Evans

PROVIDENCE — The City Council backed off its call for School Supt. Donnie Evans’ resignation last night, with members of the majority abandoning the resolution they sponsored after a day of hard lobbying against the measure by the Mayor David N. Cicilline and the School Committee chairwoman.

Two of the councilmen who sponsored the resolution calling for Evans to step down, Nicholas Narducci and Terrence M. Hassett, abandoned the bill last night, postponing action on it indefinitely instead of bringing it to a vote.

The remaining sponsors tried to force a vote, but were shot down.

The council still had strong words for Evans, who many council members said should be replaced.

“I’m hoping that the mayor and the School Board recognize the incompetence of this man,” Narducci said, despite pulling the resolution.

Evans’ contract is up in June, but he must be notified by Feb. 19 whether he will be offered a renewal.

The resolution would have had no binding effect, but would have strongly signaled the council’s feelings on renewal of Evans’ contract. He has been repeatedly excoriated by council members for his actions during the Dec. 13 snowstorm, when Providence school children were stranded on school buses well into the night.

Narducci, and Hassett, both members of the all-Democratic council’s majority faction, joined with minority members Luis Aponte, Kevin Jackson and John J. Lombardi to sponsor the resolution.

But Hassett said yesterday that he had long conversations with the mayor and with Mary McClure, the School Board chairwoman, and that they were both concerned that no hasty reactions be made to the snowstorm, and that Evans be judged on all of his work. That was part of what led Hassett to pull back support from his own resolution, he said.

Cicilline “was very concerned about the stability of the School Department. He was concerned with not upsetting that right now,” Hassett said.

He said McClure prevailed on him to allow some of the emotions that have been stirred by the snowstorm to settle and allow the School Committee to assess Evans over the next month without pressure from the council — particularly in light of the difficulty of finding a new superintendent immediately.

“She and I talked about giving some room to the School Board to evaluate the superintendent. Perhaps a cooling-off period would help,” Hassett said.

Narducci said that he also spoke with McClure, but that his actions were more influenced by the council leadership — particularly Hassett.

“Maybe I listened to leadership a little bit,” Narducci said.

The two pushed for the resolution to be postponed indefinitely, but Lombardi, Aponte, Jackson, Balbina Young and Miguel Luna fought for an immediate vote. They were shot down.

“Are you putting a prophylactic on the 13th Ward again, is that what’s going on?” shouted Lombardi, the Ward 13 councilman, when his efforts to bring a vote were denied.

Afterwards, Lombardi directed his criticism at Cicilline, saying that he must have pushed hard to get council members to pull back on this measure.

“What remains to be seen are what little nuggets or chestnuts were handed out, because things certainly changed a lot in 12 hours. I think this just proves that this administration is as political as any other.”

Jackson said that it’s not just the snowstorm that sparked council members’ discontent with Evans; an increase in special education class sizes, a lack of communication in the closings of the Nathan Bishop and West Broadway schools and continuing poor test scores led council members to call for change.

McClure said the School Committee will decide on Evans’ job status by next month, and that they are already in discussions.

“We have been evaluating him regularly. We will make a decision based on our evaluation,” she said.

Evans released a statement yesterday in response to the council’s action.

“It is my intention to continue to serve the children of Providence as superintendent of Providence Schools. I stand by my commitment and my responsibility to this community, and so I remain focused on the district’s primary goal of accelerating student achievement,” Evans said.

Hassett and Narducci said the resolution can be revived if they feel the School Committee does not take appropriate action on Evans.

The Evans issue wasn’t the only snowstorm fallout heard by the council last night.

The council also voted to press Cicilline to name a public safety commissioner. Cicilline currently does the job himself, but several council members said the snowstorm showed why that system is unworkable. A full-time director is needed to coordinate the actions of the public safety chiefs and city leaders.

Aponte said that the public outrage that followed shows that action needs to be taken — not just firing people, but building a better response in the future by naming a new director.

“The biggest casualty of Dec. 13, 2007, was the public’s trust in government,” Aponte said. “It would be irresponsible of us not to understand that message and to respond accordingly and respond quickly.”

“It’s important that there is someone who is in city government at all times who would be accountable,” agreed Councilman John J. Igliozzi.

The council voted for the resolution 13 to 2, with Jackson and Luna voting against it, saying that the job was unnecessary and would likely be filled with a political appointee.

Cicilline has said that he is mulling combining the public safety commissioner’s position with the Emergency Management Agency directorship to save money.

There were actually two resolutions filed calling for a public safety commissioner — but because of the often fractious nature of the council, they were not consolidated. Instead, the majority-sponsored resolution was approved first and the minority-sponsored resolution was approved.

Young, a member of the minority, said the internal squabbles make the entire council look bad.

“We need to stop playing games here. This is pathetic that we have identical resolutions. It kind of makes us look foolish,” she said.

The council also voted to send to committee two Lombardi resolutions calling for further review. One resolution called for an independent outside investigation of the city’s snow response and the second for a full report by the Public Works Department of how the city operates its trucks during a storm, including how many are deployed by ward and how many are owned by the city and by subcontractors.

dbarbari@projo.com