Gov. Daniel J. McKee’s plan to improve student outcomes, dubbed “Learn 365 RI,” places emphasis on year-round learning outside of regular school hours, but the initiative so far has included few details on how cities and towns will staff and run these programs beyond the classroom.
Learn 365 RI will give municipalities that opt-in a cut of $4 million in federal emergency funding to support year-round programming before and after school, with a goal of elevating student outcomes in Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System scores; student attendance; and completion rates of federal student aid applications to match Massachusetts, which leads the Ocean State in each of these categories.
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So far, the city of Newport is the only Rhode Island community that has formally signed on to participate in Learn 365 RI.
Statewide, McKee says, just one hour of extra time dedicated to education per day will add up to 1 million hours of learning on top of usual classroom time.
McKee spokesperson Olivia DaRocha says that the plan gives limited parameters to give cities and towns flexibility in enacting the plan.
“This initiative is designed to be highly customizable to meet the unique needs of each community that participates,” DaRocha told PBN.
And in his announcement at the Boys & Girls Club of Newport on April 12, McKee implied the program is intended to shift some responsibility away from teachers.
“Our teachers play a critical role in our children’s learning – and it’s no exaggeration that they are heroes,” McKee said. “But the days of putting the entire weight of this effort on their backs is over.”
DaRocha said, “It’s possible that some communities may choose to engage teachers, retired teachers or other education professionals for support – this is again all dependent on the needs of that community and the model they decide to set up.”
Darlene Netcoh, president of the Warwick Teacher’s Union and a teacher of 25 years, sees the plan as unformed and potentially hazardous to school districts in the longer term.
“What’s going on is vague,” Netcoh said. “What it’s going to look like is vague — who’s going to run it, who’s going to teach in it, what exactly it entails.”
Meanwhile, the district has plenty of other gaps to focus on before it should focus on adding extra hours of education, Netcoh says. For instance, she notes, the Warwick school district previously eliminated several elementary-level special education positions, which remain unfilled.
“I think money coming in would be better spent on shoring up what we already have, rather than creating something new that might take away funds” from other issues in need of attention, Netcoh said.
McKee “is big on creating these extra programs instead of taking care of what we already have,” she said. “And what frequently happens with special programs is there’s funding this year, but then it becomes the burden of the school department to continue to fund it.”
That means school officials have to ask the city for more money, Netcoh says, and the city has to either find additional financial sources or deny the funding, leading to more cuts in schools. As staffing stands at the moment, she added, the district wouldn’t have teachers to cover additional hours of teaching.
And while the program might work in Newport, Netcoh doubts the approach will be a good fit for some other cities and towns.
Colleen Callahan, director of professional issues for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, says she’s encouraged by McKee’s apparent recognition that students and educators need additional support.
But a critical next step is ensuring that teachers and other education personnel are at the table when the details of this plan are filled in, she says.
“A key to making sure that everyone’s rowing in the same direction is to make sure that you plan these kinds of supplemental programs in very close alignment with the regular school day programs,” Callahan said.
The state initiative has existing models to look to in honing these details, Callahan says, such as the Full-Service Community Schools program. The federally backed model encourages direct collaboration between schools and other community organizations to develop concrete resources for students.
But whether or not teachers are staffing the after-school programs, they’ll have an essential role to play in determining the programming at the community level, Callahan says.
“What I would like to see is a better alignment,” Callahan said. “And that means we would need to have teachers … I think it’s partly staffing, but it’s also heavily related to planning and coordinating so the efforts aren’t disparate.”
The state will release a request for proposals to municipalities in the coming weeks, and McKee plans to visit communities that agree to participate in Learn 365 RI for compact signings.
