Cumberland Mayor Dan McKee has taken a leadership role in education reform, and his plan for a mayoral academy is close to fruition. An outline of the school plan appeared in last week’s Valley Breeze.
The Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley School hopes to open in September. Students will attend from 7:45 am to 5 pm, with an early dismissal on Friday so that teachers may be provided with professional development.
The school’s schedule already takes into account two significant roadblocks to reform in our public schools. Firstly, the school day will be longer, significantly longer. The academy will not have to determine which subjects will be sacrificed for the other each day. Students will have three periods of language arts and two periods of math, in addition to periods in science, social studies, and electives.
Secondly, time is built into the schedule for guaranteed teacher training. In most public schools, the teachers’ work day is only a few minutes longer than the students’ day. As a result, there’s no time to provide meaningful professional development to the entire staff. Districts must rely on volunteerism or be prepared to pony up an overtime hourly wage.
Breeze publisher Tom Ward offers an excellent editorial this week. Why, he wonders, have we allowed our public schools to fail for so long.
Our schools are broken, our children are being cheated, and their futures are in jeopardy. Why are we silent?
Perhaps the mayoral academy allow the silence to be broken, to give a voice to those who advocate for our students that is louder than the unions that speak for the teachers.
The unions are afraid, so much so that they tried to unseat Mayor McKee in November. They failed. And now a host of other local leaders are expressing support for the cause. The Breeze lists Mayors Charlie Lombardi of North Providence, Scott Avedesian of Warwick, Joseph Polisena of Johnston, Jim Doyle of Pawtucket, Charles Moreau of Central Falls, Cranston Mayor-elect Allan W. Fung, Town Administrators T. Joseph Almond of Lincoln and Paulette Hamilton of North Smithfield, and East Greenwich Town Council President Michael Isaacs.
If the Democracy Prep school opens in September as is hoped, chalk one up for the children of the Blackstone Valley.
