Clik here to view.
Montañez doesn’t call it a takeover. He sees it as an intervention – a much needed infusion of ideas to improve schools. But after two years of state-run schools, things still look dire. A recent report from the nonprofit Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council shows how schools are underperforming and leaving kids behind.
The Public’s Radio morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Montañez about his plans for getting control back from the state, and for addressing the many challenges facing Providence public schools.
Luis Hernandez: The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council recently put out their report saying that state schools are in trouble. The report showed stark achievement gaps between students of different racial, geographic, and economic backgrounds, problems that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. What do you make of that report?
Javier Montañez: After reading the RIPEC report, it mentions a lot of the things that we already in Providence have been doing. So it was – it wasn’t such a shocker to us. Because you know, we were working on situations, we’ve known that the pandemic has taken over, it has a huge impact on students and educators – not just on students, but on educators, for the last two years. And we’re not out of the pandemic, you know. We may be near the end but we’re still seeing the residuals of what’s happening and what continues to happen. And as it was stated in a couple of additional reports, it’s going to take us anywhere between three to five years to recoup from where we should be. So those are the things we should keep in mind. I think the report really puts it out there in black and white for the people to, you know, open up their eyes, and how hard it has been for the school district, how hard has been for many districts. It’s not just in Providence, it’s around the country that this has happened.
Hernandez: You’ve been in this area for a while. So you’ve seen what’s been going on. And I’m wondering, from your perspective, has this been the case for a long, long time? Have you been seeing the decline? What’s been going on?
Montañez: I was a student in Providence. Then I became a teacher in Providence, and then an assistant principal in Providence, and then a principal in Providence, and now the superintendent. And I can tell you that, for years and decades, you know, we’ve done the work. But however, we’ve always been falling short, and there’s been a lot of things that need to be reprogrammed. We need to put systems into place, we need to make sure we’re meeting the student’s needs. So yes, it’s been a broken system for some time. There’s been a lot of attempts to fix some of these issues. Providence schools, as you’ve said, have been failing for decade
Hernandez: Coming back to the RIPEC report, they pointed out a few things. They said, hire more teachers of color, do more to retain your teachers, and you got to do something about attendance. Let’s quickly go through these three. Hiring more teachers of color – how do you do that?
Montañez: We have stipends to bring teachers in. We also have up to, I will say, think it’s about $25,000, in loan forgiveness for teachers of color. I mean, there’s a lot of programs that we have, we’ve put in place to make sure that we continue to work towards our goal.
Clik here to view.
Hernandez: And you yourself, as you said, you were a teacher, I wonder, you know, is it a hard sell to convince teachers to stay here?
Montañez: We’re in difficult times, exacerbated, the situation with teachers, when we got hit with COVID and the pandemic. I mean we had some teachers having to make some decisions about whether they wanted to stay here. Other teachers making decisions to work at other districts, either nearby or far. It’s a balance game that we’re playing like, how many are coming in versus how many are going out? And what are we continuing to do to continue hiring individuals?
Hernandez: And then, of course, attendance. I don’t know, besides going and knocking on doors, how do you get the kids to show up to school?
Montañez: That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have an attendance team, one of our TAP goals is – our turnaround action plan – our TAP goal is to make sure that we increase our attendance to at least 90% attendance for adults and students. So we have attendance teams at every school. We also have an attendance team at the district level that actually is doing what you said, the team is going out into the public to meet the parents and the students where they’re at.
Hernandez: I wonder, is there any one main reason why, why are they staying away from school?
Montañez: It’s not one main reason. There are multiple reasons. It can be from either they have to work and help support the house, whether they have to stay home and oversee the siblings, or you know, it’s multiple reasons why they’re not coming to school. It’s about reaching them and figuring out ways that we can help the families, help the students to make sure they are where they belong, which is in school, because we all know that students learn best when they’re in school.
Hernandez: The National Assessment of Educational Progress came out with their report card about the nation and they said it: math and reading has dropped for everybody. And part of that report, they were mentioning how it could take hundreds of billions of dollars, almost $700 billion to possibly get all the kids caught back up. Do you think it’s just about money? Is that going to solve the problem
Montañez: Well, the money will support the work and the resources that we’ll be putting into supporting the students in order for them to be successful. We look and say, you know, what can we do. And it’s going back to, you know – my train of thought is, what we can do is to understand the impact, as these reports are stated, the impact that this COVID has on our students and our faculty and staff in our communities, and what we can do to provide the resources. So that money, when we talk about the monies, it’s not talking about just the money that’s going to be thrown at the problem, but it’s looking at the resources that these monies are going to be able to support to make sure that we can do what we need to do to close the achievement gap so that our students can be successful.
Hernandez: Is there a goal as to when you want to see the turnaround? And I’m not saying there’s going to be a complete turnaround immediately. I’m just saying like, for you, what do you want to see in these next couple of years? What do you want to see in the next five years? When do you want to take this back from the state and say, this is ours? And when do you want to see this get to the point where nobody is saying, oh, Providence schools are a problem, Rhode Island schools are a problem – when it will be turned around? What’s that goal?
Montañez: You know, I know that they had a preliminary time, which was in a couple of years. I’m not looking at as far as you know, how fast it’s going to be turned around and turned over. Because I don’t think we should turn it over if it’s not ready. So we want to make sure that we continue to do the work. So that means looking at the work, day by day, month by month, year by year, where are we, what growth are we making, where we need additional support. And when we can see that we no longer need that support, then I think that’s the right time to turn it over, where it will continue to work, whether I’m here, whether the commissioner is here – it’s going to continue to work long after us. So it’s about putting a system into place that’s well-oiled, that is going to continue to work long after my time is done here in Providence.
The post Providence superintendent has plans to fix underperforming schools appeared first on TPR: The Public's Radio.