Perhaps the biggest policy proposal in the draft budget is the idea to merge to board of regents, which currently oversees elementary and secondary public schools, and the board of governors, which oversees public higher education, into one board of education.
The nine member board would be appointed by the governor and would employ a chancellor of education whose responsibilities would be “determined by the board of education,” according to Article 4 of the proposed budget bill. The current commissioners of education “shall be subject to the direction and control of the board of education.”
House Finance Committee Chairman Helio Melo said the idea is to “make the education system in the state more efficient and effective.” Because of Rhode Island’s small size, he said, the two current education boards should be able to merge into one sort-of super committee that would oversee all public education in the state.
Melo and others said the proposal is in the nascient stages.
“Is it a plan to combine the staffs of the two [education] organizations, I don’t know,” said Tim Duffy, the executive director of the Rhode Island Assocation of School Committees. “There’s a lot that still needs to be straightened out.”
According to the bill, the change would take place in 2014.
Rep. Frank Ferri, a progressive Democrat from Warwick, said, “I don’t disagree that we need to see if we can make the system more efficient and responsive, but I’m concerned about the time limit. In Vermont and Florida it took five to seven years to create.
Melo said, “I don’t think it will take years but it will take months. It’s going to be very long process.”
[...] and the board of governors, which oversees public higher education, into one board of education. www.rifuture.org//budget-bill-could-create-one-state-board-of-education.html Health and Wellness ProJo: Snuff ‘em if you got ‘em (A4) By Connie Grosch Hosted by [...]
Consolidation. Vertical integration. Lean. Mean.
Efficient??
Basketball pavilion. Kaplan. Education, LLC.
Isn’t lean and mean what created Don Carcieri, and, for that matter, George W. Bush, and gave them opportunities to be dictatorial ramrods? …hilariously, in the name of jobs?
Aren’t we already headed toward a national factory farm, multiple choice curriculum under mealy-mouthed Arne Duncan?
Look at the results.
Is Representative Melo capable of legislatively fighting off a full-on attack by the evermore powerful forces behind educational privatization? Or, will he not know what hit him…and agree to it, anyway, after the damage is done?
If he can see the dangers of privatization on the horizon, why does he advocate consolidation at a time like this? To give up diversity to save pennies? All over the place, you hear about getting rid of school committees and local control. Yeah, let’s make a pyramid out of it. That works well.
Do you really want the schools run with an agribusiness mentality? That’s where billionaire capitalism is going, clearly. It’s been clear for years now, from the time of Reagan and ketchup as a vegetable. From the time of Texas textbook publishers and their lobbies.
Streamline things so that billionaires, their “foundations,” and their hires, like Gist, can foreclose on a community based public school system (founded by progressives, incidentally) more than a century ago? Those people understood the true intent of the Founders, not those porkers with the plastic tri-cornered hats and the flop sweat.
Mr. Melo is a nice guy, but this is not Nice Guy Land anymore
And lack of awareness of history, particularly that of the ’30′s, the time of the last Depression, in Europe and in the States, does not bode well. Ask about Coughlin. Ask about Franco and Salazar.
Ask about repression in the streets.
Don’t worry about a well-oiled machine; worry about democracy.
And claw back some money from 38 Studios while you’re at it.