Friday, December 04, 2009

Hope High Finds its Bollocks

Kudos to the Hope High School community:

LINCOLN — In an unprecedented move, more than 50 teachers, students and alumni implored state education leaders to save Hope High School, once one of the state’s worst high schools, from being dismantled piece by piece.

Providence School Supt. Tom Brady is imposing a six-period day on all of the city’s high schools because, in a district where students move from school to school, a uniform curriculum means that all students will be on the same page whether they attend Hope or Central High School.

But Hope’s teachers say that replacing the school’s “block” schedule of four 90-minute periods a day with six 48-minute classes will effectively undermine five years of hard-won reforms, changes that have earned the school national recognition as well as praise from Governor Carcieri.

“We will no longer have weekly advisory periods, weekly [schoolwide] planning time and our every-other-day team planning will be eliminated completely,” said Marianne Davidson, a faculty member, at Thursday’s board of regents’ meeting.

Student advisories, considered a critical tool for building trusting relationships between students and adults, would be slashed from nearly 90 minutes a week to 30 minutes, maybe less.

I'll be drafting a letter of support this weekend.

In the meantime, I'm also glad this came up now because the Regents need to be reminded that if they start acting like the school board for the whole state, the whole state will start treating them like their school board.

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