Raffi Jansezian – RI Future

October 13, 2015October 13, 2015

Elorza makes a PASS: new program pairs cops with kids as sports coaches

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Mayor Jorge Elorza announced a new program that pairs inner city students with police officers as after school sports coaches. It’s called PASS, or the Police After School Sports program.

“This is a great day for the city,” Elorza said on Friday at Gilbert Stuart Middle School. “This is something … many folks have been talking about and working on for a very long time.

Elorza added, “Nowadays with the conflict we’ve seen in other cities, truly the cause of it is that the connection between the police and the community doesn’t exist. But we’re working proactively here in Providence to make sure we have those strong relationships, between our police officers, between the police department, and the community.”

The PASS program is an initiative of PASA, the Providence After School Alliance, which was launched in 2004 by then mayor, now Congressman David N. Cicilline to provide quality after school programs.

PASS has 10 Student Resource Officers, or SROs, who have signed on to coach basketball and/or flag football for students from 5 different middle schools – Nathan Bishop, DelSesto, Esek Hopkins, Roger Williams and Gilbert Stuart.

Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements said officers are excited to work directly with students, stressing the importance of having police officers building relationships with students and in the community.

“And in this crazy world that’s a good thing, that’s really a good thing because we often times hear about bad interactions between the police and members of the community,” said Clements.
“And that may happen somewhere along the line, but at least if they have a perspective,” Clements continued. “They can say ‘Yeah, but I know Officer Wheeler, or Officer Carvallo, or Torres, and you know what he’s a good guy. I worked with him. I played ball with him before.”

A former SRO himself, Clements said interacting with the students on a daily basis provides a balanced and positive feeling not only for the kids but for the officers as well.

“When you walk in a school, in a day room, in a basketball court, on a field, and you see a young boy or girl you know and there’s a connection,” said Clements. “There’s no question, we as adults, we as police officers, walk away with a positive feeling, that day, that night and going forward.”

The students pictured are members of After Zone, a program dealing directly with middle school students and providing them a range of opportunities. After Zone is completely free of charge for the students as well as provides transportation home, supper, and mentorship outside of school. After Zone is an umbrella program allowing students to experience a wide range of programs and activities such as: Downcity Design, Explore the Bay, and various dance, and hip-hop courses as well.

The PASA and After Zone programs are funded through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, providing money to schools within impoverished areas and low-performing schools. Aiming to help the students, and the schools as a whole, meet core state & federal academic standards. Every year PASA works directly with over 2,000 middle school students in Rhode Island.

IGT donated $40,000 for the development of the project and purchasing of equipment for the program. As well as the Providence Fire Department buying basketballs for PASS, the program aims to motivate and build community ties between students and the police department in Providence.

Formerly GTECH, IGT is headquartered in Providence and has been an active member of the Providence community, often times donating computers and other technology for libraries and schools alike.

“We knew from the beginning when we came to Providence. It’s the neighborhoods is what makes the city great, and the kids in those neighborhoods…This is where we belong,” said Robert K. Vincent, IGT senior vice president of human resources and public affairs.

Vincent joked that IGT “had the easy part,” before ceremonially handing Mayor Elorza a large check, and explaining that Hillary Salmons, director of PASA, and the others involved had done the hard work to make the program a reality.

September 20, 2015

Inaugural Ocean State Oyster Festival a success

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Saturday marked the first ever Ocean State Oyster Festival, celebrating the resurgent and exploding oyster industry in Rhode Island, held at the Riverwalk in Providence.

Attendees were both curious and hungry. Smiles and a light-hearted attitude infected all those wandering around the festival looking for the next shellfish to slurp.

“For me it’s the history, the direct heritage of it all,” said Steven Thompson, a Warren Town Council member who spoke at length the “rebuilding” of the oyster industry in his town, which he said was “decimated”and is now growing again.

Farms from across the Ocean State came to display and provide the all-important oysters while music played and smiles were brought to nearly every face.

Oysters on ice from Salt Pond Oysters, shucked and ready for slurping.

Oysters are a cornerstone of Rhode Island heritage. According to the Ocean State Oyster Festival oyster farming as far back as 1900 was a thriving industry in RI, Point Judith Pond provided an unmatched bounty of oysters. The industry grew fast with the exponential boom putting immense pressure on local oyster populations. Over fishing decimated the shellfish nearly driving them into extinction. The growth of industry drove itself into near collapse.

About 20 years ago Rhode Island sustainable aquaculture movement began and sparked the current oyster farming climate.

“It’s blowin’ up. From a few farms 15 years ago to now almost 50,” said Travis Lundgre, an employee of Salt Pond Oysters.

When asked why he loves it Lundgre said, “The calm of it all. Oyster farming is just different, different from every other kind of farming.”

Jesse Kwan, of the Oyster Country Club, called them “the foundation of the oceans.”

In Rhode Island, oysters are the quintessential local food, with nearly every farm supplying restaurants around the state almost exclusively. Some of the larger farms, including Salt Pond Oysters, Walrus & Carpenter Oysters, and Salt Water Farms, do export their stock to other states and around the country as well.

“You could eat one and I could eat one and we’d taste two different things,” said Lauren Nutini of Salt Water Farms, the largest oyster farm in Rhode Island.

With programs like the Blount Shellfish Hatchery at Roger Williams University, Blount Fine Foods, based in Warren, provided the endowment to create the only shellfish hatchery in Rhode Island. Warren was historically an oyster farming community and now that same community is pulling together in efforts to restore the oyster farms.

