Op-Ed: Show Them Who’s Boss

We supported Brett Smiley for mayor – and we still do. We would have liked to have seen a new culture with new blood in senior management rather than holdovers from an administration that we couldn’t get rid of fast enough. 

The most recent fiscal crisis is not really a surprise. The city lost a court case over how much city taxpayer money must be paid into the school system each year under the current state takeover and must pay millions more to the Providence Public School District (PPSD). This will cost taxpayers as it is likely to cause a tax increase of around 4 percent. This tax increase could be worse based on the story that we wrote a few months ago about the commercial properties in the city that have seen values fall in excess of 25 percent.

The mayor was originally going to seek authority from the General Assembly for a midyear supplemental tax increase but has backed off from that position. It should also be noted that the majority of the General Assembly has not been inclined to disproportionally support Providence. For perspective, the school department’s budget accounts for 51.55 percent of the city’s $744,965,176 annual budget. That translates into $17,697 per student, which seems to be an embarrassingly poor return based on just about any metric you look at.

Sadly, this isn’t breaking news. Providence schools have, with a few notable exceptions (Classical, a few elementary schools, and the old magnet schools), been consistently rated poor to underperforming. Here’s a quick recap since the first major attempt to turn things around.

In 1993, an independent, community-wide assessment of the PPSD produced a comprehensive report about the condition of the schools: the Providence Blueprint for Education. The report’s blue-ribbon commission included many prominent Rhode Island business leaders, including Cookson president and future Governor Don Carcieri, Gilbane CEO Paul Choquette, real estate developer Arthur Robbins, RI Hospital Trust Bank CEO Henry Woodbridge, Rabbi Leslie Gutterman, Fred Lippitt, Edward Eddy, Nick Retsinas, and a wide range of other community leaders.

Key findings in that report noted a major discrepancy in state funding compared to similar school systems and that Providence students spent far fewer hours in school than those in peer cities. The report concluded that major improvements in almost every area could be made with stronger management and with only a small increase in funding.

In 2016, 26 years later, Johns Hopkins issued a scathing report, noting that the “Providence Public School District is overburdened with multiple, overlapping sources of governance and bureaucracy with no clear domains of authority and very little scope for transformative change. The resulting structures paralyze action, stifle innovation, and create dysfunction and inconsistency across the district. In the face of the current governance structure, stakeholders understandably expressed little to no hope for serious reform.”

If anyone was surprised, they shouldn’t have been. Shortly after the report’s release, the state, under Governor Gina Raimondo, took over the Providence schools, confident that they could produce a major turnaround in a reasonable timeframe of five years. Earlier this year, Mayor Smiley and the City Council crafted a plan to retake control of the schools since little improvement had occurred.

But at the end of August, State Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green recommended to the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees the schools, to extend the takeover, and her request was approved. “I am recommending an extension of the PPSD intervention for up to three years because the absence of an aligned, shared vision of governance and limited focus on improving student outcomes troubles me and is not conducive to continued success,’’ Infante-Green detailed.

So where are our schools? Clearly, things are going as well as the Washington Bridge!

If you consider the city as a business and you are the chief executive officer, with background and strengths in administration and management, based on test scores outlined by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) against the Turnaround Action Plan (TAP) goals (see chart), you would spend a substantial amount of your of time at the school department demanding cuts and improved performance.

We would suggest that the mayor set up a satellite office in the school department and show them that the Department of Government Efficiency can work on a local level! It would benefit students, parents, and taxpayers.