Another good day at Hope High

Providence School Superintendent Melody Johnson beamed as we spoke in the corridor. She talked about forging even deeper relationships with Brown and other colleges. She talked about high school students taking courses at the renowned Ivy League school and about college professors teaching courses at the high school.

I described it as a good day at Hope High School, a beleaguered public school that has had far too few good days in recent years.

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Hope High School has made headlines of late not because of scholarly excellence as it did decades ago, but rather as the result of students fighting, incidents of arson, out-of-control absenteeism and standardized test scores that suggest there has been painfully little learning going on there.

How bad, you may ask?

Well, it got to the point just a couple of years ago where the likelihood of a student actually graduating from the school dropped to below 50 percent.

So the state, as it should, stepped in.

A bold initiative was proposed – no, mandated – by Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Peter McWalters. He called for the school to rearrange itself into three or four smaller schools. Those schools would self govern, so to speak, curriculum and teaching assignments would be tailored toward students.

It may sound like a simple, common sense approach. But nothing is simple here. Not in a state where the teachers’ unions remain powerful. Not in a state where change tends to come not at high-speed, but glacier-speed.

There was a big catch to the proposed changes. The teachers had to agree.

And so they were asked to sign on – to put the students first, to lighten up on some of their union restrictions and dare to change. They were asked, really, to stop tolerating poor performance. They were asked to stop short-changing the kids.

That’s why last Monday (March 17) turned out to be another good day at Hope High School. The teachers – most of them, anyway – did the right thing. They put the students first.

By a vote of 79.5 to 20 (part-timers received partial votes) teachers endorsed the plan. The head of the teachers’ union, Phil DeCecco, encouraged the teachers to accept the proposal. He said all the right things.

There are opponents, of course – at least 20 percent of them. Some wanted more time to digest the proposed changes. Others, I assume, are not geared up for doing things differently. Maybe they’ve gotten too comfortable, complacent even. That’s one way, after all, you get the kind of results we’ve been seeing at Hope.

Even as accepted, the teachers are looking for some of the changes to be phased in and they want to know more details regarding the professional development courses in their future.

But those are technicalities, really. They’re on board. That’s the important thing.

Johnson, the superintendent, is now looking ahead at solutions not back at problems.

“I am delighted that the teachers have arrived at a consensus on the proposal,” she said. “There is yet a lot of work to be done, but this is the first step in the process – getting the teachers’ input and agreement on how to move forward at Hope High School.”

The changes at Hope High School were coming one way or another. Had the teachers not endorsed the idea, it would have gotten real ugly. Commissioner McWalters would had to have played the heavy. The teachers’ union would have dug in its heels. It would have looked real bad.

And no one would have been hurt more than the kids. They would have been caught in the middle. Dirty laundry would be aired. Everyone would lose.

But the teachers did the right thing. Everyone can now move forward. Hopefully, in the near future, we can begin talking about improving test scores, innovative approaches to teaching and links with nearby colleges and universities.

So it was another good day at Hope High School.