore the connections between the slave trade in Rhode Island and the college’s early benefactors. The Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice was born from that investigation. At the time, Simmons said the report’s findings were a reminder that moral acts can have immense social and economic consequences.

Two years later, Brown announced a series of steps designed to take the lessons of slavery and move beyond them for the greater good. The plan calls for creating a slave memorial and a center for continuing research on slavery and justice and expanding opportunities at Brown for people hurt by the legacies of slavery and the slave trade.

In perhaps its most dramatic recommendation, Brown pledged to create a permanent $10-million endowment to establish the Fund for the Education of the Children of Providence. The fund’s goal is to narrow the achievement gaps between the haves and the have-nots in the city’s public schools.

The calculators, which cost a total of $118,000, represent the first step toward fulfilling the university’s pledge to improve public education in the city’s schools. So far, the university has raised $1.5 million in private donations, many from former students, who, Brown officials said, want to repay the generosity of their host city.

Separate $10,000 grants will also be made to Vartan Gregorian Elementary School, Roger Williams Middle School and Hope High School and those monies will be used to support innovative teaching projects at the classroom level.

Simmons outlined the university’s actions in a news conference Tuesday at the Gregorian School, in Fox Point.

“It’s very important for us to be concerned about every single child in every single school,” she said. “Unless every child has access [to a high-quality education], we become corrupt as a society.”

Simmons said that Supt. Tom Brady suggested the graphing calculators because they fit nicely with new math and science curricula that will be introduced this fall.

Graphing calculators have become a staple of high school math and science classes. The handheld devices are capable of plotting graphs, solving simultaneous equations and performing numerous tasks with variables.

Two years ago, Simmons made a personal donation of $25,000 to help buy graphing calculators for the entire freshman class at Hope High School. At the time, she said that she wanted to make sure that her contribution was in line with Brown’s commitment to public education.

During her speech Tuesday, Simmons also tossed out an unorthodox and completely unscripted suggestion:

“At Brown, Ph.D. students have to teach college,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be great if they taught in public schools? We say, ‘We are the elite. We are professors.’ Well, that doesn’t serve us well. We have to get universities back into every level of education.”

Simmons also chided Mayor David N. Cicilline for his proposal to tax college students $300 per year to help defray the cost of playing host to nonprofit institutions, which don’t pay property taxes. Then she joked, “This is not a political statement.”

Cicilline did not attend the event, which drew Artemis A.W. Joukowsky, Brown’s chancellor emeritus, members of the Brown steering committee, Superintendent Brady and other top school officials.

Brady underscored how much help the schools need by pointing out that Providence is the third-poorest school district in the country. Although the district has made steady progress, especially at the elementary level, he said, the schools have a long way to go.

“This marks a milestone,” Brady said, “and the beginning of an even greater partnership between our schools and one of the greatest universities in the country.”

lborg@projo.com