Youth-led social justice activism in Rhode Island
“The activist that I am is breaking the system from within,” said Latifat Odetunde, a senior at Classical High School and a member of Youth in Action speaking at a conference on “Youth-Led Social Justice Activism in Rhode Island.”
Wagner on transgender policy: “You can’t force people to love”
“You can’t force people to love and sometimes when you force you actually create the very issues that you say you are trying to prevent,” said Education Commissioner Ken Wagner.
Pawtucket ends lunch shaming, moves toward free food for all students
Pawtucket is employing a two-part strategy to changing its approach to school lunch. The first part was to stop lunch shaming. In April, RI Future flagged the Pawtucket School District as one of several in Rhode Island that serves cold cheese sandwiches to students if their parents don’t pay their food bill on time – […]
Groups urge RIDE to adopt statewide policy for transgender students
A recent report from the ACLU of RI found that more than 25 percent of RI public schools have no comprehensive policy in place to protect transgender and gender non-conforming students.
Providence elementary school students eat free this year
School meals will be free for every elementary school student in the Providence Public School District this year, according to a press release from PPSD. “Providence Public Schools are committed to creating educational environments that support health and wellness,” said School Board member Robert Gondola, the chairman of the board’s Health and Wellness Committee. “The […]
RI needs new investments in higher education to ensure prosperity for all
Like most states, Rhode Island’s state funding for higher education remains well below pre-recession levels (though Rhode Island’s disinvestment in higher education preceded the onset of the Great Recession by several years, as seen in Figure 1). Economic opportunity and a thriving state economy depend on a high-quality, affordable system of public higher education. At […]
Lucy Rios on prevention of domestic violence
Lucy Rios is the director of prevention and communications at Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence (RICADV). I talked to her about her work in my continuing series on domestic violence issues. Why is prevention important? We have been strategically working at how do we end domestic violence in our community. We focused a lot […]
La Salle very interested in replacing Providence Water Supply Board building with parking lot
La Salle, continued Thomas Glavin, looked at the building with an eye towards “possibly re-purposing it” or “possibly housing their middle school” and “our engineers and architects advised us that it just wouldn’t work… It’s just not economically feasible.”
Ward 3 candidate forum provides insight into candidate priorities
Less than two weeks after the un-debate, four of the five candidates who qualified for the ballot in the race to be the Ward 3 city councilor from Providence once again took the stage, this time to answer questions, not just listen to the concerns of residents.
Progressive Dems oppose educational experiment on RI students
Personalized Learning is a misleading term when, for example, the only personalized aspect is the pace at which each student works through the same commercially-produced digital content modules.
The CCRI-only compromise on Raimondo’s RI Promise doesn’t help poorest students
For students like me, who are eligible for the full Pell Grant (federal funding for college students), community college is already free. That means the RI Promise Scholarship does not change anything for folks like me. But in its original form, it would have covered the gap between federal funding and the tuition at RIC or URI.
ACLU settles case with Tiverton on behalf of 3rd grader arrested and searched without cause
The seizure, detention and interrogation of the young child were based solely on unsubstantiated claims from another child that the girl was carrying “chemicals” in her backpack, and occurred even after the police found nothing in the backpack.
RI now has one of the best public preschool programs in the country
When it comes to pre-kindergarten programs, Rhode Island is slowly becoming one of the best states in the nation, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual State of Preschool Yearbooks released yesterday. “Rhode Island is a leader on funding per child and preschool quality standards, meeting all 10 current and new benchmarks,” […]
Students and supporters push for affordable college at State house
“I want to go to college, but low-income students like me have to rely on student loans that don’t even cover the full price,” said Jayleen Salcedo, a senior at Classical High School and a member of the Providence Student Union (PSU).
The state of RI school buildings is in ‘crisis,’ says Wagner
“We have a crisis with our facilities,” said state Education Commissioner Ken Wagner about the state of school buildings in Rhode Island during the student question and answer portion of his State of Education speech Monday night. A student from Chariho posed the question. He said his school resembles a prison. Then there’s Providence. In […]
Rhode Island’s pre-k program is expanding, slowly
As Rhode Island considers extending the social contract at the tail end of the public education experience with Governor Gina Raimondo’s high profile RI Promise proposal, it’s worth noting the Ocean State has been extending it at the other end for almost a decade. This September, the state-funded pre-kindergarten program adds four new classrooms in […]
Raimondo on lunch shaming: ‘We shouldn’t be singling kids out’
“As a mother I sure wouldn’t want that happening to my kids,” said Governor Gina Raimondo when this reporter explained to her the concept of lunch shaming. Several Rhode Island school districts serve cold cheese sandwiches in lieu of a hot lunch if their parents miss payments for the meal (here and here). “We shouldn’t […]
Legislation would end ‘lunch-shaming’ cheese sandwich policy, maybe much more
A new bill seeks to outlaw lunch shaming policies in Rhode Island public school cafeterias by mandating “Type A” lunches for all students. The way it’s written, it could also make school lunch free to all students. “It’s a very simple solution,” said the bill’s lead sponsor Rep. Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, of Providence, “provide a hot […]
Lunch shaming in RI, part 2: Urban schools and cheese sandwiches
The suburbs aren’t the only place lunch shaming happens in Rhode Island. Some urban school districts have also experimented with the so-called cheese sandwich policy – when public school cafeterias serve students a cold cheese sandwich in lieu of a hot lunch because their parents are delinquent on the bill. Pawtucket: cheese or sunbutter sandwich […]
Lunch shaming in RI: Suburban schools say let students eat cheese sandwiches
It’s known as lunch shaming. Students are subjected to special, sometimes embarrassing, treatment because their parents didn’t pay the school lunch bill.
New Comments