Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, the Providence School Board, and parents, teachers and community leaders across the city have spent the spring grappling with a reported $100 million structural deficit citywide and a crash course of school closures and reorganizations.
But while Taveras put forward a proposal to close four PPSD schools at an estimated savings of $10 million a year, at the same time Cranston Mayor Allan Fung has quietly submitted a plan to the Rhode Island Department of Education to open a five school "mayoral academy" that would, over time, serve 1300 Providence students, and, as Mayor Fung has put it, see $20 million a year "funneled into Cranston" from Providence.
My favorite line:
Mayor Fung's solution to race and income-based achievement gaps within his city's schools is to offer low income students a special school they can attend with poor children from Providence.
Where's the outrage over this? Do people even know about it, or care? Rhode Island does not need Achievement First.
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