East Providence
One doesn’t have to know the specifics to be taken aback by this dirt-bag move from State Senator Daniel DaPonte (D, East Providence) (emphasis added): Larisa has cost the city money, DaPonte said, by creating “monumental parks” named after the mayor’s mother. And, DaPonte continued, Councilman Robert Cusack has cost the city “hundreds of thousands…
Anchor Rising is well represented at tonight’s fundraiser in East Providence, as are the familiar faces of the RI right-wing, and Republicans, too. About 50 people here. Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian had to be elsewhere and spoke first: State GOP Chairman Gio Cicione went next: Gio noted that he was glad to finally be able…
Tomorrow 6:30 – 9:00 pm at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 50 Crescent View Avenue. Good food and lots of interesting speakers. Details here. East Providence has been one of the major battlegrounds Ground Zero’s for reform in Rhode Island. It’s always fun (and enlightening) to drop in on events there.
Dan Yorke has been talking about the East Providence school administration’s push for a pay-for-performance system for teachers, and one teacher from the district called in from her house in Barrington to explain that that sort of pay schedule doesn’t work in her profession. Teaching is cooperative, you see, meaning that unlike other professions (apparently)…
From a press release just out from the East Providence School Committee: The proposal calls for a collaboration among “stakeholders” in developing the system of evaluating teachers that will be the basis for paying them beginning in 2011. The “stakeholders” would include parents, teachers, administrators, the teachers’ union and educational experts from Rhode Island and…
Doesn’t it seem that school districts somehow always just happen to find money? I mean, sometimes a car’s brake lines just happen to go the day after it’s been in the shop for a tuneup, but it’s difficult to know what to make of the Woonsocket superintendent’s claim that the district can now hire a…
General Assembly Auditor General Ernest Almonte has rejected East Providence’s budget balancing plan (PDF): The City of East Providence and the School Department have a well established history of deficits. Unfortunately, the City has failed to adequately resolve its financial dilemma. The current Plan is similar to prior deficit reduction plans which proposed the sale…
The rhetoric about public-sector workers’ doggedly, thanklessly doing the hard work that the community requires, recently promoted around here by Phil, comes to mind especially with the item that I’ve italicized in the following: EAST PROVIDENCE — The city’s teachers have voted to withdraw from volunteer activities in the district’s schools. The roughly 500 educators…
Is anyone else at all squeamish about a city manager asserting the authority to go ahead with layoffs without City Council approval, as has happened in East Providence? For the background, here’s the Projo‘s Alisha A. Pina from yesterday…[East Providence] will lay off 13 of its 100 police officers immediately to save $1 million, City…
… is referenced, in fact, by National Education Association Executive Director John I. Wilson in yesterday’s 7 to 7 ProJo News Blog report about the teachers’ “no confidence” vote in the School Committee. Our goals are basic and universal – to protect the rights of employees and defend quality public education. Undoubtedly, most individual teachers…