The farms themselves use sustainable farming techniques to ensure the oysters not only thrive but provide a healthy ecosystem around them. One such practice is “reseeding” or pouring the old shells back into the farms allowing the baby shellfish something to latch onto and grow before popping off and being harvested.

Oysters filter nearly 50 gallons of water a day, with some farms having 6 million animals, that’s over 300 million gallons of water being cleaned cumulatively a day for years as they mature and grow.

“There’s nothing better after a day at the beach,” said attendee Fred Jodry, “It’s a mouthful of the ocean.” Jodry explained his intrigue with the resurgence of oyster farming in Rhode Island. “Industry took it out, and it’s nice to see this coming back.”

September 5, 2015September 5, 2015

Groden Center employees picket, demand better wages

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More than 50 staff, union reps, and concerned families chanted and picketed Thursday afternoon at The Groden Center in Providence. The gathered participants were making their concerns public in their struggle for fair wages and safe staffing practices.

“At one time the Groden Center was considered an excellent school for autism,” said Cory Lafleur a staff member and key figure in negotiations with the Groden management, “and I want to help it get there.”

According to Lafleur the staff has been negotiating with Groden management since October with no changes and are now going public with their fight. Lafleur, who has worked at Groden for ten years, says he’s “seen things deteriorate,” and that the school is “loosely run,” with an emphasis on a “high turnover” rather than taking care of employees. Lafleur has accused Groden of walking away in the middle of negotiations and wasting the staff’s time while not budging on any point.

Among those in attendance were reps like Chas Walker from Service Employees International United (SEIU) Local 1199, who was running the event, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 328, Teamsters Local 251, among a plethora of other local reps. All supporting the cause of Groden staff members including Rep. Patricia Serpa (D-West Warwick) and Rep. J. Aaron Regunberg (D-Providence).

Most of The Groden Center staff receive as little as $11.25 an hour, with very few making above $12.00 an hour. Allison Peterson, who has worked at The Groden Center in Coventry for three years, claims to have only received one raise in that time and only because of new hiring practices. Rep. Serpa called the treatment of the staff “morally repugnant” and “incomprehensible.”

According to Peterson during emergencies the staff are able to make “support calls” and have additional staff from nearby facilities intervene to ensure student safety. But even at times that’s not enough.

The chanting rang out in the Eastside neighborhood as Fil Eden lead the calls through a megaphone, various chants of “Can’t survive on eleven twenty-five!” and “What do we want? Safe Staffing. When do we want it? Now!”

Corey Lafluer wearing a sign before handing out fliers to passing traffic.

Safe staffing means hiring more guides to take care of the children, with current student to staff ratios being nearly 1 to 2, or a 1 to 1. It would seem this number should mean each student is properly cared for but many students need near constant care as well as emergency cases where more 2, or even 3, staff members need to stop a student from hurting themselves or others. Leaving other students unattended.

“I’m passionate about it, I love the kids, I love what this institution is built on, but I don’t see them caring as much as I care. And that’s a problem,” said Lafleur.

Lafleur, Peterson, and many other staff spoke at length about the quality of care they provide and the love they have for the children under their care. As well as having the right kind of staff and people work at the school. The job coming with many difficulties, from the above mentioned emergencies to the slow progress of many of the students who are on somewhere on the autism scale.

“Not everybody is cut out for this job, so when you have people that are willing to work here, that enjoy working here, understand that they’re not gonna get rich working here, and don’t want to leave,” Lafleur said through a megaphone to the gathered crowd. “You need to recognize those people and pay them what they deserve.”

September 3, 2015September 3, 2015

Cicilline stands with child care providers

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Congressman David Cicilline met Wednesday with local child care workers to discuss the need for high quality care that pays a living wage.

“It’s time for Congress to take action to ensure that high quality, affordable child care is accessible for every American family,” said Cicilline. “And that the childcare workforce can access the training and wages they need to make a living.”

Cicilline joined a forum of 11 child care workers, state representatives, and local parents to discuss House Resolution 386, which recognizes the need for better child care for the working parents.

Among possible solutions identified by the participants on Wednesday, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour for child care workers was the most popular.

“They want us to better ourselves, but we need help,” said Nichole Ward, a certified nursing assistant and mother of two. Ward spoke of the difficulties finding care for her two children while working and going to school at the same time.

Ultimately she had to ask her family to watch her children as childcare proved too expensive, a common solution for working families. Ward explained that her children had “fallen behind.” in their educations. Her mother and sister “aren’t teachers,” unlike the child care providers, and cannot provide the vital early childhood development.

“Between 2007 and 2015, funding for Rhode Island’s subsidized child care program shrank by 30 percent (from $71 million to $51 million),” said Rachel Flum, senior policy analyst at the Economic Progress Institute. “The reduction was primarily in state support for the program which was accomplished by reducing eligibility – causing hundreds of families to lose coverage.”

Cicilline cited a University of California, Berkeley study that found child care workers are paid less than $10 an hour and wages have stagnated with no real increase since 1997 while at the same time child care costs have doubled.

“Pay the workers like their work matters,” said Marti Murphy with Fight for 15, an advocacy group currently celebrating victories big and small across the nation.

Cicilline expanded that childcare is becoming the “biggest number, bigger than rent, bigger than food.”

“Things are different now than 25-years-ago,” he said, talking about the need for Congressional action. “We can’t pretend it’s 1950…and recognize the reality that both parents are working.”

Added Chas Walker of 1199 SEIU New England, “From 1-5-years-old are the most important years in a child’s life. We have to value the people providing the care for them.”