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3.12.2002 08:31
Schools rapped for slow progress, hiring practices
• Schools Supt. Diana Lam responds to her critics by telling them that it only takes "a few seconds and a match to destroy a house, but much longer to build one."
PROVIDENCE
-- At times last night, it seemed as if the regular biweekly School Board meeting did nothing but highlight the divisions among various segments of the school community.
At other times, it served as a call for everyone involved to take collective responsibility for the education of the city's schoolchildren.
First, a presentation on the district's aspiring principals' program prompted Beatrice Wiggins, president of the Rhode Island Association of Concerned Black Educators, to renew her criticism of the hiring practices of Schools Supt. Diana Lam.
Then a proposal to refocus a new high school curriculum from international studies to Latin American studies prompted criticism that it would be too narrow, while ignoring factors such as the African influence on the development of the New World.
The critics replied to Lam's public statements last week in which she wondered aloud whether some people have set her up to fail by demanding a quick turnaround on problems that have been two decades in the making.
One speaker, Juan Pichardo, chided Lam's opponents in return.
"Rhetoric is an easily affordable commodity that is employed to rile parents and the community" but does nothing to improve the schools, he said.
Rather than dealing with issues such as the dropout rate, which has been rising for years, "we are focused on taking shots at those who are working to turn around this system once and for all," Pichardo said.
Lam, meanwhile, remarked that it takes only "a few seconds and a match to destroy a house, but much longer to build one."
She said she wants to take responsibility for what happens in the school district, but improvements can't happen overnight, or when the administration is continually diverted from the education of children to deal with other issues.
Last Wednesday, ousted School Board President Gertrude Blakey and leaders of several black organizations blamed Lam for failing to address the ills of the school district over the last two years.
That night, some of the same people disrupted a public forum for two School Board candidates who Mayor Vincent A. Cianci nominated to replace Blakey and Juan Lopez, whom he also passed over for reappointment.
Last night, Wiggins said "this issue is not about whites or Hispanics getting jobs.
"The issue is unfair methods and techniques used by the present administration in hiring and appointing people," she said.
Although Wiggins said the concept of an aspiring principals' program is a good one, she singled out the selection of Victor Capellan, one of 23 school employees enrolled in the program, because he does not meet the teaching requirements in the job posting.
Capellan runs the district's student registration center. Unlike other aspiring principals whose tuition in graduate courses is paid by the school district, Capellan is paying for his own courses, according to the administration.
But Wiggins questioned whether Capellan also was paying for his own substitute at the registration center while he got on-the-job experience at the elbow of a school principal.
Meanwhile, a presentation by Deputy Supt. Melody A. Johnson on the international high school, or Providence Academy of International Studies, apparently didn't sit well with board member Roosevelt Benton.
Acknowledging a difference of opinion on the curriculum, Johnson said she believed that focusing on Latin American studies would allow the school to ensure depth in course work and enable the school to capitalize on the strengths of the community.
Benton made much of the fact that Johnson's presentation didn't match a written overview of a curriculum of international studies, even after Johnson pointed out that the latter was the original concept. It was passed out last night to offer School Board members a frame of reference for the proposed revision.
Benton then asked why the proposed revision didn't come from a design team of teachers.
"We don't have a design team," she said. "There were only two applicants." Later, she said she believed the applications went begging because of the work-to-rule stance teachers have taken since they first rejected a contract last October.
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